Into the void...

2003-02-04

6:01 p.m.

So tired . . . so very, very tired. . . .

Work has been absolutely crazy lately. I go into work with the most admirable ideas of what’s going to be accomplished, and, before I know it, it’s the end of the day, nothing is done, and I’m dying to be in bed. Students are positively driving me out of my mind.

“Give me more money. I deserve more money. You owe me more money. What do you mean you can’t help me? How am I supposed to live on the $45,000 a year you’re giving me? It’s not enough.”

It’s never enough.

What do they think I am? Just because the door happens to say “Financial Aid” doesn’t mean that it has anything to do with giving you money. Financial Aid means people have money they tell us to give to you or not to give to you, and no amount of begging, pleading, or being an asshole is going to change that.

Aside from the fact that work is just overly traumatic at the moment, I’m trying to take a class in which we’re reading Vergil’s Aeneid. When you get home from work each day feeling like you’re about to fall over, Vergil is the last thing you need. I’m not saying the class is or was a bad idea, but I’m definitely nearing the end of my rope, particularly because I can’t stop thinking about how worthless it all is.

I have thought for the last ten years of my life that I am going to die before I turn twenty-six. I turn twenty-six in nine months. I have less than nine months to live. This is a feeling that’s been stuck in the pit of my stomach since the first time I knew what that part of the stomach was for. I really, truly, honestly expect to die within the year.

However. . . .

I do have plans. I have plans that are multi-year plans. I’m in the middle of a novel that will take several years to finish. I’m in the middle of a program that should get me a masters degree within three years while I work full-time. I’m desperately trying to show everyone at work that I am smarter, more efficient, and more competent that everyone else, and what is it all for?

I’ll be dead in nine months.

How do you come to terms with something like that? The further along in life that I go, the more I think about it, the more I figure it doesn’t really matter one way or the other, and the more I trouble myself over the inherent paradox that exists in a life where you plan for a future you don’t expect to have.

It’s confusing.

In the time it takes for a human life to be created, mine will be destroyed. But what about all those projects? What about Rob? What about my family? What about the fact that if I turn out to be wrong about this, I’ll feel completely destroyed because my entire life to this point will have been lived under the pretence of a belief that had no basis in fact? It will destroy my entire perception of reality.

I can’t have that again.

That’s happened to me once. If I go through another period of questioning what is right and wrong in terms of interpreting reality, I’ll be forever and irreparably insane. I will be so confused about life that I won’t know who I am, what I’m doing, and where I’m going. What about those ambitious projects then?

Christ.

I’m honestly too fucking tired to think about it. I’m too fucking tired to do anything. I’m too tired to care if I live or die, too tired to try and discern whether or not I’m happy. Too tired . . . too tired. . . .

Too tired.

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