The Bleak Certainty of Despair

None of my usual highfalutin' ideals today, I'm afraid. If you have an aversion to emo whining I'd suggest you skip this entry, because I'm in a dour mood indeed and I feel compelled to vent.

For years I've struggled knowingly with manic depression, after having not known that was what it was before. I've gotten past the point where it could control me as completely as it used to, but I still have entire weeks when nothing seems to go right and I'm just useless for accomplishing anything and can barely stand the thought of living to see another day. I know these moods pass and have banished the thought of doing anything irreversably drastic as a result of them, being sensible enough to realize that I have no right to deny my future self opporunities on the basis of my current moods. So I've taken refuge in a number of coping strategies, of which one of the most successful has been self-aggrandizement. I would imagine that what few virtues I do possess (writing talent, for example) might eventually earn the approval of some agency that was in the position to grant me ultimate power to make the world right according to my preferences, or at least to escape the world into a neverending fantasy that would fulfill my wildest dreams.

Today I confronted yet another of these bleak moods, promoted by a series of petty annoyances (and one not so petty one which puts my future, as in my having one at all, in serious question). And when I reached for my usual power trip, I found that the idea didn't satisfy me this time, because I realized that ultimately, my problem is an inability to stand the possibility of things going wrong in the future. Any current happiness is fleeting to me; no matter how much it satisfies me, the best it can hope to accomplish is to temporarily distract me from the knowledge that things could go horribly wrong tomorrow, condemning me in an instant to unbearable agony, degradation, terror, or any number of other fates I would give anything to avoid. But I saw today that there was nothing I could give, even if an entity of ultimate power were to offer me some bargain...for what that being could grant, it could also take away, for any reason or no reason, and I would have nothing but its word to suggest otherwise. Not being a person given to trust or faith, I couldn't believe that word, and so I would never feel secure, not even after being blessed by a benevolent deity with the fulfillment of my every whim. (That's not to say it might not be fun, but it would have to continue being fun forever or it would still fall under "temporary diversion"; I'd still never be content.)

So I see now that the adaptive nature which I've always believed was humanity's greatest strength, and also suspected was its greatest impulse, indeed has me by the balls even more thoroughly than I had suspected. There is no gift I can be given which would entirely and eternally free me from the fear of pain, disgust, and fear itself. Today I am legitimately a being without hope, and I recognize that I will be overcome with fear for the rest of my days, that short of the complete obliteration of my personality (which I would not submit to even if I trusted that the method employed was capable of doing the job right, and I certainly have no such faith in modern medical methods), nothing can ever set me fully at ease. Right now, the only thing I have to live for is a vague sense of gratitude toward my parents for having put up with me when I was terminally unemployed and seemed incapable of ever amounting to anything. I've made something of myself, but it's a something I don't much like, and I legitimately wish I would simply cease to exist forever (not simply dying, mind, for that makes no guarantees regarding any afterlife), because I see no other way I can be guaranteed never to suffer the worst fates I can imagine, and those fates are so frightening to me that no reward would be great enough for me to be able to accept the risk.

That's where I am today - nowhere, and going nowhere. To be very explicit, this isn't a "cry for help" and suicide is not on the table as an option; I simply have the bleak realization that life brings me no satisfaction, and probably never will again. I will eventually escape this mood, and you'll hear me ranting about how perfect the world could be if we all did X, Y and Z, and I'll believe it wholeheartedly and disavow this dour mood as just a depressive episode, over quickly and better forgotten. I'm not going to try and say otherwise; I just know as of now that this darkness will always return to snuff out all my joys, and that I can think of no way to guarantee it won't.

EDIT - Just to put things in perspective here, it's an hour later and I feel somewhat better. This in no way means I don't still believe as I did above, only that I've been distracted from that belief and am no longer fixated upon it. Like I said, I've learned that these moods come and go, so I need to take them with a grain of salt.