Eight years

[itswhatits]

I've been struggling uphill against myself to feel happiness for eight years. Eight years, I've fought and struggled, and yet it all feels so empty. It feels like all I can do is bear my struggles on my own, and that none of the effort I put into my life matters. I try to do all of the things that people say will help -- talking to people, going to therapy, taking my medication, going on walks, journaling, making friends -- but it all feels so hollow in the sheer magnitude of my despair. All I do, all I am, all I have, is hevel, smoke, vapor in the wind. God dammit, I am fighting, I am trying as hard as I can, but it just isn't enough. I feel utterly powerless.

I wrote in my online journal earlier today. Got me to thinking about the epic of Gilgamesh, and man's inability to face the fear of death. There's a lot in Gilgamesh about power and powerlessness, about what man can and cannot overcome with brute force. Gilgamesh and Enkidu are the strongest warriors under the heavens, they can defeat the great beast of the mountains Humbaba and overcome the Bull of Heaven, but Enkidu cannot return to his life as a wild man in the forest, nor can Gilgamesh stop the death of Enkidu, or conquer his own death with the flower of life. There are some things in a person's life which they simply cannot defeat, in spite of all of their struggles. Innocence, immortality, these things have been left out of reach of humanity, by the ceaseless flow of time. Innocence, the perfect past. Immortality, the perfect future. None of us can hold these things forever, none can grasp the great snake of time in our hands and stop it from leaving us behind. What can any of us do in the face of the sentence of the Gods?

 

[UniqueWorm]

mental illness is a persistent little bastard, sometimes you have to go on merely so it wont win.