I’m frustrated, sad and frightened.
I didn’t go to work today, in fact I didn’t leave the house.
I’ve been sitting at my desk smoking one cigaret after another.
I loathe my profession. I dislike the adversarial nature of the practice of law. I’ve been plowing this field for 20 years and it’s never been good to me. I’m trapped into a life that regularly leaves me feeling stupid and ineffectual and cowardly, regardless of the reality.
The promise of making a decent living in the practice of law has so far eluded me. I’m not a very good businessman and my business reflects my disinterest and half-hearted attempts to do better.
Yet, as I near the age of 60, I can’t imagine where I could go from here. Who would hire me?
I made my own decision about my social life more than a year ago that I would be better served by not dating. I thought long and hard about it. In most ways, that seems like a good decision in retrospect. There has been a downside, of course; there is a downside to everything. There are days like this one when I’m not just alone, I’m lonely. I wish I had a shoulder to cry on, a cheerleader to buck me up and a companion to bounce thoughts back instead of the echo chamber inside my head.
In the job market, the reality is that my age would be a large obstacle to beginning a new career. Similarly, in the dating market the truth is that I’m not much of a catch.
I’m fortunate that I have enough to recommend me that I have a cadre of close friends. I value them more than gold. I have a supportive family that sometimes likes me less than at other times, but is loyal and loving even in the times I’m not at my best.
This is not the despair of depression. I’ve been there and I know that “black dog” (as Winston Churchill called it) all too well. I’m not overwhelmed by darkness. I see that I have been fortunate in more respects than I can here enumerate: I’m smart, well educated and relatively healthy; I certainly am not homeless, without wardrobe nor hungry.
This is also not the “restless, irritable and discontent” of my alcoholism. This is not something I’ll drink over. This is not something that I have a finger to point in blame. I have no resentments about this, except perhaps with myself and my sometimes unwise choices.
It’s just where I am.
I wish it were so easy for me as to simply have faith in God that I am in his care and will receive what is best for me, if not what I want. I wish I could turn to non-attachment and the path to nirvana or unification with the universe. I’ve poured over the Tao de Ching, studied the Gospels, immersed myself in Rome’s Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius and pondered the analects of Confucious. They appeal to my intellect, often striking me as holding wisdom beyond measure. Today, they elude me.
Lately, I’ve been proactive with my interior life. I’m in the process of seeing a psychiatrist who is helping me find the right medications to control my depression. I go to AA meetings, having seen what failing to go brings. I plan activities I find enjoyable: I see my friends on Wednesdays and Fridays, go to art openings and next Monday, I’ll go see Andrew Sullivan, one of my favorite bloggers, at OCU.
Meanwhile, I have writing projects that lie fallow. I don’t know why I’m not in pursuit of that. My studio hasn’t been used to produce even the smallest watercolor or sumii in months. I inexplicably walk past that door in the hallway dozens of times a day without a flicker of interest.
Right this minute, while I write this, it’s quiet in the house — with no one to disturb, there’s still no music to entice me.
I hate this cigaret that burns between my fingers. I get up and hack and cough for a half hour every morning, smoking and choking both at the same time. The very thought of giving them up scares the living shit out of me even though I know beyond all reasonable doubt that they are killing me.
I wash and dry the clothes, fold them and put them away. I do the dishes and reshelve them. I play solitaire on the computer between hours of reading about politics. I write in my journal of my gushing and mixed emotions and the trivial happenings of my day to day quiet desperation. I go to bed.
This is existence, not living. This is waiting in a self imposed prison for an indeterminate sentence of death. I am a character in a Kafka story. I look at the tree outside my window and it dissolves into the vomitum of Sartre’s nausea. The soft velvet veils of television, religion and consumerism are denied me and I long for my lost naivte, a virginity I lustfully flung away many years ago.
Perhaps if I were a woman I could blame men, or if I were black I could blame whites or if I had come from the hardscrabble of some ghetto I could blame capitalism. Please victimize me. No matter how coy your rationale, let me have some thin reed to hide behind, some straw to grasp, some will o the wisp as an excuse.
I thought not.
Yet, I refuse to truck with nihilism. It may be true that none of this will matter half as much a thousand years from now in the big scheme of things, still it matters a great deal to me right now.
Even if life isn’t fair, can’t my life still fare better than this?
Post Script: Since I’m still up and thinking about this stuff, I’d say I’m suffering from ennui. It’s not that stuff doesn’t matter, it’s just that I’m bored with it and I don’t care. I’m all outraged and shit about politics and maybe that matters. Maybe it matters that your baby left you or that he never gets off the couch. Maybe my eternal soul is paramount. Sometimes I think I know what’s important, sometimes I lose track. If I could, I’d croon Ms. Lee’s “Is That All There Is?”. I’m a walking, talking, typing Gallic shrug. I mean, is this really it for me? Is this the best I could do? Is this really what life offers? The best you can do is “Life is suffering; get over it”? Some pie in the sky bye and bye? I see these wretches at some AA places I go and their hands are trembling and I thank God for my sobriety. And, I think I’m damn fine because these bastards want what I’ve got. They are willing to do anything to be me. If they only knew. Being sober is better than not being sober. Now what? One stick in the eye is better than a stick in both eyes. Yeah, great. That’s the best you got to offer? No other choices? I got this great law degree. One of my sisters is fond of telling me how wonderful her life would be if she had a law degree. Right. The practice of law is the pot of shit at the end of the rainbow. It feels like a betrayal, an utter loss. I’m sorry I ever went to law school. I don’t know the answer to your question and I can’t offer you justice, I’m all out. It’s just all bullshit. All of it. Bickering like magpies over meaningless details. Plucking the entrails out of people’s lives. Literally making a federal case out of bruised feelings and 30 pieces of silver. Yeah, I’m one great pillar of civilization, contributing to the betterment of the lives of all mankind all right. This is the apex of American culture? A petite bourgoisie sinecure? Shuffling paper and impoverishing my clients with mumbo-jumbo and jargon is supposed to crown my life’s achievements. Life has been so not worth it, if that’s true. And, maybe it is. Maybe it’s like this one centenarian I interviewed as a young reporter. Maybe living to 100 is nothing more or less than waking up 36,500 times. You get up. You drink coffee. You fold the clothes. You go to bed and do it all over again tomorrow. You can’t even help it. Eventually, you’ll go to sleep. You’ll wake up. No matter how hard you try, you’ll wake up. And, you find something to do until you sleep again. Lather, rinse, repeat. Pointless and stupid. Brute, nasty and short. I am frustrated because life is pointless. All this effort and just nothing other than a big “so what?”. It’s sad to think that it doesn’t get any better, that this is it and there isn’t anything else. We push a boulder to the top of the mountain and it rolls back down again. Every once in a while, we think this is great and we’re happy. We sing in our chains and warble in our cages. I don’t feel like singing just right now. I’m afraid I may never again be happy pushing the boulder up the hill. I can also imagine Sisyphus anguished, disconsolate and tortured. Tonight, I don’t care about Sisyphus. I’ll log off and go to sleep and wake up in the morning.
Bummer on your bad day.
I was home from work too and home all day. Mostly in bed with a migraine. I found myself thinking that maybe if I were actually dating someone, that person could bring me comfort in the form of medicine or ice cream. Of course I could call a friend to do the same, but then I’d feel obligated to brush my hair and teeth. Nah, too much effort.
Saw this quote the other day: “You come into the world alone and you go out of the world alone, yet it seems to me you are more alone while living than even coming and going.”
I’ll be swirling your last question in my mind for myself as well.
Yeah, Dad. I agree with Aunt Mary. BTW, you aren’t 60 until next year, right? So, you’re 59. But let’s say you are 60. Did you watch Barbara Walters last night. If you live to be 100 like that geezer you interviewed, you have 4 more decades to sleep and wake. In the meantime, get a new life, a new career, whatever. Stop living the life you are supposed to live. (You are perfectly self-aware about your tendency to try to live up to someone else’s expectations of who/what you should be – am I giving too much away in a public forum? oh well, the irritants of having children. you can always delete this comment if you wish.)
I have never loved the jobs that I did, which I did because I could and not because I wanted. I feel trapped where I am, but I have big plans for the future and I’ve started working toward them now. For example, did you know I am a guitar player? I won’t say I wish I could play the guitar any more. I play the same 9 notes that Parrish does and because I play the guitar, I am a guitar player. Like all the best notions in my head, Jack turned me onto this one. I’m going to live a long life and so I should start acting like it.
Also, you choose to smoke. Stop being so self-loathing about it. Enjoy the cigs – but not around my kids. Don’t just smoke them – smoooooooke them. It’s not like you are going to quit, so accept that it’s part of who you are – a big, smelly, cancerous, money spending smoker. And that’s okay, Stuart Smaley. Adore the deco swirls forming around your head and filtering the light from your windows as it pollutes your living environment. If it’s one of the few pleasures in your life, then allow it to be pleasurable.
And what’s up with the ennui? Are you Gretta Garbo? And what’s up with the nihilism, which you say it ain’t but it certainly sounds like it is? Who cares if life is pointless or pointed? You told me there are two ways to go through life – laughing or crying. Which are you going to choose? Though to be truthful, you left out a gamut of other things like nagging. I spend a significant amount of time neither laughing nor crying, but rather doing something that sounds like, “Didn’t I tell you twice already to get your shoes on?”
Oh, and you are alone. You are always alone and you will always be alone. Get used to it. No one can fill that void for you. And still you have buddies, colleagues, peers, and family. You may not want to claim us, but here we are pestering you on your blog. Letting you know that we see you and we carry pieces of you with us everywhere and always.
(HA! I wonder where I get my familial reputation as the ice queen? It’s your own fault for passing this crap down and triggering my own interior monologue. Did I mention how much I love and adore you?)
“I Becca Long, you no make fun of me.” John, I say this too myself a lot. Sometimes I am at Starbucks and while I am getting a cup of coffee here it comes in my head, “I Becca Long”……Then I’ll be waiting somewhere, the car wash or doctor’s office……”you no make fun of me”. It really is the best mantra I have ever used. You should try it.