My Testament to Happiness

My Testament to Happiness

	Luck is like an ebb and flow of a tide. Previously, I thought some were doomed by bad luck or good luck from the start. However, I now believe that it must be like a tide. When one believes himself to be blessed by good luck, he does not realize that bad luck is sure to follow shortly, and in just as great of an effect. It is in this way luck is reciprocal. The ebbs and flows, however, are not governed by these rules themselves. It must be some outside force that which, in an unbiased way, determines these ebbs and flows. Like the moon controls the waves, our ebbs and flows are determined on whims. This is why you consistently hear to not envy the rich, to instead envy the poor and the meek. It is because the poor and the meek have so much to gain from the tide of luck flowing in. Whereas, the rich and the powerful must always fear the ebb in tide. Even saying this, the poor are not any happier than the rich, and vice versa. The rich envy the poor, and the poor envy the rich, but this is just wishful thinking on both parts. Beware, do not show the ebbs in your own luck, for many are superstitious, and believe that misery travels in a pack. Very well they may be right, but do not show it regardless, for only company and time alleviates misery. I before have left others when they show signs of pain, fearing for my own safety; just as I myself have been left when I have showed my own pain. Simply, keep it under wraps, for your best interest, your pain will only act as a bad omen. The question has once come into my mind, if there are such great ebbs following a high tide, should we not instead avoid, and be ever vigilant, of catastrophe and strokes of bad luck?  I have tried both and I learned the answer, just as it hurts less to be hit when you are warm, it hurts less to feel the effects of bad luck when you are warm from company and spirits. Conversely if you are cold from loneliness when bad luck comes, you will feel pain in your depths, having nothing to fall back on. The pain in your depths will spread to your everyday life, malignantly affecting your health and regular activities. If you are one who has shut themselves off in fear, you have to put on a mask, you have to feign hope, then real hope will come, and your face will shift to match the mask. I can promise. There will of course, come a time, for everyone, when you will feel the ebb of luck again. This time, however, you will remain resolute, knowing that this will pass again if you let it. All this is for happiness, you have to cheat the most happiness you may out of life.

	About two years ago, I tried to, and I believe successfully, hit rock bottom. I say two years ago, and to myself it seems like a long time, but I feel it is very close to me even now. In the situation I am in, I can see it closer and closer. I did things that the average person would find disgusting, pathetic, admonishing, and it did not start as a sort of experiment, but rather a distinct philosophy of life. I believe it ended, however, as an experiment. I had the good fortune to learn the company around myself, I do not remember how I did it, but I know there is a distinctness separating the me which hit bottom, and the me who transitioned into a relatively normal person. Now that I am drawn into thinking about it, I realize that there has been numerous stages of rock bottom in my life which I unknowingly walked into. Every rock bottom experience is followed by a period of something you could call happiness. I wonder if I grow from each bottom experience, if others have the same experience on different scales, I wonder if there is more comfort in being abandoned willingly to being abandoned unwillingly. Regardless, I am scared of it, especially now that I feel it coming, I can see myself losing my friends, I believe that it has already started to occur, yet I have no idea how to stop it. It occurred without my notice for a short bit, and I should have seen it coming. Even if I had seen it coming, I doubt there was anything to be done. All that is left is to ride out the current of this experience and hope that even broader horizons lay in wait for me.

	I feel as though I am an empty person again. There was a period, where I did not feel empty. This period marked the first time I haven't felt empty since something like 7 years. It was like finding an oasis in the middle of a desert, but now the oasis has dried up and I am back in the desert feeling empty. I have no hopes, no ambitions, the closest things I get to real feelings are anger and anxiety. The period I felt I had size, had filling, I was content for living in the moment and enjoying life as it comes. I now realize the problem with living in the moment: happiness lasts for just a moment, when that moment is over, what is left? Nothing, its all empty. I can look at the emptiness around me, and it only reflects the emptiness in myself. I'm starting to believe it is becoming almost unhealthy to keep looking at my environment. Just as a watched pot never boils, if I isolate myself, the world might change without me realizing, like waking up from a dream. Consider dreams, over the course of the last week or so, I've had recurrent bad dreams (I do not call them nightmares because I feel it is too dramatic). In these bad dreams, and in the past, I was able to wake up when I said to myself in the dream: “This is too awful to be happening to me, it must be a dream” but recently, it has stopped working. I'll tell myself its only a dream, in my dream, but I stay sleeping. In these dreams which don't end I know I felt a lot of dread. I don't clearly remember what it felt like, and even now I feel my memories of the dreams slipping away from me, like most dreams do, but I do know there was dread, accompanied with a feeling of disbelief. I have even caught myself, in real life, saying, “Something this terrible can't be happening to me, it must be just a dream” but of course, being real life, I do not wake up. The bad dreams, however, are not a match for the wish fulfillment dreams.  By the end of those, you just feel pathetic. I used to wish for them when I was younger, but now I realize what they entail, truly.

	I've just recently realized the nature of happiness, or rather the methods of happiness, that is, that happiness is fleeting, like a drug where the affect wears off after continued usage; all things that bring about happiness will only do so for a finite amount of time. Drugs, hobbies, people, we get tired of all of them, they cease to have the same happiness output they once did, so we seek out replacements. We seek out replacement friends, replacement drugs, replacement hobbies, all in an effort to recapture that happiness that might not have been truly present since we were children, experiencing everything as though it were brand new. Happiness, in its generally accepted definition, isn't really the right word either, 'distraction' would be a better word; a distraction from the everyday dread and anxiety, that's what these methods bring. No solution is permanent, and the same goes for these stop-gap attempts at novelty. I want you to think about whomever is closest to you: your father, mother, girlfriend, boyfriend, best friend. They are going to tire of you, and you are going to tire of them. If you tire of them first it could happen without even hurting, you could leave them like you throw out old phones. We throw away so much that we don't even think twice about it.  Maybe, you'll only understand the pain of being out-dated when its you that is being thrown away. But this is the nature of distractions, you can't have your cake and eat it too, you have to be on the receiving end sometimes if you are fortunate enough to be on the giving. I'm sure there is some moon out there that balances this out, making sure no one gives more than they have received, it will show, eventually.

	I think God just takes away the things most important to you. I think that God thinks he's doing you a favor, that if you hold onto the important things, you become stagnant. While that may be true, I'd much rather a happy stagnation to a life filled with loss and despair. The only thing that keeps me going anymore is the knowledge that every dog has his day and God be damned things will go right for me for that moment. I will have my day and I'll show you that the harder you hold, the looser your grip.

	With each period of emptiness I am growing more accepting, the first time I didn't even acknowledge it, the second time I saw it as an illness, now I see it as my home. It is not somewhere I want to be, but, how often does one get to choose their home? Home is where the self resides, and my self reflects only emptiness. I wonder if everyone is similar to a mirror, each without their own distinct weight, only momentarily reflecting the real. If so, where does that image come from, the one we reflect? The mirror itself is devoid of life, of ambition, personality. Yet there are times when we seem beacons of light, only to disappoint when we show it was but a reflection. Does the light we reflect come from some old lost ideal, propagated through generations of human life? I think we sporadically reflect the light that we were born with, the light of life that died out with our childhoods. To be mirrors is our adult form, to be children is our wish, reflected. The point here is that while everyone focuses on the mirror when it is reflecting something, what of the mirror when it reflects nothing? That is the ebb of the tide, when we reflect nothing of our old light.

	I can't speak. I can try, but nothing comes out. Sometimes what I say makes no sense, I've grown to hate the confused look people give me. I rehearse, I rehearse, but still I can't speak. My voice fluctuates, I don't even know my real voice anymore. What am I supposed to do, what am I supposed to say, when I can't speak? Its words that keep me in this darkness, my fear of them. Words are like wild dogs, once they see your fear, they will never be at your command. Instead, they will nip at your heels, forcing you to retreat where words can not reach you. I'm a defective model, people settle for me to fill absent roles, eldest son, boyfriend, friend, etc. However, it means nothing, they are merely filling an absence with a less than desirable model, once a new opportunity comes along, or if they find they really can live with that absence, they throw away the defective model. Of course, I have to let it happen. I can't speak. I try to ask them not to throw me away, to keep me around, but I can't, nothing comes out. I know what background characters in movies feel like now. I know what it is to be the old doll that you've long since outgrown. Is the voice in my head my only comfort? The voice which offers comforting messages of despair, makes me feel not so alone.

	Futility is the mantra of life. Everything you do will end in disappointment. How do I know? Because if you didn't at least think something could be pleasant or rewarding, you wouldn't do it. Things are always worse than expected, passions always less passionate, frivolities always more frivolous. It's the mantra of life, it just keeps repeating. Disappointment, disappointment, disappointment. How do I know? Because I hear it spoken to me in words too soft to hear, telling me of the regret and sorrow. I hear it repeated day in day out after every action, every inaction, nothing but disappointment.

	I fear beauty, because behind it is only that which brings such great despair. Send me depression, send me loneliness, but for the love of god keep me away from beauty. The world is rife with such beautiful irony, and it scares me.

I met the Devil at cross roads,
I asked to take his misery for myself.
I thought it was sweet like honey,
I took the misery of others.

	I read back from what I wrote earlier. How naive I was; you cannot feign hope. You can not hide your despair from the ebb and flow of a tide. The tide will take its due no matter what, you WILL feel despair. The only thing you can do is go with the tide, if you try to stay resilient, you’ll merely be fighting the tide for a longer amount of time than if you just went with it. Ah, I now know the truth; hope isn’t the medicine, its the poison. You’ll never be in despair as long as you’ve forgone hope. Of course, this is impossible. Even now, with all the times I’ve been betrayed by hope, I still hold some in my heart. It’s certainly funny, though; the prospect of losing all hope is completely hopeless. It’s so fucking ridiculous. Who decided it to be this way? I’ve tried being good, I’ve been worthless, it makes no difference, you’re destined to be carried under the tide, desperately looking for air. Every once in a while, you’ll find your way to the surface, greedily gasp in air, only for the tide to bring you back in. Why do they think their place is in the air? Just because we’re born in hope doesn’t mean we aren’t creatures of despair, this is our maturity. Try to breathe under the break of a tide, you’ll find yourself filling with emptiness, you’ll forget about the air.

	Our traits are only determined by how others respond to them. You are not any different from the way others see you, because what lurks below what others see has no meaning or purpose. Personality is merely the reflection of what others see in you. This is why you become so uncomfortable when you’re misunderstood, you can feel your own self shifting to what others believe to be true. It’s our evolutionary habit, to shift when it best suits our survival.

	I have nothing to say. There’s is only a gnawing feeling tugging at my stomach. I don’t know anything anymore, I don’t know myself, I don’t know what to do. Is there anything to do? Anything that can be done? I’ve tried. I’ve really tried, but its hopeless. You can’t change your stripes. I don’t think god has ever been this cruel to me. What do I have to fall back on now? My friends are gone, my family is crazy. I’m going to ruin myself, once I’m free again I’ll ruin myself in ritual. I’ll turn my life into a waking dream. I don’t what feelings are true anymore, I see agendas in all my past actions, I see a disgusting rat walking through my memories. Everything I do is self-serving, how can I think of happiness? What do I deserve of happiness? I’ve got my lot, and they’ve got theirs. I want to delete everything I’ve written about happiness, I speak like a selfish cunt who can’t accept what he’s allotted. Even now, I know the real reasons for what I’m writing, and they’re pathetic. What troubles me is not my despair, I’ve learned, its that I can’t trust any feeling I have, there always seems to be an underhanded motive behind every thought. I was right though, about the beautiful irony. The world will always surprise you through these terrible games, there are no tricks or cheats to help you through these, the world will always surprise with these games and its never good.

	The trick to life, I would like to pass on to you, keep these rules constant: 1. You don’t deserve anything. 2. You are not different from anyone else. 3. You, and everyone else, are pathetic. 4. Your thoughts, and everyone’s thoughts are pathetic. 5. You’ll come to see how pathetic these rules themselves are.

	How can I write about love when I don’t know what it is? I want to create for myself the things I’m lacking but my feelings of love are fleeting and always bitter. I once heard that you can only begin to love another once you’ve learned to love yourself. How deluded I now realize that is, that is not love, it is a reflection of your self-love. Love is terrible, pathetic, self-sacrificial. Its your guilt, its your despair, its your anger, that is your love. I can’t stand those that misrepresent love, its a disease, not a purpose.