The Infallible Arbitration of Thy Estranged Self

There are times when I wake that I hear the cruel voices of my past telling me that I need to pay up some sort of debt that I owe them.
And other times when I wake up, I find myself curled up and afraid to face the day knowing that nothing will ever be the same or change no matter how hard I give it my all.
Most of the time though when I wake up, I feel the waves of burdening depression washing over me trying to drag me back down in the sea of despair.
However, though each time I wake up, I do so in a puddle of sweat from the indescribable unmemorable nightmare –
That's actually my life.
 
I really wish I knew that life was going to be this horrendously agonizingly unrelenting brutal.
I mean no one told me that life was going to be this tough,
Sure, they might've mentioned it was going to be rough,
But they didn't forewarn me that life was going to be a never-ending onslaught of merciless beatings from every walk of life and form every pivotal life-changing moment.
I had been broken - no, correction,
I became shattered, nope that's not it -  
I've wound up being decimated due to every single relentless beat down, abandonment, forsakenness, betrayal, deception, corruption, failure, inadequacy, imperfection, belittlement, self-deprivation that either somebody or I did unto myself.
And for this, there are holes and dents in everything I own, that are stupidly paired with bloody scarred knuckles, which helped me remember that pain is both a temporary weakness and a grim reminder that I was still alive.
 
During my entire life, some so many people tried directing the course of my life just by peering in from the outside of who I was without knowing or understanding the real me that was imprisoned within me.
I mean, there's not a one that could ever possibly know or wish to know or even begin to grasp the understanding of the raging chaotic storm that swells within me or the monsters and demons that lie in wait within me.
I would rather rip out the pages if you are nonsensical script and burn them the fire of who I am, that let anybody ever try and tell me how to live my life from their point of view instead of allowing me to direct it from my point of view.
For all the depressed people out there ya gotta know that I'm just preaching to you the masses when I say these things.
 
I swear sometimes it feels as though these demons and monsters are dragging me right down to the concertina wire of the gates of hell.
And the only thing that keeps me from stepping over to the other side is the fear of the depths of hell.
I'm as bold as a lion in facing everyday life dilemmas and obstacles, but that isn't the case when it comes time for me to follow through with suicide,
Because I become as cowardly as the sheep that fail to live their lives without regret.
When I lay down to sleep, I pray for my soul for the devil or maybe God to keep and that I may never wake again.
I'm not ashamed to say that I have tried on one or more occasion, it's just that I couldn't finish the job.
One might even say, that I had robbed my own grave and deprive it of yet another freshly corpse.
Yeah, I won't deny that I began digging my own grave the moment I put my finger on the trigger.
Oh, the very thought of my weakness makes me resentfully bitter of who I've become.
 
Ya see to know how I became like this I think I need to let you in on how it all began and before I started going down the rabbit hole.
It all began at the age of 18 when I sold my soul to the devil and became his harbinger of death.
For 30 plus years I carried out the morally unjust bidding of the politically incorrect,
And along the way, I buried my beloved wife and the three offspring we bore together,
After all that I came home and dealt with the endless onslaught of an emotional bombardment of betrayal and abandonment from those whom I foolishly trusted,  
also from religiously sanctimonious folks, and the government to which I swore my allegiance to.
So, now I'm 53, and I often wonder if I'll live to see 54 because of the extensive lethal emotional devastations that brought about a deathly depressive state.
And this depressive state that I am forced to feel every godforsaken day is an unbearable weight that I am forced to carry,
It also feels like a curse which makes life insufferable and intolerable to continue living onward, but I do, nonetheless.
It also wasn't that very long ago that, I had been told by counselors, psychologist, and random people alike that if I just keep up the good fight and believe in positive thinking that one day I'll wake up and I'll be fine.
But that hasn't been the case for so long now, so to all those who fed me false hopes and misguided truths –  
YOU’RE ALL A BUNCH OF LIARS!!
 
I mean I've been trying to keep up the good fight, by staying positive and believing that eventually, things will get better,
And for a moment, just for a fleeting moment, they are, but when I think things are looking up and there's a brighter day over the darkened horizon,
I've come to realize that whenever I almost reach the top of the horizon that the light of hopeful possibility is nothing more than the bridges that I have burned and that are being burned by others.
 
So. I find myself once again trying to find a spark of hope amongst the ruins of the hopeful happiness that I was trying to build.
Instead, somehow, I find myself adrift on the wind with the ashes, and I'm always being blown around on the wind loneliness,
Every time that I try to ground myself to sort of hopefulness or happiness that turns out to be another letdown a part of me dies.
And another part of me realizes that life isn't what I was promised as a child and that there's no certainty or guarantee of a utopia in the promised land of the partially free and the cowardly brave either.
 
So, there isn't anybody who has a right to tell me to strap up my boots cause none of you have ever walked even a block in my shoes.
Nor have any of you ever spent even a mere minute within my mind or trapped within my heart so don't try feeding me the line that you know what it's like or that you understand what it is I'm going through because that is complete and utter malarkey.
And to all the haters, doubters, and naysayers who said I wouldn't amount to much or that I wouldn't be able to continue living on or that disbelieved in my progress to become something better than I was before,
Well, I've gone and done proven you all wrong
By making the impossible possible, overcoming obstacles too difficult for most,
Going against the grain and coming out on top,
Carving a beaten path into the utmost bleakest unknown regions and traveling upon it,
Fighting my demons till I was bloodied black and blue and became allies with them,
And claiming victory over what seemed to be unconquerable battles against formidable foes and odds.
So this is my life, the life that I chose to forge instead of being burnt by fiery destructiveness of my pain.
 
Now as a child, I was different than others, I was outcasted by a father who never wanted me in the first place it seemed and questionably loved by a mother I never knew because she shed her mortal coils before I was even four days old.
Raised by two kind-hearted grandparents who showed me the brighter shades of life while my dad taught me the darker shades of it.
Throughout my childhood, I tried stuffing my pain into a box, but it's somehow always got out and affected those around me.
And as I got older, thought I had become wiser, by taking whatever negative emotions I didn’t want to deal with and locked them in a padded room hoping they’d stay as the days went forth.
So, over the years I kept adding more cells to lock away more pain, sorrow, agony, depression and so many other negative emotions so much in fact that I wound up unintentionally and inadvertently made a prison for all those negative feelings that I refused to cope with.
But unbeknownst to me, that they would eventually find a way to break themselves free, so they could surface and wreak havoc upon the latter days of my life.

I grew up in a small town as a loner because I was so misunderstood and because nobody would ever dare to listen the ramblings of a big-hearted wandering mind that's unwittingly trapped within his own emotional darkened turmoil.
But never did I let the narrowly small-minded people keep me from achieving my aspirations or full potential.
Even back when I was young, I knew I was different than all the rest,
I felt as though I had been cut from a different cloth which hadn't been made since god knows when.
At some point my life I outrightly refused to live my life with my foot upon the break and on cruise control,
Cause I feel as though I was driven to be something more and do something more with my life.
  
Therefore, I speak out in written words and do my best to try and live my life accordingly
And not just by the standards of the Bible
But by the moral standards of the words I speak, the promises I vow and the actions that I choose.
I live my life like this not to appease others, or The God in heaven or the Devil in hell,
I live my life with a particular ethos code so that when my time is nearing the end,
Cause I won't be another victim of complacency or circumstance.
Unlike so many others who live their life's in fear of never amounting to much or achieving what they sought out to achieve and they fear death so much in fact that when it's time for them to leave this world will do so full of regrets and with unfinished business.
 
So I will keep swimming against the tides, refusing to conform all the while ignoring the gossipers and prophets of doom cause I refuse the bent or be broken entirely by them.
I refuse to be kept within the confines of alleged normality within society itself,
So I broke free from the cages that I was put in.
And as for the accusers and attackers I pay no mind to them because they live a sad life with a history of lying and deceiving the sheep-like masses just so they can get from them some sort of messed up pleasurable gain from their pain.

So, no I do not want to be another footnote on the pages of life,
And it's so difficult trying to be oneself in a world full of fraudulent charlatans that are controlled and ruled over by a syndicate of duplicitous pretenders.
But yet I find myself constantly lonesomely surrounded by fakes and frauds each and every wretched day that I'm alive,
Continually dispensing the pessimistic cynics and misanthropes’ words of negativity and doubt.
Admittedly there are days I feel as though tightening noose my neck and \kicking out the chair beneath me would be a whole lot satisfying than having to try and deal with such nihilist,  but I don’t, and I won't.
 
When I look into the mirror, I despise what I see, the broken man who was supposed to be greater than what he was believed to be by those who tore him apart and abandoned him and told him that he was less than nothing and could not be anything more than that.
Who have I become!?  
Why did allow me to fall prey to such darkness!?  
How is it that I let myself become this monster once again!?  
And Oh, merciful God, what have I done to deserve this!?
And yet once again I've become down and out and depressed lost without a way out of this pit of despair.
 
I told myself I wouldn't break down and cry but here I am bawling like a widow at a funeral.
But look at yourself Marine the years have not been kind to you and it shows deep within your eyes.
So watching you suffer like this is grueling and unbearable and hard to stomach.
I mean how could you let other opinions bring you down!?
Don't let somebody forsaking you discourage you from feeling like your not wanted.
Why are you choosing to love your sins more than the possibilities of forgiveness!?
Quit blaming everybody else for what is truly wrong with you own up to your own maddening flawed imperfections of who you are!
Maybe I should just pull the trigger for you because you aren't man enough to do so yourself.
Would you flinch or be mad if I did!?
 
Go on and do it, pull that trigger, you coward!
But I know that you won't because you were too afraid to do so.
You have no right to solely blame me entirely for giving up and not wanting to continue fighting.
Because you my former self were also there too in the shadows and you could have done something,
But where were you my former self when I needed you the most!?
I may be your former self, but you are you now and you could have asked for help,  but you didn't.
I did ask help from you my former self,  
But you ignored my plea for help and chose to stay in the shadows and out of the limelight,  
leaving me to fend off these demons alone.
Now that all of your imprisoned negative emotions have broken free from their cells and are out in the open for all to see because of your pride you refuse to open your eyes and ask some help from those in front of you and not from me your former self.

You see I am your former self, the part of you that has accepted your past and learned to live with what you've become.
Unlike yourself who has refused to accept the reality of who you are and who you forged yourself to become.
And don't you know that due to your high expectations and desires to appease people who do not love, respect, or wish to be around you has inadvertently done the most damage to the both of us through and through!?
And it pains you to accept the failure that you are which is not a bad thing but it's not a good thing either.
So take that yoke of a burden off your shoulder and Marine up so that we can carry on as we've always done before.

Unless you feel the need to pull the trigger, then I too will gladly pull a gun and assist you in the ending of this so-called miserable life that you think is so existentially egregious.
Or do you want is right and go one more go around in the arena of life and prove you are truly cut from a different cloth and that you're the undefeated champion of fighting back against life's cruelty and uncertainties?