Wednesday 6/30/21
I am not dealing with anything. I've not shaken the breakdown, I remain mired in it, really. Been a long time now since I had a day without vomiting, the chest pains, usually some instance where I pass out. The terror. The inability to look at anything. To get my mail. I can create--which helps nothing--and force myself to exercise, which is done, in theory, to be able to withstand and keep going. But I know I'm in a more dangerous place all the time. I know how close I am to giving up. And by giving up, I mean, it'd be so easy for me to just slide out of this world. There is danger in my days. I feel the danger. I can barely brush my teeth. This place isn't livable. But I can't function. I know how confusing and misleading that must seem, given all that I produce and its quality, and all that I appear to do, as is reported in these pages. I cry everyday. I don't know how to get out of this position. I'm hated. I'm not liked, let alone loved. Though I think being liked is just as important, if not more so. The abuse I've known from people I needed and counted on is always there in my thoughts each day, when I see how they treat others differently. People who aren't very good people, whom I have no respect for. And simple people. Not brave people. I see what the keys to being liked are. The qualities. They're not good qualities. The result of that treatment, when it comes from people you are supposed to rely on, is that you question what on earth is wrong with you. It's hard enough having thousands of people in an industry against you. I understand why they are, but you just end up with nothing ever positive. Everything is ugly. Negative in the extreme. Someone texted me last night that they spent three hours in a car yesterday with an in-law, so they passed the time listening to segments of me on the radio. And the person said that the person they were with kept saying that they'd never heard anyone so amazing on the radio, and they couldn't believe it, and all of this stuff. And that just depressed me so much. It's not like I think, "withhold the report from me, if you would," but it's that contrast between what I do and the level I do it at and where I'm at. I listened to that segment from yesterday, and I heard someone who sounds like they know everything about everything, who is so funny, who speaks in a way no one else does, who is nice and kind and sounds like so much fun, has such a nice way about them, and I thought, "that's why you're hated, man. That is why no one likes you. That's why an industry is against you, why you have no one in your life, why people want to hurt you, see you fail, bring you down, with almost no exceptions." It's true. I know it's true. The hopelessness that comes with trying to figure out what on earth to do about that. It is the most hopeless feeling. This was supposed to be an entry about the works of art I'm partaking of lately, but obviously it's not. I'm in so many pieces. I think so often about death. But I also know that no one will do anything for my work after I'm gone. My family never would. It really will be like I never existed. Like the greatest artist ever was never here. And it's not like anyone would even remember me fondly on a personal level. One person who has maintained that this will change, and that will be the biggest thing ever for this world, for society, for culture, for people, would think to themselves, "he was right about everything he said will happen," and they'll feel bad, and that will hurt them, because I do think they believed so much and they'll feel a complicity, but at least they were on my side and tried to do right by me. But I don't think they'd do anything after I was gone. There's too much, it's too complicated, and people have their own lives. If there was a meter that could measure how close you are to the line of death, allowing that that's such a thing, what your danger rating is, which you might not be aware of in a way, because you're covered in sweat in workout clothes, I think I have many days now where I'm so into that red. I'm going to force myself to exercise now. As I exercise I worry constantly about money. I think about how hated I am. The reasons why. The people who are glad for that. People I've known who are glad for that. Family. How I keep getting better. How that makes everything worse. I wonder if I'll ever be able to deal with anything again. If I'll make it to an afternoon without crying. It's just not good. I can barely tell you how hard this is right now. I don't know who I mean by "you."