Message in a Bottle

Echoing loudly on the side of nauseating at this point, I'm going to ramble a bit about #socialmedia ...again.

After the last post I threw out, many people in my life (as in, more than one) reached out to me hurt or angry. I don't write anything on here for any other goal than to write to a future version of myself and maybe help a wayward depression battler along the way.

I don't write anything with any agenda.
I don't write to cause pain or spread misery.
I write for the sole purpose of releasing emotion or insight so that I can purge it from my system. The fortunate (or unfortunate) effect of this is that people can latch on and share emotion, realizing that we're not alone in this fight.

Some folks mention that they like to read my inane scribblings for various reasons. This is all beside the point. I write for me first and foremost. I need to see movement with this illness. I can't settle for stagnation. Unlike visibly seeing a scar heal, we cannot see proof of the progress. The whole process of healing is intangible and invisible to the physical eye.

Documenting emotions and feelings is the only way I know how to track this slow, seemingly endless slugfest with the overly mentioned black dog. (Captain's Log, Day 223, etc.)

Why on the internet? Why not in the confines of a private journal or secret hard drive? Because I like the romantic ideal that this is me getting as close to putting a worn piece of parchment in a glass bottle and pushing it to sea from the isolated prison of this illness. I sit with a million bottles and a million ideas. Maybe there's a one-in-a-billion shot that someone out there, some wayward shiphand ("Googler"), might hear the bottle (post) clink against the hull of the ship (browser window) and read (click) my message (URL).

I'm not sure if that metaphor even makes sense to me, or what makes sense to me anymore... or if anything has ever made sense... ever.

Swimming back to whatever point I was trying to formulate, I've once again opted to be a volunteering pariah of online society. I currently lack the self discipline to use it for good and positive ways. I only measure myself against peers and screw things up with friendships I would like to maintain, fractured and broken as they may appear.

(The majority of the daily readers came from syndication with Facebook, Twitter and other forms of means-to-connect. Seeing as how I've discontinued my use of such digital venues, I highly doubt more than three people stumble on this.

Clink. // Any use of hashtags is strictly satirical.)

Playing Pretend and Social Media

I go on these stints of social media hiatus. Trips I tend to take frequently for various reasons. I feel that social media and it's various forms don't do much to remedy the sense of loneliness I get when battling the dog.

Usually people don't even notice that I'm no longer in their various feeds, timelines, or what have you. "Didn't you see that thing on Facebook?" I'll be asked frequently in the real world. Which I usually reply in some such capacity that I haven't been on social media for personal reasons. It's a big deal for my brain to force myself out of the scenarios presented online, but the remainder of the populace doesn't even notice.

Imagine the progress that I lose whenever I eventually cave and revert back to social media. Not only has everyone in my life moved on, but they've done so without me even being a blip on the radar. Old flames have moved on to bigger and better relationships, put me in their rearview and not looked back. Friends and co-workers live life as though when I leave their sight I just vanish into the tomes of some imaginative story somewhere. I'm to be called upon in a later chapter when I play a supporting role in their personal narrative.

It gets very difficult to maintain this facade of being okay while out in public. I laugh, I talk, I pretend to feel attractive when a pretty girl smiles at me... I'm just pretending, this is all just a big game of make-believe. It's unfair of me to think that I'd play a bigger role in certain individuals lives. Some sort of malicious egotistical thought process fathomed up by a boy that doesn't matter too much.

I finally caved in tonight, hoping to see some sort of happiness or social interaction by logging back in to the virtual halls of the interwebs. I look for signs that may have noticed I was gone, there are none. Life moves on, forever on and on. People that used to play a huge role in my life now continue their story without me in it at all, only a vague memory of a time that once was. Whether this is for better or worse, I couldn't tell you. I'd want to believe the former, though my brain would present heaps of evidence to the latter.

The process is always the same. I justify myself logging back into the confines of cyberspace through many reasons, but always have one stipulation I give myself. A stipulation that I always fail at upholding. I allow myself access to this social network, in the hopes that it helps my sense of emptiness, by promising myself not to look into the lives of people I've been jealous of in the past or brilliant women that I've loved/still love.

I always fail.

Unable to resist the urge to pry into the world outside of my own, these people have seemingly great lives. They're all moving on without the weight of me in their life. Even if it's not someone that's been at the forefront of my life, I see happy babies and smiling photos of couples. New houses or cars populate the stream of information regurgitation piping into my sight.

Despite me trying to seem calm, collected, cool about not getting text messages or call outs from the people I care about... it's fucking devastating. Some part of my brain thinks that people will eventually realize that the great and admirable Brett is missing from their daily interaction and send me a lifeline. It's been over a week since I've gotten any correspondence from the people I really want to hear from.

A fraction of me wants to reach out and ask, why? Why am I not worth the time? Was I just that much of an emotional drain? Are you that much better without me in your life?

The gall I have to think I should matter to anyone anyway. You have your boyfriends and spouses, why do you need a whiny me in your life? You don't. No one does. This always happens and it always causes a spiraling out of the somewhat bearable airspace of contentedness. I see life going on without me and it strikes a very loud realization every time.

Even if I were to end my life, life would still go on for others. How would I be remembered anyway? Probably as the "nice guy" that was always the beta male uncertain of his social status, always in his own head.

What I would give to be content and not have to pretend to be okay all the time. I pretend even now. Writing this, MAYBE ten pretend people will read it. Does that justify the effort? Does it even give me any solace from my own pain? Out of those ten people that read this, is one of them who I really want to know how I feel? Does it even matter how I feel? If not to her, him, them... then to me?

Out of everyone else that may or may not care about Brett, you think that the person that should at least care a little bit is the one inhabiting the vessel of Brett. Nope, not right now.

Life goes on with or without me walking around in it. To me it seems most people have more productive and healthy lives when I keep my distance and fade into the white noise of the supporting cast.

Hating Who You Are

I'm drinking and just want to air some dirty brain laundry.

The man I am is weak.

I am a poor excuse in measuring myself against anyone of real mental strength or fortitude. Woe is me, I am a sad example for an anything. Let us continue to throw a pity party and hope someone gives a shit. I push people away from my depression and myself in this attempt to save them from me. I want to save people the hassle of having me, Brett Hamre, in their life in any fashion. I spend hours agonizing over how I've wasted thousands of people's time and brought a negative impact on their life. All I want to do is leave a positive impact, yet here I sit---bellowing against the void, agonizing over every mistake or shortcoming.

I push people away even though, ironically, I want them to persist and stay. I want them to show me some love or sympathy. I don't want your sympathy! (Yes, part of me does.) Despite my attempts to fall on my own melodramatic sword... I am lonely. I want people to care. I think this is the human condition, or maybe just my purely selfish disposition.

Every day I think, with increasing fervour, that I should really just cash in my chips and settle my debts. Again, we confer to a cryptic allusion to suicide or death. A final answer to a temporary problem... for most. Not for me, for me this "temporary" problem has been persistent for nearly a decade of my life. It's the core of who I am, and what I consist of. My past and future reek of depression, self-pity, self-loathing, self-hate.

Actions I attempt to take out of the goodness of my heart are viewed in wildly different light than I even could fathom to comprehend. I don't do anything maliciously or with an agenda, ever. Other people constantly think I do. I'm always out to better myself or win someone over with a gift or gesture.

What the fuck do other people matter anyway? Right? It's it what we've all grown up learning that it doesn't matter what others think as long as you follow your heart. My heart, which I now increasingly becomes more and more numb to any emotion, is always in question. I always think my intentions are pure and true, and always considered myself altruistic, sometimes almost to a fault. Despite these thoughts, I've always recognized and agonized over when I did too little for someone or stood idly by while something could have been changed.

I understand why people drink. I understand why people medicate. I am in so much agonizing mental anguish every single day. This only lifts when I am with a few other genuine people in my life. This is unfair to them. I feel as though I am using them to escape from the hell I've built in my head. I've become reliant on other people to have a purpose to carry on living (at least existing).

I've failed the last college class I took because I couldn't force myself to write anything. Every word (including these) is tired and poorly written. They are all hollow and taunting in their reflection of the author's infinite lack of composition and guile. I sit again, forcing myself to write out the trail of thoughts currently circling in my head. They make no sense. There is no end to them. There is no believable conclusion or outright answer to anything.

Everyday I look into the mirror and stare at myself. Stare at what I can't believe is the body I am imprisoned in. I look at my faults, the weakness, the ugliness. Even though I am prompted to change, is there any changing for me? Is masking myself in muscle and tone any disguise for the pathetic monster that lives inside that shell? No.

So, I become more well-read and take care of my physical body. Let's assume that in six months time I am in the best shape of my life. Let's also assume that I've somehow become an interesting person that knows something about the world, anything for that matter. I'm still a depressive 25-year old that's failed more times then I've succeeded and feel like that's the way the future will always play out.

Wow. This all sounds like I'm just completely bitching and whining. I am.

Tangentially to whole depression debacle, I'm pretty sure I'm in love with a girl that I have no business being in love with. I should be allowed to love. I bring only heartbreak and pain to those who I caress. A curse which I will not impose on even the most resilient of persons.

Increasing is the emphasis on ceasing to exist. I'm attempting to save people from me. I have no right to have friends. I am incapable of being entirely selfless and caring for another person, despite me believing my intentions are full of honor or valor. I am a scared child in the skin of an older man. I don't deserve your time and should be okay without it.

Digressing to whatever point I'm rambling at... I look around my room, the confines of what I thought I inhabited, and am disgusted. I spent this much money on this much bullshit? I spent a large chunk of my life pursuing things that don't matter. Material things that mean nothing in the end. I have the grand notion of giving it all away, but then who am I? If not the sum of the things I've collected, what point did all of the past years of work serve?

The answers to all these questions I can hazard to guess, or even may know. This doesn't change the fact that they are still running through my mind constantly. They impede self-growth and rob me of any sanity I think I'm still clinging to.

There doesn't exist a soul, past, present, future, that should have to cope with the feeling of worthlessness that I drink deeply from daily. Even now. Even now I know only a half-dozen people have even struggling through these words... I can only think to apologize for wasting your time. There isn't a point to any of this. There isn't an enlightening thought or lesson to be learned here. I can't see one anyway.

You've indulged me long enough.