The Slough of Despond. This post is particularly ugly, and very difficult to write. I would suggest to everyone that they avoid reading it as though it were Medusa trying to stare them in the face.

Since I turned 50, three years ago, I have been experiencing more and more often the belief that I am, essentially, a useless person. The lives I touch are not better, and sometimes worse, for my being there. I make no difference to anyone. My actions make no difference to anyone. I serve no purpose. Were I to disappear tomorrow, it would not be noticed.

I don't know how I've gotten here. Other milestone birthdays have come and gone, and they've been just other December 13ths, neither regretted nor celebrated. But the 50th birthday was somehow different, and why this should be I have no idea.

I didn't want my life to be like this. I didn't want to be the sole support of my household. I didn't want to be in a job where I exist by means of year-to-year contracts. I didn't want to feel as though all I was good for was giving. Above all, I didn't want to feel as though wanting anything was futile, because I couldn't ever expect to get what I wanted or to have things turn out as I wanted them to. I don't want to feel like I have to live as though I was poor, or 19 again, or both. I don't want to feel that my magic has gone, possibly forever.

And yet I can't help but want. I want a house where I don't have to worry about taking care of the disrepair left by I-don't-know-how-many previous owners. I want a house where I don't have to walk around stacks of boxes and crates filled with unused things and old mouldering papers. I want a house with space and light, both of which I crave as an addict craves his fix. I want to be able to invite people into my home without feeling ashamed of the way it looks. I want to share my life with a partner, not a dependant. I want to live with someone who has a job and earns an income and shares the expenses of our home with me. I want to believe that I am a good man who is wanted and appreciated for what he has to offer, and for doing what he feels he has to do. I want to have my ailings and failings acknowledged and not used as the start of a comparison with those of other people. I want my emotions acknowledged as mine, to express when and how I see fit, and not seen as something wrong with me that people need to fix, or worse, something that has to be turned into a learning experience on the proper time and way to express my emotions.

But I won't get any of that. I put it out into the universe, and the response is silence. I can't make those around me change, or motivate them to want to change. Even when given the chance to express any of this, I'm blocked by considering what effect my words might have on other people's feelings, and blocked again by trying to choose the clearest words to express myself. It's easier to scream and rant when alone in my car. Worst of all, I'm blocked by the thought that I have led a charmed life, one of amazing privilege that many people cannot even aspire to, and therefore have no right to complain about or want any of these things.

It's not going to change. I don't expect it to, because I know it's not going to happen, and expectation will only bring disappointment and more sadness. I can't have and I can't hope. All that's left me is the maintenance of the external me, the role I once chose and am now assigned, the coping and protection that doesn't work as it once did.

And if you wonder: no, suicide is not and never will be an option.