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My life is a string of failures. I won’t lie I’m probably not a person you want to end up like.
The way I keep going now is by realizing that the thing I’m running from isn’t a sense of failure, or a bad self image. The things I’m running from are literal hunger, literal pain, literal cold. As in, I’ve been homeless before, and I’m fortunate enough to have come through that intact, but it put a fear into me that drives me.
The reason I keep trying is because I’ve seen how fast it gets worse when I stop trying. Like, at my age things fall apart fucking fast if I start letting the depression win.
I’m now at the point where I know the steps I need to take to keep depression away. And I’m considering depression to be like “A state of no motivation”.
I’m starting to get a little stable, which is making space to see new larger meanings, larger than just keeping myself alive and out of pain.
Now I’m starting to see the other people around me trapped in the hopelessness. So I’ve decided I’m going to start being that one person who makes new social connections. Who reaches out and takes the initiative. Because others have done that for me.
So, staying alive gives me the motivation to get up and push hard. But not always consistently. Now, I’m starting to run into limitations in my social skills. I’m rough, and caustic. I cuss a lot.
Now the whole game is learning to keep a tight operation. I can afford to fall off many different wagons, while I’m surviving, and still survive. I’m actually pretty hardy, and I can survive a lot of the effects of my fuckups in life.
But what can’t survive those intermittent collapses — those junk food and weed binges — is my role in the community. I want to be there for people who need someone, and if I’m inconsistent then I can’t do that.
So that’s the meaning pulling me up from fighter into … shopkeeper? Priest? I don’t know. Someone with a consistent schedule, whom you know where to find, who’s got the energy and time to give you some attention when you badly need it.