Past Caring

Another crap night.  I don't know what the ratio is, but it can't be good.  I get to this point sometimes, where I just feel a bit hollow.  Where it all doesn't really matter anymore.  Where I just think, OK - when my house is fixed, I will sell it, and I will pay my partner back whatever he feels I owe him, and if there is enough left over, I will buy a cheap van, just big enough to sleep in, and I will live in that.  I will try to earn just enough to feed myself, and cover vehicle expenses and have a little bit to try to share with the kids when I can.  I will park at the beach, or wherever, and just try to incur as few expenses as possible.  And just, well, just exist - with as little impact on anyone or anything as possible.

I get to this point where I think: nothing has ever worked for me, and it doesn't really seem like anything ever will, so why bother?  There's this Henry Lawson poem, and there's a refrain in it that rings so true.  Sure, the woman in the poem has had a MUCH harsher life, with way worse losses - but still, that feeling ... that feeling, I can relate.

This is the final stanza:

My eyes are dry, I cannot cry,
I've got no heart for breakin',
But where it was in days gone by,
A dull and empty achin'.
My last boy ran away from me,
I know my temper's wearin',
But now I only wish to be
Beyond all signs of carin'.
Past wearyin' or carin',
Past feelin' and despairin';
And now I only wish to be
Beyond all signs of carin'.

 Perhaps I am being a little melodramatic, relating to something like that - but like all things, if it's real for me, then there's truth in it, even if it's not a 'truth' that someone outside of me would be willing to accept.

I will go to work though.  Of course.  Like a robot.  And when I get there, I will be somebody else, one of those other me's - the one they expect to see.  And I will smile, and maybe even laugh, and I will enjoy my shift.  And then it will be over, and I will be back to the real world, of having nothing and no-one that I can trust or rely on to really hold me up, to truly support me, to validate me in a way that makes me know I am human, and loveable, and that I have worth.

It's time for me to go.  This contemplation will have to wait.  For now, all I know is, I am nothing - an empty shell.  On the outside of me can be projected whatever the observer needs to see.  That is survival.  But on the inside, there is nothing much.  Just dry, shrivelled up, broken pieces of hurt.  Sometimes they try to mend, and coalesce back into something that can flourish and shine.  Mostly they fail.