failure

I was down with high fever and acid reflux couple of days back. There was none around as I struggled to find my way at home, cook some porridge, make myself tea... My dear pooch as always my sole & soul companion.🥲Worse did not even feel like calling few of my friends (or maybe just calling them good acquaintances would explain why I couldn't be enthused to call them for help. And then everybody is so legitimately busy with work & family routines) Fortunately for the moment figuring out what could be possibly wrong I took some medicines and I'm stable now. Physically that is. Mentally/emotionally even more devastated. That as I age my body will start giving away, I will need help whom I will need to employ - to do all the chores I otherwise do myself - cleaning, cooking, gardening... As a single destitute retiree this helps me save money and also gives me something to do. My medication other than for my depression & anxiety has been minimal so far. Notwithstanding all my grief, depression, abject failure, loneliness and anxiety, ironically I'm always conscious of my tragic isolation, financial limitations and so as such careful with what I do to myself - not to abuse myself beyond what I already am by brutal fate and circumstances & seek pointless diversions, engagements in the so called pursuits of letting go, forgetting, moving on and other piously proferred nonsense. Yet this possibility of matters morphing into further tangle is even more unnerving. Things have been at a point where there's no high I crave for - company, food or drinks...even coffee. In fact zilch interest in eating . Or for that matter any urge to indulge in any way . I barely have any relationships left even in very rudimentary terms- none interested in my tragedies & guess I did things so reproachful sometime in my horrible past, that today I endure or endear to none. Rarely even a text or a call I get unless I attempt to reach few out myself. Forget about flowers, surprise visits. Yeah I know... all this makes one sound so needy and juvenile. many remark it's just my self pity. Some worthies pose me as the very pathetic antithesis of Nietzschean Ubermensch. 😔 Yes many such, my kins and insensitive, self righteous connections from past I no further long for.

Desire like travelling, movies, visiting art galleries my passions once, nothing barely motivates . For one thing Bangalore in India is such an traffic nightmare that at one level I should feel lucky to be still alive staying put home where chaos outside and just few minutes of travel can be so stressful aggravating even a Buddha! Yet Somehow still I prepped myself on few days of driving tour out of a wretched Bangalore to rather unknown places. Not that it was in any way very therapeutic or meaningful. There's none I feel like sharing my experiences or photos with. my knowledge and insights however singular itself enthuse none. Movies I still try watching but nothing barely gets my mojo going. So many left half way or quit after mere few minutes of it. Yes music, club house jazz and Indian Western fusion I find meaning that somewhere resonates with my melancholy & grief. Then reading... Sociology, cultural history... Howeverv in short, all giving away... Even coffee. All will end soon. A purgatorial life with no hopes of redemption anywhere. 😢

I use Mighty more as my journaling. Thats my only therapy left to reach out and talk to some in the world with my soliloquies. Thanks for reading 🙏
#destitute #Grief #CheckInWithMe #acuteloneliness #Loneliness #ChronicDepression #failure

Absence, Loss, loneliness...grief manifests in so many ways. The suffering and pain of it. You do things... supposedly the wiser and well meaning counsel you to 'get out', 'move on' from it. Yes, often you so do want to get out of the misery wrought by fate and circumstances. I literally moved myself out of the confines of my apartment and the little neighborhood I step out into, for a week long driving excursion - I in fact was barely enthused and till previous day not sure if I had the mojo to orchestrate this forced sojourn. Holidays otherwise are meant to be fun, leisure filled activity - visiting places in company of the cherished - family or friends which by rights add meaning to your life. Even just on your own, on a holiday you look forward to the journey, the place, food & even new people... there's excitement. During my drive there was none. No doubt the places visited in itself were fascinating, where both natural and historical splendours captivated. But there was no thrill or great elation and I just wondered if I could have just stayed put at home with my dog. I wouldn't have been more worse off.

For in many ways the absence of my ex was amplified, the banter and the excitement she showed while we travelled together so often. I was also thinking of my parents who too were inveterate travelers and the many tours we did together in my childhood and I wondered how much they would have loved the places visited on this drive. Medicines for depression, anaestheticises your surging emotions I guess and apparently tempers your mind. Probably why then I did not sense any great sense of joy or adrenaline rush as the beautiful temples and vistas unfolded before me and did fascinate and moved me at many levels. Carpe Diem. The whole experience was intellectual at best sans emotions where I felt mechanically following a protocol, a routine where I was merely tick marking an inventory of places in trying to get away from my grief and despair. All these in contrast to the thrill, excitement, amazement I experienced and showed it with oohs, aahs, yippee once, inside if not outside and shared my emotional rush with people I trusted, bonded with, in more optimistic times of less dismay & disgust. Now there are none. As Megan Divine says you cannot leave your grief or run away from it. You carry it.😔

Of course I did capture the many such impressionist moments on my mobile camera and tried to give it my expressionist perspective. Then it also hit me that there was/were none as such I'm too eager to share with and talk about. Nobody connects in ways that only my ex could and my parents. There were some others too, alas! all but forsaken to mundanities, rigmoroles and not surprisingly forsaking a romantic, melancholic me! The extinguishing of excitement therefore makes any activity even the so called visceral ones like travel, watching a movie or listening to some great music redundant. These can be something subliminal and can be balming too but yet in many strange ways makes your anguish, loneliness and loss more intense. But then there's more honesty there I imagine when confronting your bare emotions thus and possibly opening prospects for acceptance. Then sharing pics on social media is so anonymous where notwithstanding the few likes & hearts, actually makes matters rather pitiful as many virtual social encounters engineered through digitalisation is. The emptiness and hollowness remains and often gets more pronounced even when you try to literally 'get away from it' all.😞😢 #Grief #griefandtravel #Depression #Loneliness #failure #Anxiety

Relationships are of different kinds. There are those by default i.e. kins. But emotionally and psychologically we can be very disconnected. As youngsters we still fraternise with cousins as familial norms and occasions thrust us into frequent interactions. Later we discover our different temperaments, outlooks and thus family ties by itself no longer binds us.

Then there are friends. Socially and perhaps intellectually you connect with them. Particularly as youngsters they make so much meaning to share your excitement, joys, exploits and pose your worth with. However from my experience & observation shame, sadness & sorrow which you undergo are to be shared more with your immediate family and elders. Probably as you age, very few friends remain or appear in your life whom you can still trust, take into confidence and reveal your vulnerabilities. Showing one’s susceptibilities and weaknesses is not easy in our bourgeois society where success, conquest and winning have to be the goal of all interactions (the zero sum game mindset) and where this norm is reiterated at many levels, overtly or subtly everywhere. Positivity is another geist that envelops our social world. Therefore remorse, regret and misery are just not to be revealed. They make you a loser.

That’s where intimacy comes in and maybe that’s why it is so important to have people you are intimate with…usually that will be your partner as an adult. So even having friends can at best be just practical and utilitarian. Indeed one reason why many don’t keep up with friends because the charade involved in to proclaim friendship becomes difficult to sustain. Unless there’s something emotionally and intellectually appealing. Your spouse and kids are more meaningful to hang around with in such a sense where you are flaws are accepted and tolerated (at least to a greater extent vis your friends, kins or certainly not you work place…unless of course some friend of yours too has faced such tumults and nursing deep grief to commiserate.)

That’s what makes my isolation splendid…actually sorry, miserable and voiding life of all meaning and relevance. A very painful seperation and loss of not just the individual who I loved wholeheartedly but the loss of an entire emotional bonding and being uprooted from an ecosystem that was established in both literal and symbolic ways, has pushed into an bottomless abyss. Having no kids and kinship ties pointless and where friends even as trying to be helpful in many ways but the key emotional and intimate bonding needed to cope with grief, despair and anguish and much needed for healing, is what I sorely lack. Having also failed professionally, the multiple setbacks, losses, humiliation that seem to always hunt and haunt me…like invoking penalties at every corner but yet people counsel to carry on, get over, move on and remain functional and positively ‘normal’. Walking the razors edge…just that medications often numbs me and teflon coats my angst and pain even as my life is severely gashed. 😢#Grief #prolongedanxiety #Loneliness #loser #SuicidalThoughts #Anxiety #failure

met my doctor/counselor yesterday…I have been suffering with prolonged depression and grief…well more than a decade. My counselor acknowledged life has been very severe on me. Repeated losses, failures, shame which has left me scarred and scared making me severely anxious. It may often appear, for a man who is 56, that my angst and lament, vulnerability and anxiety are more of a mis-besotted teen, very juvenile. Maybe that’s my senility. I have prolonged depressive disorder… My doc feels there was perhaps a melancholic disposition inherent in me even earlier as a kid…continuous setbacks, personal & professional has permanently impaired me…😢 the worse is my loneliness…no one sees my grief and the abjectness of my condition…dismissing it, ridiculing it, comparing and invalidating it…This becomes more humiliating. For now there’s one friend who supports & understands…doesn’t judge me…stays with me when possible… hears me out… rest are all very instrumentally helpful at best if not totally indifferent. With no spouse, kids or siblings, my isolation is total. My career too was continuously bewitched that further debilitated my esteem and dignity. Repeated setbacks aggravated my despair and i just had to give up work too. People familiar with my history which I have shared many times over the years here may also be tired reading all over again. Yet I hope few will still remain empathetic and reach out.

Many feel that because I look for meaning in everything I do, I have ended up so. Few look for meaning - work, family and even socialisation is all out there and people carry it out their roles as a machine meant to carry out its functions. This may look very existential reasoning but existentialism I imagine is not something that emerges in such mundanity and routines but through deep thoughts. However to transcend mind and meanings in certain agency and subjectivity is beyond an ordinary me. Guess most today are socialised into indifference by default. Being and remaining an automaton serves the larger system too which thrives in its meaninglessness and folks are primed to merely play out their roles.

Friends who still may care are perhaps helpless…but to me their helplessness appears like indifference and cold diffidence. My doc recognises how i still do my best to keep myself functional…but just not enough to keep myself sane for long…medicines help but they can only go so far . Some worthies aver that the only control I have is in my ability to respond to crisis…not the repeated and crushing episodes, failures, loss 😞. That life is not fair is so brutally exemplified in my life story. The misery, the damnation, the horror of loss, grief and loneliness. This strangely I feel I cannot get over and it’s not even meant to be gotten over. A life of despair, melancholia, grief is a permanent part of me but which in many ways also helps me to understand the world, existence differently and expose many of the shibboleths that people carry both aware and unaware. Yet the extreme sense of failure overwhelms and death as relieving from misery is a possibility that reigns my mind always. 😞🙏🏽 #Grief #melancholia #prolongedepressive #Anxiety #Loneliness #acuteisolation #Depression #Shame #failure #SuicidalThoughts