So what should I do?  Whine on about why I've gotten depressed again?  If I had a nickel for every time I've rambled on about getting depressed...I would exchange those nickels in for quarters so I could do laundry.  At $1.75 for a load, I need a  lot of quarters. 

Let's see...it's been awhile since I've had to ramble on while avoiding mentioning what set me off into yet another downward spiral.  I'm feeling pretty rusty. 

What do I have to live for?  That was something I was thinking about a few days ago.  I'd been crashing at Ray's a lot, and since I hadn't called Jenny to ask her not to chain the door, when I decided to leave Ray's one nite at around midnite, I knew I had no place to go.  So I went to Kinko's and e-mailed people, particularly Nicole.  Nicole's had the thing that whenever I feel like I'm in trouble emotionally, then I need to call her or something.  Or call a shrink; SOMEBODY.  Now I expect a dedicated PhD student to be tucked away in the sheets during the witching hour, so I just wrote her an e-mail at Kinko's.  It cost me a chunk of change, but it was worth it to keep it together emotionally.

But the question that plagued me when I left was, "What do I have to live for?"  And it dawned on me that at the moment the thing keeping me from slipping down the well head first was other people.  I didn't want to think of what other people would go through if the cops or somebody had to call them to tell them that I had managed to kill myself.  Not Ray, not Paula, not Nicole, not Das.  Oh, and not my family, of course, but I gotta admit my thoughts are often located in the here and now.  My biggest worry -- honestly -- was that Ray would have to miss work to go to my funeral.  My next big concern would be that someone who would like to have gone to my funeral wouldn't have gone because they didn't find out about it.  And that would suck.  Not that anybody ever really WANTS to go to a funeral, but you know what I mean.

So I need to get my priorities straight. 

Suicide is often described as a selfish act, that it hurts other people while the perpetrator, if successful, doesn't have to stick around to deal with the consequences.  The big fault in this argument would be that if the suicidee (my new word) didn't have anyone close, then nobody would get hurt and hence, it'd would cease to be selfish. 

It's described as a cowardly act.  Oh like that helps; Potential Suicidee is feeling low and thinking of ending it all, so calling her or him a coward is gonna help?  No, it'll just make them feel worse and possibly hasten their attempt.

"There is so much to live for."  But if you have never lived up to your potential to begin with, then all you have is stuff to live down.  Yeah, there's lots of stuff to live for.  But what do I have to live for when I've failed at everything and let down the people in my life so often that they're patience with me has reached an end?

Well, right now it's other people. 

<SIGH> Sorry, sorry, this isn't what I had intended to write.

I know I could be doing worse.  Yeah I'm fat, and I've got bad knees and gappy teeth and lots of bad genes and all.  But physically I'm all right.  Since I was about 4, the worse thing that's happened to me physically was when I dislocated me kneecap (which started the bad knees thing).  I haven't had cancer, or leukemia, or gout (doesn't gout just sound like something really bad?  "GOUT".  "gout gout gout".  Yick.)  Haven't fallen victim to any of the trials of Job.  Never been a leper, either.  Never had any STD, but then again I've never been in position to catch one.  I'm not a retard, I just feel like one 99% of the time The other 1% is when I watched "So You Want to Be a Millionaire" and couldn't believe the retard on the TV had to call her brother to ask him the answer to what's the name of the host, or something.  OK, I'm making that last one up, but I NEVER got an answer wrong when I watched for two days, only to give up in frustration at how stoopid these people are and how I would never get on the show.  And I didn't have anyone to call for advice either.  Argh!

Heh that reminds me of the Stripper game on Howard Stern.  They'll find a stripper and tape a session of her answering really basic questions and then they'll bet on if she gets it right or not. 

Q: "What does pork come from?" 
A:"Umm, mushrooms?"

So I thankfully don't have the IQ of a stripper.  I don't have the body or therefore the income of one, either.   And on the plus side, I'm not schizophrenic, bipolar, or suffering from Parkinson's syndrome...yet.  I have all my limbs and digits, just barely.  I don't live in Moscow, or Kinshasa, or East Timor. 

But I am depressed and have no self-esteem and that conquers all.  No matter how much I tell myself how fortunate I am that I don't have a lot of other problems, it never seems to work.  I spent five minutes trying to turn the "I'm like rubber, and you're like glue" shtick into something about depression, but I couldn't.  Basically good things bounce off, and bad things stick. 

<SIGH> Nothing is turning out how I wanted it to, no matter how I tried to make it.