I don't know why I am writing this as nothing ever changes for the better. But, here I am and so I write. I'll skip any War and Peace details of what led me here, and try to stick to a brief summary of the Cliff's Notes, but at age 44 I fell so far short of even the most base and modest of expectations I set for myself. Nothing I set out to do worked out. I've suffered from bipolar since I was 13, though I was misdiagnosed until just over four years ago. In high school, I never kept friends for very long, though I started dating my first wife then and dated her for eight years until we were married. After we married, she lost interest in me and moved out. I met my second wife a few years and a new state later; we pushed up the date of our wedding so that our daughter, unplanned but never unwanted, could be born to married parents. After a few years, that marriage went to hell too because I hurt our daughter (something for which I will never forgive myself. Not now, not ever.) and she wisely divorced me. I went to college for seven years, both undergrad and grad, but was never able to earn the Masters degree I needed to teach; this was about the time marriage number one was ending and I got effectively run out of grad school under very questionable circumstances which I was too stressed and too worn out to fight. I earned another degree for a new career, but I couldn't keep any position and fell into debt.
Now, I'm living at home because I have no alternative, with parents who don't want me there and are ashamed of me because I fail at everything. My second wife has put a lot of barriers in between my daughter and I, and the good relationship we have in spite of my actions is now gradually eroding away as she enters her teenage years. I have no real friends, no one I can confide in or even just spend time with, and any thoughts of a relationship seem like pipe dreams. Even if anyone should take interest in me, I have no business in any relationship as I seem capable of only inflicting pain and receiving pain in return. I hide the pain, the anger, and the bitterness I feel just to be able to engage in simple human interactions, but after less than an hour I just want to hide again. This is not living. This is mere existence.
I worked hard and I did things right. I never drank, I never did drugs, and I take my medications as prescribed. I did what I was supposed to. I worked so hard to become good at something, and then did the same again from scratch only to have it never work out either. I sought medical help for my dark moods, only to have my psychiatrist feed a benzodiazapine addiction of his creation for years. I have sought therapists to talk to only to find them unreceptive, even hostile, to my plight. I wish this was all over. My world has only gotten darker, and in my bitterness and my anger I generally hate everyone, most of all myself. I always think that I would like to put dear old dad's .45 caliber to my head and pull the trigger, but my failure is so complete that I can't even kill myself. I don't believe that any man or god will save me; the former is indifferent to undesirables such as myself and the latter does not exist. But if the rest of my existence should continue on this downward spiral, I see no real point of continuing with any self-delusion when all hope is gone. I'm just too much of a coward to do it.