BROKEN

I don't know how to properly explain this, but I am feeling more than a little broken at the moment... It's as if whatever made up "me" has been smashed into smithereens by a great big hammer and there are pieces of me lying around on the floor everywhere and not one of them can summon the energy to pull themselves together again.

Instead, each of the little bits wants to just lie there for as long as possible before whatever light there was simply fades out into darkness and peace and quiet.

This year so far has been a genuine slog to try and get through and I'm starting to believe that the very last strands of my tether were reached months ago, so that the end of it is now little more than a vaguely pleasant memory, dating from a time when things were merely bloody awful and there looked like there might actually be light at the end of the tunnel one day, rather than a series of oncoming steam trains each trying to squash me.

Rationally, of course, I know how lucky I am. I know that, in comparison to many, I've got it very easy, and somehow, that just makes it worse as I put myself through the meat grinder for even daring to think that I've got it bad when so many have it so much worse.

And yet it still goes on and on, and my ability to think properly is so scrambled that I have to force myself to remember even the most mundane of things that need to be done as flashbulbs of anxiety burst incessantly inside my head and prevent me from actually managing to do anything.

Whilst I hesitate to make the comparison, because to do so feels as if it is somehow belittling the far greater ordeal these people suffered, the only comparison that I've so far been able to make is to shell-shock, in that I've spent what seems like years now just waiting for the next mind-bomb to go off, and the next, and the next, so that my hopes and dreams and, dare I say it, compassion have been bludgeoned out of me, leaving this hollow shell who's just trying his best to survive the day, and sometimes feels as if he's not even going to quite manage that.

Somehow this broken husk seems to drag itself along, however, and the battles with decay and destiny and ingratitude and endless criticism keep on chipping away at the soul. I try to start my days trying (and mostly failing) to be "witty" on the internet (not here, obviously), because it's now the only moment or two that I can find where I can dig down deeply enough and try to mine what remains of what I think of as "me..."

I want to just run away and hide, cover my ears and shout "Lah! Lah! Lah!" as loudly as I can to block out the noise, the expectations, the responsibility, but it's always there, clawing away at me, demanding my attention and time that I'm no longer prepared to give away as my own life slides away down life's sewer.

I obsess upon my own mortality, on the brief span that is already flushing away. This weekend, assuming I reach it, I will reach an age older than another one of my writing idols ever managed to become, and whilst I ought to find some comfort in that, not only will I remain wretched at the loss, but I will beat myself up about how much  they achieved in their all-too-brief span, and how little I have despite having a pulse and, perhaps, another dozen years left to reach the same age my father did.

So I remain broken, shattered even by circumstances, and can see little hope of respite as the ongoing, never-ending saga meanders on, tearing at the remnants of my soul and leaving me despairing of ever escaping from this dark, charmless, hopeless maze into which I've somehow managed to put myself.