हार्ट और हेड

I have strived to not use this blog as a diary, but to entertain my readers.

I realize now that, save for the occasional moment, I no longer have readers. A long hiatus between posts can have that effect. That may have been the point.

So, what the odd characters are saying in the title here is 'Heart or Head'. It is the cause of my ponderings this evening.

My previous blog regaled of my platonic love for someone who seems governed by his heart more than his head, and proudly so. This one is, quite selfishly, about me. My heart. And my goddamned, fucking head.

As a writer, I rely on my head. My stories come from there - the characters, the nuances, such as there are any. However, my head is also deeply afflicted with an illness। It is an illness often discredited, often maligned, often equated with nothing more than weakness. I know that it is not simply weakness, however, this illness would have me believe so.



Any virus or disease can kill. There are viruses and diseases that render the body useless, that destroy it from inside out, that make it impossible for the mind to even use the body. Then, there are illnesses of that which defines most of us on a continuous basis - I suffer from a disease of thought. It is called clinical depression. I'm not alone. In fact, I'm in good company - Ernest Hemmingway, Nick Drake, Ingmar Bergman, Winston Churchill, Leonard Cohen, Rivers Cuomo, Vincent Van Gogh, Martin Luther, Michelangelo, Robert Oppenheimer, and Kurt Vonnegut.

I'm also in horrific company - Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, Seung-Hui Cho, Mark David Chapman, John Hinkley, Jr., and now, Robert Hawkins.

That is the dichotomy of my illness. It does not necessarily kill me. It can make me really good at one thing. The problem is that that one thing is usually hating myself.

I don't really understand why people don't hate me as much as I hate myself. I can see the good within me that they speak of, but it doesn't matter. In fact, I'd prefer it if they hated me; if they could see what I see, understand my flaws as I understand them. That they don't makes me want to curse them, though they love me so much. I cannot understand why they don't hate me. It makes me feel guilty for not loving myself, which only gives me another reason to hate myself. You must understand, dear reader, that the reasons for my self-loathing are bullshit. They could be overcome with the right mindset. I cannot accomplish that mindset. My depression does not have a reason or a purpose; instead, it invents the reasons and purposes for its existence. It is self-sustaining.

Know this - whatever the story of my life may be, it does not have a happy ending. Not for Gomer Pyle. Not for Chastity's Ogre. Unfortunately, my noble, and accomodating reader (I praise you for being able to bear me this long into this drunken sprawl of a blog), I am too drunk to continue, so I leave you with the query I secretly want to ask of all my friends and family -

Why don't you hate me, too?