Bloody and Bowed

Poetmom has a thread asking about people's regrets. Here's my response:

"I wasn't going to answer this one because I have sooooooo many regrets, I didn't think it would be possible to pick one.

But then I was poking around the web (even though I really should be sleeping -- but I'm probably on the verge of a nervous breakdown, so who needs sleep, right? Funny, I thought I was doing better than this... Anyway, back to the story...) and as I sometimes do I started trying to find people I used to know which almost inevitably leads me to trying to find anything about my old high school. Well, since my last journey into self-obsessed Google-land my kinda-alma mater has put up a web site. This (looking at the site) combined with the dream I had last night about my long broken relationship with them, kind of pushed me nearer the abyss.

I regret that I was so arrogant when I was young, that I thought success was inevitable, that I always thought there would be time... and that I was so wrong on all counts."

If I wanted to start listing regrets I could fill your monitor with pages of them.

I've always considered myself the "bloody but unbowed" type, the "Ha-ha, life! you threw everything you had at me, but I'm still standing!" type. It's clear that I'm full of "it." Clearly I have cried aloud and become so practiced at wincing that no danger is even required. I'm not just bloody, I'm bowed.

At some point I clearly gave up. The last 12 or 13 years have been a kaleidoscopic blur of mistakes, misfortune, loss, and pain. My life lies around me like the remains of a hurricane splintered house. Only by being told do you know a house once stood here. No evidence presents itself to your eyes for you to independently reach that conclusion. All you can see is a shattered, haphazard lay of what once may have been something. Even a garbage dump would be ashamed to look like this.

Anything I envision now seems like just a pale adaptation of what I once dreamed, a mere struggle at survival, a token effort to say, "I'm not broken, I'm still in the game, really I am... really." I've been facing some very hard realities this year, and one of the hardest is that I am broken and empty and I don't know if I have anything left to give. It only takes one little crack for everything to drain out. The empty container is so easy to shatter.

I'm literally shocked at how closed down and shut off my life has become. I keep thinking over and over again, This wasn't how it was supposed to be. This has been a bad year, a really bad year. I've lost things I never should have lost, things you wouldn't believe if I told you, things that make me doubt whether I have any future whatsoever and make me question my entire past.

Virtually all my achievements take place before the age of 21. And what did they add up to? Nothing. Much ado about nothing. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. Things are supposed to matter. Things are supposed to build.

I miss my friends -- have I had any real friends since high school? I miss my life. I wonder if I have even had a life since high school. I tried. But I wonder... I really wonder.... It's easy to look back now and see what I should have done. If only... If only.... But what do I do now?

I guess this is a desperate cry for help. I just want someone to care. I just want someone to acknowledge me. But at this point, after so many years of fall and loss, I wonder if the acclaim of the entire world would be enough. The way I feel now, I doubt it.

You don't know me from Adam. I can't expect anybody to care. I don't really. But I figure crying out to the world this way is better than collapsing in a heap somewhere and wailing out to the heavens. Not much better. If things continue this way I still may end up in sobbing, slobbering ball somewhere.

I hope not. But all my past hopes have been dashed. Why should this be any different?