Need to Vent

[cheesesweat]

Where to begin? I don’t have really anybody to vent my frustrations too, so I’m just gonna use this forum, for whoever cares to read. Maybe somebody can get something out of this or commiserate.

Had a fight with the wife. Masssive guilt trip and anger dumped on me. I always fight back and stand my ground though. Perhaps parts of it were my fault, but I think she went way overboard. I’m would like to get into details, but can’t really do that here.

But this rant isn’t even about that. This is about how so many things in this life, in this society and this country have taken a shit on me. Murphy’s law pretty much describes my life. It loves to rain turd after turd on my life. So many things and people have taken a shit on me. Work, school, people, “friends”, coworkers etc.. physical ailments, external circumstances like traffic, absolutely terrible luck, depression, spiritual oppression, constant uphill battles against something. It is ALWAYS something.

For one reason or another I just fight to get through each day. I rarely seem to catch a break. And I do mean rarely.

I’ve really dealt with the overwhelming majority of crap alone. All this junk is like a huge weight that I just silently carry every day. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” describes my situation and feeling to a T. So many times and for so long I’ve battled up rage, extreme stress, disappointment, (hate to say it) loneliness, exhaustion, generally misery etc.. like a damn soldier. And I’m just so tired of it all.

Not saying my situation is special. I know there are tons of guys that drag their butt through life each and every day. The reason I’m on here ranting is because I really don’t have anyone to talk to about this. Well, technically I have one, but I don’t want to unload all of this misery on them.

So many things in my life that gave me joy got snatched away. If it’s a little crumb of happiness, for one reason or another it always gets taken. So I try to find another crumb of happiness, and that gets taken. It seems like the purpose of my life is to be ground down to a miserable little robot that just performs his duties and keeps all the misery inside till death.

About that crumb of happiness. I’ve been in places where I feel so much better. But for several reasons I just can not make that work right now and I have no idea how long it will be if or even when I can figure something out. Life has made an extremeely narrow path for me. And when I deviate even slightly I get my ass kicked 100 times.

I can’t get into the details about everything here, so this probably sounds vague. It all just sucks. So is this my fate, trudge through each day, shut up and take it for the next, several years, decade or more? Seems so.

[Shemp]

I suggest you read the following memoirs of Europeans captured at the time of the Mahdi uprising in Sudan and held prisoner 10 years before escaping. This should give you some perspective on what it really means to have life take a shit on you.

If you use Android and don't currently have an ebook reader. I highly recommend the Moon+ ereader app. Use with epub formats from Gutenberg.

Ohrwalder (Austrian Catholic missionary):
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32875

Slatin (Austrian Officer serving in the British colonial army):
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41035

[gsjackson]

Condolences. Sometimes life is just a shitstorm and all you can do is walk through it to the other side. The 'quiet desperation' thing may be a bit more chronic. You write about it well, though; maybe there's a future in that. You'd think the niche of connecting personal misery to the American way of life would be completely saturated, but that's not what i'm seeing. Start a blog, or a Facebook group. You just might find all kinds of people interested in exploring the connection. Check out books like The Geography of Nowhere and The Great Good Place. American social pathologies were extremely well documented in the last century; not so much now.

And of course, try the remedy recommended here -- get a different geographical vantage point -- whenever it becomes possible.

[cheesesweat]

Condolences. Sometimes life is just a shitstorm and all you can do is walk through it to the other side. The 'quiet desperation' thing may be a bit more chronic. You write about it well, though; maybe there's a future in that. You'd think the niche of connecting personal misery to the American way of life would be completely saturated, but that's not what i'm seeing. Start a blog, or a Facebook group. You just might find all kinds of people interested in exploring the connection. Check out books like The Geography of Nowhere and The Great Good Place. American social pathologies were extremely well documented in the last century; not so much now.

And of course, try the remedy recommended here -- get a different geographical vantage point -- whenever it becomes possible.

Thank you for the reply. I have thought about writing in general. I think I can convey how I see things fairly well. Perhaps, that could be my ticket to making enough money to live abroad. Just the thought of that makes me a little bit happier.
I’ve certainly noticed that life is very unfair. Some people hit the genetic lottery, which includes a high IQ. They can guzzle however many beers, cigarettes, dope and junk food they want and still feel and function very well. For others just the slightest chemical and food intolerance sends their body into shock, depression, fatigue etc., or whatever. Some get born ugly, unhealthy, stupid, sickly and also born into extremely abusive families, in shitty areas, with shitty people. Others get the silver spoon from birth. It is what it is.

[cheesesweat]

I suggest you read the following memoirs of Europeans captured at the time of the Mahdi uprising in Sudan and held prisoner 10 years before escaping. This should give you some perspective on what it really means to have life take a shit on you.

If you use Android and don't currently have an ebook reader. I highly recommend the Moon+ ereader app. Use with epub formats from Gutenberg.

Ohrwalder (Austrian Catholic missionary):
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32875

Slatin (Austrian Officer serving in the British colonial army):
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41035

I think that if you had to walk in my shoes for the past 20 years you’d end it after 5. For me, the whole, “ Someone has it worse thing is a bad argument. I mean if some kid grew up locked in a closet, molested and beaten for 10 years only to later have so called “friends” incessantly bully and tease him, face rejection by 100% of females, treated like shit at work, feels weak, sickly and depressed that his life wasn’t too bad because someone was a POW and tortured for 20 years. The latter would be worse, but those are both obviously really shitty.

Would you tell a combat vet that eventually offs himself from ptsd that well, you didn’t experience trench warfare with mustard gas in WW1, in which conditions for the average soldier were far worse, so be happy and don’t complain. Cmon. There are varying degrees of shittines, even though some things are much worse. But you are entitled to your opinion of course as I did gripe about my life on a public forum.

[Shemp]

@cheesesweat: you maybe misinterpreted. I'm not downplaying your situation. It's just that I am sometimes tempted to complain when everything is going wrong in my life. When that happens, I always think of Slatin flattering the Khalifa so as to live another day ("the proof of God's goodness is that he put a man like you to rule over us!"), the throngs of petty offenders with right hand and left foot sliced off, Ohrwalder's description of the famine year when people cooked and ate their own children, etc, etc. Then I just laugh at whatever is bugging me.

[cheesesweat]

@cheesesweat: you maybe misinterpreted. I'm not downplaying your situation. It's just that I am sometimes tempted to complain when everything is going wrong in my life. When that happens, I always think of Slatin flattering the Khalifa so as to live another day ("the proof of God's goodness is that he put a man like you to rule over us!"), the throngs of petty offenders with right hand and left foot sliced off, Ohrwalder's description of the famine year when people cooked and ate their own children, etc, etc. Then I just laugh at whatever is bugging me.

Thanks for the clarification. I appreciate that. My “go to” plan is to just usually “suck it up and drive on,” as they say in the army. But just recently, it felt like things were just getting really intense and this forum seemed like a good outlet. If you ever wanna gripe or complain about something, feel free to PM anytime. I’d be glad to listen.