We all know that this life is hard. We are all aware that the moment that you figure even one step of this life out, you are almost immediately crucified by the Gods, by the Universe, by the very fate that someone laughingly told you was yours. You are continually and almost spiritually slapped down over and over; and expected to either say or read some cute little saying, get up, and start over.

Life is a single straight, and often narrow, line to death.  There are corners, curves, little bumps in the road that all lead to one single thing: the end.  There is grace, there are miracles, there are small moments of joy that you must carefully and faithfully hold onto until you reach that end, in some attempt to figure out how to start over.  There are births to counter that path to death, and there are rainbows in cloudy skies.  But the truth remains, good or bad, you are on a straight line.

If you can’t read between the lines, I have had a spectacular day.  Once again that which I held onto, that which I believed in, once again betrayed me.  This is the story of my life to date; and whether I am saying that because I am in a bad mood or because it has proven true, I am not absolutely sure.  What I do know, without a doubt, is that I too will die.

There are moments in my bad days when death looks like the solution.  It looks like a path to complete darkness, but a darkness without monsters.  It looks like a way to leave the burdensome truths that I can not escape and enter into a new hope.  This is a fantasy that I know deep in my soul cannot come true, but having bad days always brings those thoughts right to my own touch.

I am not an easy person.  I recognize this and often feel sorry for the people in this life who are actually stuck with me.  I say this not out of a need for attention, or even pity, but rather a learned lesson from many years.  It is not easy to live with a mentally ill person; not for a child, not for a mother, not for a husband.  It is often a fight just to get me to eat, much less get me to breathe.  I am not an easy person.

I have to question though if my selfishness with this disease, my need for space and understanding, isn’t the reward God is giving me.  While for others he may give new paths, new jobs, new love for me it is a continual struggle simply to mentally survive today.  While for others he may show forgiveness, it often feels for my transgressions there is none.  How can one soul be so amazingly selfish as those with mental illness and expect to be loved? I  am absolutely selfish, and I wonder day in and day out if my life isn’t punishment for it.

I know my words today come from frustration.  I know that what I am speaking about is rooted in the darkest anger of my heart.  I know that I am feeling every dark emotion, and can’t expect to understand life today.  So I am not.  I am simply whining.

I am whining in this open forum because today didn’t go well.  I am whining on this great, beautiful blank screen in the hopes that typing the anger out of my fingers will keep it from dwelling in my soul.  I am whining to the world, not for pity but once again for my own selfishness.  The need to find my anger, breathe my anger, and one day let go of my anger.

Until then the burden of selfishness, the burden of this anger will follow me on the next curve in my life.  I will once again be able to eventually forget my step and fall in love.  I will once again be able to forgive my own brain, my own illness, my own world for not being the perfection I demand of it.  I will continue to walk down a path of resentment, and try and find forgiveness that I don’t deserve.

And maybe today is simply another curve in the road.  Maybe it is simply another punishment in my life.  And maybe, maybe, next time, God will let me come back as a ant.