Forever January

Sometimes I feel as though my inner fire is dying. It’s merging with the dark, letting the shadows deepen into dark pools. I question life and the meaning of living, of purposes and fate. Most days it feels as though there is nothing to live for anymore — I’m going through the motions, but I don’t mean them, derive no enjoyment from this existence.

It’s been said that misery loves company — but does it, really? I’m absolutely miserable and I just want to be left alone. I’m tired of trying to form relationships with people that don’t turn into anything but shadowy semblances of what a real relationship would be. Everything feels hollow and grey.

To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

- William Shakespeare, Hamlet 

It’s hard to imagine that the world would be different if I were to cease existing, that something would be changed. Perhaps there’d be temporary mourning, but grief fades over time until it’s forgotten completely.

We all die eventually — it’s merely just a question of when and how.

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.