“Hope is a dangerous thing. Drive a man insane. It’s got no place here. Better get used to the idea.” — Red

Sometimes I find myself wishing I was completely alone rather than having the hope of being with friends and then being let down by circumstance. It would be easier if I could be angry at someone, but who’s there to be angry at? I feel lonely and angry and I don’t know what to do about it.

Life has taught me that if you can’t self sustain, it’s like being emotionally homeless. You are dependent on the charity of others. I don’t like being dependent on other people. I can’t predict what other people are going to do, or how much they’re going to give. I don’t know how much to rely on them. As much benefit as I’ve gained from having friends, sometimes I feel like I’ve suffered equally much. But even if that’s true, and if I swore off all relationships that were more than acquaintance, I feel like it would be just as hard living life alone.

I came back to God to help me figure out the answer to this problem. God takes the edge off maybe, but there’s no solution in sight. The issue remains. I don’t know what I expected to happen, but whatever it was hasn’t happened. Maybe I expected God to magically take away my pain. Needless to say, he hasn’t. I came to God to try to rely on him so I wouldn’t have to rely on humans that can’t provide me with what I need. God is up in the sky somewhere. Even if he’s everywhere, his corporeal form has been gone for 2,000 years with no sign of coming back any time soon. I can’t hang out with God.

So what happens now? Do I keep holding on to the hope that God will come through? Hope will drive a man insane. And yet, what is the alternative? To give up?

I feel trapped with nothing but the pity of others to provide me solace. Pity is worse than no feeling at all. I’d rather be completely alone than be pitied.

It’s difficult for me sometimes to understand that the perceived unfairness of life doesn’t mean that I am somehow defective. That what so many of my friends have and I don’t doesn’t mean I’m less fit to belong.

I have some things that many of my friends don’t have. I often forget that I have a very great deal to be thankful for.

But life shouldn’t be about what others have and I don’t, or what I have that others don’t. Life isn’t a competition. I just don’t want to be left behind.

I finally am beginning to have an actual relationship with God again. At this point God is acting for me sort of like a nicotine patch does for a chronic smoker. He takes the edge off. He helps me deal with my occasional feelings of despair and loneliness so I can bear it. As much as my friends mean to me and as much as they help me, there are some things that can’t do for me. And that’s why I turned to God in the first place.

Life goes on. I make a lot of things harder than they need to be. I take a lot of things more personally than they are. But that’s part of who I am. Learning to cope and improve myself without becoming numb has been a lifelong struggle for me.

I find myself thinking that life is a lonely prospect if you cannot draw from inside yourself that which is impossible for others to give you: self-worth.

I fail at it sometimes. But I think I’m beginning to learn that it’s okay to fail sometimes.