2026: Chapter 9

I can’t imagine another point in my life when I have been able to sit back and tell myself that, you know, E, you kind of have your shit together. Work, money, sobriety, exercising, eating (somewhat) healthier. The boxes are almost entirely checked off.

So why I do remain so unhappy? I don’t know if I would even call it plain flat-out unhappiness, but rather the void of being happy. In the past I have referenced the cartoon of the sinking ship and the cartoon character plugging a hole only to spring a leak in five other places, and then plugging those five and having water shoot out from twenty other spots, and so on. What I speak of here is not that. The ship is fine. But there does, somewhere, exist a leak.

I already know what it is and I am such a broken record that I don’t feel like talking about it anymore, so instead I would rather explore my own curiosity. Is it as simple as the idea that no matter how well I am doing, or how content I am, it will never be enough for me? Or do I have a genuine grievance that I need to somehow find a way to work through? It could be both. It could be neither. It could be some weighted combination of the two.

The Buddha taught me the nature of impermanence. Niña’s death taught me that no single event, or individual moment, is unendurable. My entire history of failed and broken relationships taught me that there will always be more out there for me; there will always be others. My life experience has been one of complications and bad timing, and it has also made me realize how relatively easy I have had it and how fortunate I’ve been. I take it all into account.

And so much of my life, presently, feels as if I already have the answers to the test. I can go on like this forever — at least within the realm of what is expected of a human lifespan — and succeed by doing little other than being who and what I already am. Which is to say: I am as solid as they come. I have a conscience. I am a loyal man. I do right by my people. I am the one who is able to deliver on so many of the empty promises and hopeless dreams that other men spend the bulk of their waking hours selling.

I’m not going to lie: It makes me want to have a drink. I think that would make me feel particularly nice right about now. I am not going to do that because I made myself a thinly-veiled sort of promise that I wouldn’t drink anymore, for all of the reasons that have already been stated and will again be stated in the blogs to come.

In a way I feel like what I am going through now, and what I have been going through for the last several months, mired in this position where I don’t really know where I stand with the only person who represents any fulcrum of consequence, is the true test of my sobriety. How much stress can I put on myself without any assurances of the future? How much more intrapersonal misery can I endure before I decide none of it is worth it anymore?

My frustrations are only exacerbated by how literally every other aspect of my life is right where it needs to be. Throughout my adult life I have almost welcomed the minor tragedies, and obligatory setbacks, because they at least have allowed me to focus my attention elsewhere — that being outward. I have probably been guilty, also, of a fair amount of self-sabotage which has generated a similar general effect.

So I do suppose this (whatever this is) is the natural byproduct my brain releases in the moments when seemingly everything is going directly according to plan. I have nothing else with which to dedicate my time and energy and resources, so it all sort of collapses back upon me in an agonizing display of having to confront my own feelings and emotions.

Needless to say: I am not a big fan.