....Of Poets And Madmen Pt.2

  It's funny how everyone has the answers to solve your problems without being in your situation. They love to expound about how they can put you on the right path even though they no nothing of how fractured your mind has become. Once in the grips of depression and pain even the most brilliant mind can fall victim to the disease. Depression hurts deeper than just what you see or read on the surface. When failure is the norm no matter what is a simple answer becomes a monumental task. Sometimes just getting up in the morning or falling asleep at night becomes a chore. Imagine never being able to feel happy for fear that something bad will come from it. Just picture yourself never getting joy from being around friends or family. Never feeling like you are good enough to achieve anything because you are always expecting the worse. No amount of words or macho bravado can comfort someone who expects to fail. When failure is your track record and bad luck your totem, you only expect bad things to happen. It's a cycle of self fulfilling prophecy that never ends. One who has never tasted an ounce of sustained success in life can not be expected to find solace in the words of other people unless they to are failures. Unsuccessful people only know the taint of failure and it's cruel twisted irony. Faith is lost and God seems so far removed from a person whose life has been plotted and shaped by failure.

   In many ways the constant failure begins to mark those who seemed a once normal person. They become sullen and angry at the world around them, never fully reaching any potential once thought attainable because of the expected failure or impending doom. They become contented in knowing that any success is short lived and that failure is right around the corner. Most people who suffer through this mindset fight themselves daily just to keep from exiting this life by their own hands. They have to find comfort in things most people try to avoid thinking or doing. The darkness become a cudgel to ward off the overwhelming feelings of self imposed hatred.

 That self-hate can lead many failures to destroy themselves by way of suicide. Many failures see this option as a way to stop the negative behavior that never seems to go away. When you live in a darkened world, light, becomes the enemy. Positive emotions only become a Siren Song leading a failure to his doom on the jagged rocks of life's torturous shores. Success for a failure is as foreign as a snowstorm in the Tropics. A failure doesn't expect to succeed therefor, they never do. Self-loathing and self-hatred undermine any shot at happiness. Many failures find the only way out of this maze of negative thoughts is to shut of the brain permanently. The only exit they find is self destruction. Through self destruction they finally find the peace they so desperately seek. They leave behind a cold cruel world and settle for a vast nothingness. Once again, the darkness wins.

  Do not read into this anything but the author trying to expose those out there, who do not suffer this kind of mental war, to the reality of someone fully ensconced in this kind of disability. Maybe then the enlightened masses will stop trying to impose their own opinions of what a person who has never felt happiness or success should do. When God seems like the enemy and Faith a fairytale, sometimes it's just enough to let a person suffering from this kind of malady know you are still a friend. Sometimes these people can seem distant and cold, just know they don't realize any other way to behave. You can't expect a failure to just snap out of it because years of felling like a failure will not go away in a moment. Sometimes it never goes away. No amount of rehashed catchphrases or religious passages will ever crack the hardened walls these people have built over the years. Just be a friend. Tell them they are loved despite their negative outlook and nurture their need to slowly evolve out of the darkness. Stand by them and let them know you care on a human level. Harsh words and Faithful diatribes only reinforce their belief that know one understands them. Try to understand this malady and go through it with them, refocusing their dark behavior in a kind and understanding manor. This disease will not go away overnight, try and hang in there when they relapse and don't get discouraged, you may be surprised what a sympathetic shoulder can do to change their mind. Let them know you are there for them, that is all most of them ask for to begin with.