Don’t understand: Why Must I Be Doomed?

One’s joys are just so very, very fragile…

Life frightens me. My view is: It can only go downhill.

So what is most terrifying at the moment is that nothing bad is happening to me. It’s like the Clinton years. Yes, we all complained but was anything really horrible happening to us? Only irksome little things. Things we could forget about the next day.

This is how my life is now: Nothing terrible is happening to me, nothing terrible is happening to the people I love. I’m happy, my family is so well, my beloved is well, everyone connected to me is doing well. For some reason my car—whose death was foretold many months ago—just doesn’t break down. For some reason everyone I meet is fairly kind to me. I’m in love. I haven’t had a pimple in weeks. I smoke and smoke, sleep one hour a night, live on pastrami and still my skin stays fresh as a daisy.

And that scares me. I’ve gotten comfortable. Well, no not entirely. Naturally, I think “Wow. Nothing horrible is happening. That means when something horrible does happen it’s going to be all the more horrible.”

Oh, I’m really scared now! Why did I even bring this up?

Ay, mi. Why can’t I simply be grateful for this moment, this hiatus, these years of comfort? (In fact, that’s why it’s hard to get anything done right now. The years of comfort…I’m just enjoying them by doing virtually nothing productive.)

Well, I am grateful. Except for that niggling realization: Bad things are going to happen. Bad things are going to happen to me. Isn’t there some way out? Isn’t there some way to avoid death, loss, grief, illness, tragedy, mishap, failure, disappointment, betrayal, virtually everything unfortunate?

It is not my own death I fear. Death will allow me to cheat both the consequences and the creditors.

Here are some of the trivial thing people say that make me want to choke them:

Without the bad, you couldn’t enjoy the good.

Think of all the people who are so much worse off than you.

Don’t complain.

Enjoy the moment.

It’s all part of some big plan.

It all works out in the end.

You are the most neurotically anxious person I’ve ever met.

Well, I can’t think of any more. But there are literally hundreds of these optimistic little sayings that one should never, ever repeat around me when I'm holding a sharp object. Why oh why are people so annoying? Don’t they understand? Death is bad…loss is bad…suffering is bad…humiliation is bad…estrangement is bad…disappointment is bad…cruelty is bad…violence is bad…injustice is bad…And it is inevitable that it’s going to happen to you.

There is no bright side, you deluded fools!

I always thought that by never doing the things I was supposed to do (like now) and always doing the things I am not supposed to do while always realizing I will face consequences later, I was preparing myself for death. A laggard’s Tibetan Book of the Dead as it were. The fact that I am always on the edge of utter failure due to the passage of time makes me see the ticking clock for what it is…always there…always ticking…always leading to my eventual doom.

But it didn’t work this way. Since what I fear is that I won’t die soon enough. I may actually live a long life, full of discomfort at the least and intolerable agony at the worst.

I’ve managed to forestall doom, to dodge doom, to get an extension on doom. And so I think: Can’t I do this indefinitely? Why must doom ever come?

Doom, doom, go away…come again another day. No, just stay away.

God, I’m tempting fate just by writing this. Please fate. Don’t get me. This time. I’ll be good, I promise.

Indian bureaucrats ruined my life

Sacajewea coin says 'the presidents ruined my life'

Stofa ruined my life

Furniture ruined my life

Piercing ruined my life

A housing development ruined my life

Email ruined my life

Arboriculture ruined my life

A chiropractor ruined my life

Baseball ruined my life

Child support laws ruined my life

Jedi ruined my life

Marijuana ruined my life

The Boy Scouts of America ruined my life

Nintendo ruined my life

Buffalo ruined my life

Machiavelli ruined my life

Pauly Shore ruined my life

Pepsi ruined my life

The internet ruined my life

Nice people ruined my life

When Harry Met Sally ruined my life