Sometimes Laughing Isn't Enough

I try not to take myself seriously. Really, I don't. I'm the first to make fun of my flaws and neuroses and weird shit that goes on because that's how I deal with it. That's how I cope. It's so much easier to make a joke about not being able to be picky with dating because I don't have options that makes others laugh because it can make me forget about it.

But what happens when the jokes are over? What happens when there is no audience to laugh and laughing at yourself isn't possible?

What happens when laughing isn't enough?

It's...tiring. Being alive. Being present. Being in the world and doing things and having a life. It's tiring getting out of bed and doing work and wanting nothing more than to just be asleep and dreaming because in dreams, you don't feel dull. You don't feel worn down. You don't feel depressed or anxious or like a hack or unbearably sad. In dreams, you don't question why you keep going.

I have so many things I want to do with my life. So many things to write and to publish and to bring to the world. Singing, writing, cooking, joking, stories, all that. There is so much to do and so much that I CAN do. It's not like I'm in a shitty apartment in the ghetto, surviving on ramen, and wondering how I can pay my rent. I'm in a very nice place at a good school working on my fucking MASTERS' degree. Not college. My fucking masters'. I have an incredible family that loves me unconditionally. I am part of the top choir in Oklahoma. I HAVE PUBLISHED A FUCKING BOOK. At 26 years old. Twenty-SIX! A published author. I have friends that love and care about me. I have talent and skills that I don't even use and I am So. Fucking. Empty.

I am sitting here, writing this, only a little numb on a third of a magnum of wine because I don't see the POINT in life. I don't see the point in what I'm doing. Yeah, I'm going for my masters. It's in a program I don't particularly like for a degree that would only barely qualify me for a career I don't particularly think I would enjoy because that's what you do when what you want to do will not help you live. That's what you do when spinning ideas and words onto paper and Word documents sells maybe twenty copies. I can't live on that. So I'm doing this.

I thought I'd be happy being a part of the choir, since singing is so integral to my life. It's...joyless. I go, I sing, I leave. I have spent time - not much - with people in the group which has been great, but most days, there's nothing. It's just silence and singing. It's a chore. It's not a love. It just IS.

I have another year of school and I don't know how I'm going to make it. The isolation, the being alone, the only sporadic interactions with people. The long stretches of not creating. The drinking.

I am tired. I'm tired. Am I stupid or selfish enough to consider The Final Option? Hell no. I have too many people that love me to do that. Too many things to do. But fuck already. A break would be nice. Something to give me hope because right now, I am ground down to the hilt.

Yes, other people have it much worse than me. I know that. I am fully aware that others are in much, much worse shape than me.

But are they doing so little with so much?

Fuck it. Sleep calls and, at least for eight hours, I'm not in my own head.

What happens when laughing about everything just...doesn't happen?