It's been my experience that there is no such thing as random, amazing good luck. Life has followed a predictable pattern in two different nations, regardless of what I did to move onto a different, more rewarding path: my options are struggle to barely get by, or die. That's the summation of the past 15 years. I can't even tell you what happiness is like because it's not something I've felt recently enough for it to be something other than an abstract, alien emotion. Rebuild, prepare for impending doom, fight it when it does come, repeat the cycle.

That's not a life, not one worth living to me or anyone else. Yet it's all I get to have. The person I fell so deeply in love with? She'll never speak to me again and she and a manipulative French hillbilly get to live out all of things she and I had dreamt of doing. The girlfriend I have now? I don't feel as strongly and I'm sure it will only be a matter of time before she breaks my heart too. My career options? Warehouse grunt or cashier, that's all I have to look forward to and I'll be lucky to get either. College? A pipedream; I can't afford it and, even if I could, I wouldn't be able to support myself if I went? Home? I'll never be lucky to live in anything but a bed bug infested rooming house; can't afford to live anywhere else and my credit is too fubared to not need a cosigner.

I'm alive. But there's supposed to be so much more to life than seeing how many times you're able to crawl then eventually walk as it beats you to the brink of death year over year. Perseverance and strength are cold consolation. And they aren't enough for me anymore. If things don't improve in a meaningful way, I'll curl up with my phone, some ear buds, and a bag with a helium tank before I turn 28 this summer; I could never live and I was never lunch enough exist in anything approximating my own terms, but I can definitely die on them. If jumping in to the void spares me from another 3-4 decades of hell, then I'll do it with a smile on my face.