All I do is sit alone in my house and feel really bad and pray. Who I’m praying to, I don’t know. I just pray. Maybe I’m praying to myself or to the universe or to some great big nothing. It just gets my mind off the pain and loneliness of my existence. I know, it all sounds a little pathetic, and maybe I’m just being a big pussy about this, but, damn-it I am a human being and I hurt just like everyone else. A side effect of the loneliness is that I get drunk and call everyone I know. I’m slobbering drunk and call up all my friends from high school. Most of my friends moved away a long time ago when the meat pack closed and the tractor factory started laying people off. Those were some hard times back then. This old town was fast becoming a ghost town back then. Of course things have changed since then, they always do, and the economy is a rollercoaster that goes up and down and up and down, over and over again. 

I am aware of how this might sound to you. But, it has been a very effective practice. I think maybe I should create a seminar and travel the circuit teaching guys my methods. I think it would be a benefit to society as a whole. Helping people is important to me, I think we should live our life following Jesus’ example, you know, help people where ever you go, spreading love and good will. I’m like the Buddha of love. My goal is to help people make connections. Everyone is long to make some intimate human contact another human being. There are too many lonely people out there looking for a friend. I want to be your friend. Can I be your friend?

You find that you will do absolutely anything or say anything to convince others that you are not the person that they say you are. Still you are hurt and bleeding feeling alone and vulnerable. There is no margin for safety. You ask yourself is this it? Is this all there is for my life? I had made so many plans and time just whisked by me. Will this be the end? How will I be able to recover from this? My strength and determination are not what they used to be. There is no beauty for the generic human soul, no bond with this sickness of humanity. You become a beautifully tormented person reaching for the sides of the abyss. Your life has become like a reality show. A battle engaged completely within you by your own rules and capacities. All other things have fallen away; they have become nothing to you now. Your awareness of self becomes sharpened and intensified into a single sharp point, focused and extreme. You cannot fix yourself in the looking glass. No, you are harrowed and sad, a distressed soul in the night of darkness. The details of the darkness overwhelm you like a young rebel who is coopted into the establishment at an older age. Your former sense of self is gone. You have disappeared in the mists of oblivion. You are driving down a long dark road and have become quiet at the wheel. The darkness is your only means of establishing some kind of meaningful connection in life. This basic human need is subverted by the exultant sensation of Godlike control.