To Tell You the Truth

 

I'm so bummed out that writing is my only hope. 

My readership has gone down so much that I might as well be writing to myself.

As well as writing to get my ass in gear, I take 200 MG of Bupropion a day. The byproduct is loss of appetite. 

Like Gandhi fasting for 135 days. Now wait a minute here, Gandhi fasted for 135 days? I think it's folklore. If you don't drink water for 24 hours you can die. I guess the Mahatma was drinking water at least.

I'm one of life's fuck- ups.

I' could never hold down a job and get just enough Social Security to survive in Thailand— if I was living in America I’d be living in a homeless tent city. 

I’m not a rational person, I’m impulsive, and it’s a constant battle between me vs. impulse. The byproduct is I do stupid shit that gets me in trouble, ignoring the advice of bright and sane people.  

When Robert Johnson sings about the blues, he’s singing about depression. The blues is depression, being broke, and without prospects.

If it wasn’t for writing and psycho dope I would slit my wrist with a razor blade on the pot in the bathroom until the last drop of blood left my body. 

I don’t have a gun to blow my brains out because foreigners in Thailand aren’t allowed to own them, but you can be sure the fucking Thais are well-armed.

On the fuck-up scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest, I’d be a 9.

Maybe it’s Karma, maybe I was Hitler in my last life. 

Every day is an effort for me, I’m retired, scraping by in Thailand, unlike US retirees— Ole Joe, doing woodwork in the garage, building wood crap, or classy Chad on the golf course drinking beer and having a burger after 18 holes. 

I wake in the morning, and look around, feeling depressed when I realize where I am.

The cognizance shatters the breathtaking dreams of glorious sex with women I love and the feeling of being in otherworldly utopian environments.

The getting out of bed process is comparable to waking in a jail cell.

I see people who have made it, in small ways, not your Elon Musk types, just regular folks who own a liquor or hardware store and envy them 

I couldn’t galvanize myself to give a shit growing up, content with minimum wage, working in warehouses, or pumping gas,

although I drew the line at working at Mc Donalds or KFC because of the terrifying smells.

After work, I'd go home, get high, and watch sports and porno. 

So here I am today, 45 years old, living in Thailand because I can afford to— Without extra money to get massages, go to bars, getting by with enough money to feed my 12 dogs, and myself.

God help me if I have a heart attack or something, I'll have to go to a Thai public hospital and the doctors aren’t so hot.

My girlfriend Pinky is never home because she works on her parent's farm, 40 kilos north of Chiang Rai. 

She cuts rubber, a white liquid that seeps off the trees as you lacerate them with a blade in a circular motion. 

Her family grows— corn, rice, cocoa, and Kratom, which was legalized when ganja was legalized in Thailand. Kratom doesn’t do nothin for me, but the Thais like it.

I have a friend who’s the kind of guy you go to for advice, Andy, he suffers from depression like I do, we are on the same meds, Bupropion, only I take twice as much. 

Andy has a wonderful hill tribe wife, Nat, but he just scrapes by like I do, living cheap in Thailand, teaching English online, and his wife works as a maid. Anyway, he told me the other day, 

I wish I was never born. 

My wish is a mirror image of his, 

I wish I was dead.

Big talk, easy to say but it’s bullshit, I’m scared shitless of dying. The funny thing about dying is nobody gets a Get Out of Jail for Free, everybody kicks it eventually. 

I don’t wanna die, I’m a vegetarian, don’t drink, smoke cigarettes or ganja, and walk every day, big fucking deal I'm going to kick it anyway. 

Fuck who wants to make it to 94 but 83 would be nice. And, I would rather live on the beach in a tent than go to a nursing home. I pity the poor old bastards stuck in those ennoble 

jails.

I had a friend in high school in 1967, we went to New Trier, in Wilmette, Illinois, a well-to-do town. Where the actor Bill Murray grew up. 

His name was Tommy Sprague, a gifted basketball player. Somehow, in the white-bread suburb of Wilmette, he became a junky. 

My guess is he took the electric train from Wilmette's Linden Station, the last stop on the line, to the hood on the Southside— ghettos like, Back of the Yard, Hide Park, or Bridgeport, scoring there. 

Tommy would bring the junk home and shoot up in his bedroom. 

As you would think, the story has a sad ending. His father broke Tommy’s bedroom door down, finding him lying in bed dead from an overdose, He was only 17. Being precocious beyond his years is what killed him

So me, crying to you all, about my life seems kind of stupid doesn’t it?