The Blue Balloon.

A greeting card from hell: my dark, horrible, hopeless religion.

Mr. Melancholy — the Big Bad — from I Saw The TV Glow (2024)

“I let go. Lost in oblivion. Dark and silent and complete. I found freedom. Losing all hope is freedom.” ~ Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“What’s good is to eradicate hope. They can’t get you if you got no hope.” Tom, Succession

“I paint the ceiling black so I don’t notice, when my eyes are open.” Sloppy Jane, Claw Machine

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We go our whole lives with certain visions and hopes and dreams about what we’re going to do and who we’re going to be, and letting go of all that is supposed to be some kind of self-betrayal. Lately I’ve been coming to terms with the fact that everything I wanted to be and do and always assumed I would have in this life are simply never going to happen for me. I’m not going to recover from this illness. I’m never going to be a father or husband or ever again know love or meaningful human connection. I’m not going to be some kind of suffering-to-success story, or become someone or anyone at all. My pain will never be understood or appreciated in any way that would be remotely satisfying or equivalent or worthwhile. I’m certainly not going to use my suffering or make anything out of it. That’s just fantasy. I don’t think my story really matters. I can’t get people to care about a disease they don’t have, especially one called the chronic fatigue syndrome. I won’t ever be redeemed or forgiven or saved. She won’t ever love me, I know that. I’ll never feel okay or enough, because I’m not. I feel like I’ve disgraced and dishonored and discredited myself many times over now and just said way too much (and am still doing). I don’t think it’s possible to express myself honestly without evoking evolutionary disgust in people. I think I’m actually doomed, and I have to wake up to that every day. And you can’t help but ask why you are not allowed to have things, can’t help but feel like you could’ve been something or someone, a contender.

Except admitting all of that fills me with peace and a dark sort of bliss. I look back at my 20s and think, man, I was trying so hard, and it only left me hollow. For years, my whole life and mind revolved around impressing certain people in a certain way to desperately compensate for how shit I actually felt, under the illusion that if I could just hit the right notes in the right tempo and tone, everything would change for me and it would be glorious and I would be whole. I was running in circles, a rat in a maze seeking the cheese of attention and approval from people who couldn’t care less whether I existed. Now I’m entering kind of a blue period in my 30s where I’m just surrendering to the black and making peace with the fact that I will always be hopeless and sad and alone, a sick old man whose life is all behind him, a punctured and deflated blue balloon – kind of raggedy and empty and strewn, my guts out for the world to see and walk by, the way you react to a split-open animal carcass on the highway. I can almost feel my spirit exiting toward the sky. And I’m guilty for even indulging this when there are others with the same illness who can’t do shit and are completely fucked.

Now, I hardly go out. When I do, I hobble around with my little walking stick. I don’t feel safe or at home anywhere. I don’t have anything to say to anyone. I look like Skeletor and feel like some sort of ghost or goblin. I don’t do birthdays or holidays. I don’t do anything. My dreams and memories are more real than reality. Most days, I can’t even believe I’m alive. I’ve given up on being good at anything, at being a writer or “connecting” with an “audience.” I write because it’s the closest thing to a religious feeling I can get and for that I’m grateful. I’m only good at suffering and being alone. All this just makes me laugh, honestly.

My vision has darkened over the years and a horrible humor about it all has set in. I think life is evil and people are aliens and death is kind of good (in relief from the horror of being). I think there is a God, and I think He laughs at our suffering. I think God and the Devil might be the same, that it’s all mashed together and intertwined, demons and angels, love and hate, and that we’re living in hell already. I think everyone including myself is a schmuck and we all have some built-in life-lie that cuts to the core of our being – a need to justify our existence, even if it’s bad. I think human beings are physically very small and that we smell kind of weird. I think the people standing on boxes shouting the end is near are probably right, and have always been right. Nowhere was it written that we were destined to live forever and ascend to the stars. The dirt is just as inviting. That’s how I really feel, man. I pray every morning and night to the God of pain to spare me and every other me. I have total faith in the eternal brokenness of being.

It’s a tough sell, no? That everything sucks and is bad. I just really like the idea of no longer supposing I have anything important or good to say and not trying to turn everything that happens into some kind of motivational speech or self-help motto or socio-political talking point. “How to defeat friends and manipulate people.” I find myself utterly exhausted and bored by the stuff I see people pushing these days, disgusted with myself and reality and in a state of constant horror at the world and the human condition. All my former idols have fallen, made total fools of themselves. Everyone’s trying to sell you something, an attitude, a politics, an identity, and it can’t help but seem like one big money-making scheme, a great gleaming tower of shit. Am I wrong? Can anyone hear me right now? I’m afraid for the effect we’re having on each other and how we will all ultimately be judged for it. And it’s not like I’m any better. Mostly I just want to leap out from behind your screen and metaphorically smash you in the face. To make you feel something and put my sickness in you. Because then, I existed. Then, I mattered. Which is a pretty depraved way of thinking, really. Welcome to my nightmare.

So now I’m giving up hoping and dreaming and wishing and wanting, which I think is humanly impossible, and it’s weirdly satisfying to just let go and give in and submit and succumb to reality after years of struggling and striving against it. There’s a dignity and sanity in surrender. There can even be moments of genuine lightness and laughter and levity. Because at least then I don’t have to stave off the inevitable or forget the obvious or lie to myself anymore. And what you realize is you’re mostly doing that for other people — which is admirable in a way, but foolish. Because, on top of everything, I don’t want to compound the problem by living in denial and delusion. I don’t want to miss anything.

I’m okay being nothing and nobody and kind of just fading out. I mean I’m not, at all, but you get it. It’s fine. It’s bad. It’s funny. It’s terrifying. And I think there can be something kind of healing about giving expression to that bleakness and receiving that dose of living death. The world needs blue balloons, but there I go again justifying my existence. I feel lucky to be alive, to have lived, which is weird. I don’t want to hurt anyone, which I think is a kind of victory. I think suffering is bad and we should try to help each other. And I still want to do some good damage while I’m around. But holy fucking dicks the end could not come soon enough. I just want to be left alone to suffer in peace with some scattered moments of catharsis between — get some damn medical assistance, if possible. And who knows, maybe something can emerge from this hopeless despair. Maybe it’s a portal to some other place. Maybe it’s about sitting quietly with it and letting it move through you and listening to the penetrating silence that seems to rise up from the ground. But now this is becoming kind of a self-helpy thing. Happy fucking Holidays, you lovable schmucks. Be safe. Eat cake. Don’t worry. It absolutely won’t be okay.

Highly recommend the film I Saw the TV Glow.