I am wasting away

I occupy my time with trifling things. I am nothing. Occupy space, but that is all. I take existence for granted. I do not appreciate being alive. I regret that I was born.

I have ruined myself by counterfeiting my own soul. I do not possess any real life force, just passivity and mediocrity. I am mired in my own circumstances and in my own conception of who I am. I don't measure up, even in my own mind. I just don't have it - the thing, the essence of a truly great person, the soul of an artist and a visionary. And I am afraid that I cannot fashion this of myself because I have wasted my tools and my materials.

But that's all there is. My life is in ruins, but I'm okay. These are the two facts of my existence. I'm just okay, I'm just some guy. I will never do anything great or interesting.

--

Enough of this! Haven't you grown tired of wallowing in your own pathos? You live in the past, in dreams, because you cannot stomach the present. Are you incapable of steeling your constitution to look at the world squarely?

Does it really make you feel better to chastise yourself in the weakest possible terms? You are a loser, a failure, a punk, a good-for-nothing maggot. There - get over yourself. You have not even had it so bad in life that self-pity would deserve anything but scorn - in fact you've had a decent go of things. What do you really have to complain about so contemptibly? Not everything has gone your way, but people would kill to be in your shoes nonetheless. Why don't you try stepping outside of your own perspective, your own small-mindedness for a moment and considering that if things are bad, YOU DESERVE IT! You deserve the failure, the losses, the insecurities. They represent real weaknesses in you, not just nebulous qualities to be vaguely poked at in flowery prose.

What if, instead of whining, you actually tried? Really, truly tried? Made a valiant and noble effort to improve the things you hate about yourself? Or do you really think you're so far gone that you're beyond saving? That is perhaps the most self-involved notion you could possibly have.

Or do you not tire of peering into the house of mirrors of your self-hatred? I don't think I could even call it self-hatred, because you are incapable of arousing the vigor required for it. It is just a quiet, milquetoast seething. It's all designed to make you feel that you've somehow been wronged.

Why don't you try putting your mind to producing something of value? You've stayed in your confines long enough, haven't you? Are you afraid to break free? Do you think they keep you safe?

You fear leaving the comfort of what you've known yourself to be because inside you truly don't believe that you could be anything else.

A man is the sum of what he does. The only path is forward. You know these two things to be obviously true - you just need to put them into practice.