1:27 p.m. Breakdown & Death

It was inevitable, I guess. Last night, we watched CSI and House M.D. It was like a one-two punch. CSI focused around the "death" of a girl with bipolar. House spun around a dying man and the concept of life after death. The rest of the night, I couldn't stop thinking about death and whether there was actually anything to think about. Are near death experiences merely the last hurrah of nerve endings firing in your head, your brain flooding with endorphins, creating delusions? Is there anything out there?

At my bleakest, I am sure that religion, mythology, and spiritual beliefs are all stories we make up to convince ourselves that life is worth living, that there is some reason and reward beyond ourselves. After all, why is it easy to look back on the ancient Greeks, to throw stones at their gods, without being aware of the hypocrisy of our own belief systems. The peasants in Medieval times seem uneducated and desperate for some hope of release and reward in an unconscionably hard existence, but how much more uneducated and desperate will we seem to those who look back at us a thousand years from now?

This is where I become lost. If there is no sense to living hand-to-mouth, to spending so much time at work that we see more of our colleagues than we do our families, to death and decay and poverty and injustice and hunger, then why--why--bother? Your parents raise you, as best they can, to be a productive member in society, but what happens when that conditioning no longer rings true to you? What happens when it begins to slip? For me, I despair of having to fill countless hours with things I have to do for other people, things which have no meaning whatsoever in the grand scheme of things. Why? Why work? Why sell your life to someone else? Why struggle? Why continue on in such pain and misery and anxiety?

I spent last night grieving my wet-headed, ninja kitty again, though it's been over a year. But there's such guilt there. I knew something was wrong with him. I could tell he wasn't making his jumps, his balance was off, he was sleeping all day... And we laughed at him for being clumsy. And we didn't take him to the vet for over a week because we didn't have the money to spare. And by then, he was so sick. There was nothing we could do, except make the difficult decision, stand by him until his heart stopped. I was hysterical with tears, and was again last night, remembering it. What is it that we do here? That we can believe in to weather such things? What can we do except make up stories to give us hope, to ease the grief, to find some explanation.

But there is no explanation. There is no knowing. We are robots: our body working in set sequences until it can't anymore. We are conscious, yes, and we have free will, but what does it lead us to? So, individually, we choose what we live for: the love of family and friends, the love of a partner, the satisfaction of living life on our own terms, the pride of being successful. Each of us must find some reason to go on, else why bother? And it's during times like this I can understand those who choose suicide. What is it all for in this shallow, shadow world we live in? Tired, and alone, and depressed, how can we choose to go on when we see so clearly? What if we cannot find that one thing worth living for?

And despite this, there are moments I want to believe, but I catch myself. Even in my dreams, when I die, there is nothing. I'm alive, and then I'm not, and everything is blackness. Only once did I dream that I died, and having died in one existence, found myself in another, parallel existence, living another life in another consciousness that was like my own, but not. And perhaps we live that way, on parallel plans of existence, time meaning nothing. Or maybe the true blackness is inside of me, an empty void of loneliness. And maybe I'm grieving for myself as much as I am for my cat, my marriage, my father, my grandmother. All I know is that I cannot understand the struggle, and that I am lonely in my lack of belief.