I Keep Getting Up

May was a horrible month for me. On top of the regular stupid crap that I do, and the ongoing challenges of my life, I discovered something unpleasant about myself.

I am worse than I thought. I am evil.

I will not relate the details of my transgression. I will only say that I did something unspeakably bad, and worse, I knew it was wrong and wanted to do it anyway. For hours after the event, I sat and stared in horror at the abyss in my soul. Recalling my apalling and outrageous behaviour, I remember knowing what I was doing was wrong and wanting desperately to do it in spite of myself. All I could say for hours afterwards, over and over, were four words:

"I am a monster".

I tell you this only because I was very close to killing myself. I didn't, and I don't know why. I have many reasons to die and very few to keep living. In the end, I decided to keep going merely for the sake of going on. Call it hope, call it survival instinct, call it what you will, but I decided to stay alive, if only for the sake of staying alive.

I keep falling. I keep getting knocked down. I keep tripping myself and landing face down in life's muck. I keep thinking of giving up and ending it all. But for some reason, I keep getting up. I tell myself "give it one more day". Sometimes, I inch forward, concentrating not on getting through the day, but on getting through the hour, the minute, the moment. I don't know why. I am a wretched fiend, a diabolical slave to my selfish, desperate, grasping desires. I have wronged so many people that care about me that I feel that I deserve to die. But God (for lack of a better term for whatever higher power there is) refuses to help me out by giving me a massive heart attack or an inoperable tumour, so He must want me to stick around for some reason. So I do. I keep getting up. I don't know if that's a good enough reason to go on, but it will have to do.

I keep getting up. It's all I have.