My heart is heavy

We are only helpless because we are heartless.  I often wonder what my life would be if things were different.  What if I was born into a rich family?  What if I was popular?  What if I had it all?  Would I be better than I am now?  Would I suffer so?  I'll never know sadly.  I like to think that I am the man I am today for a reason.  That there has to be some purpose to my life.  I just haven't found that purpose.  Purpose is what is driving me, I want, no I NEED to find that purpose.  I NEED to find that vision of me that I can be proud of and make it a reality.  I just feel like time is running out.  I am 32, half way to the grave, if I'm granted the normal life expectancy that is.  I just feel this pressure to figure things out and then the helplessness sets in.  I don't know where to go.  My heart is really heavy.  Its a major source of anxiety in my life.  Time cuts like a knife.  What am I here for?  What am I able to do?

Sadly, nothing seems to be the answer.  Everything I touch, every relationship I try to build turns to dust between my fingers.  A source of my depression.  Where do I go and what do I do?  So I write so that when I am dead and gone my words and ideas can live on.  So I can be immortal in the cyber world.  That maybe I won't be forgotten.  That maybe I can save a soul with my experiences.  Lord knows I have persevered.  I feel old though, I feel weak.  Every day the will to open my eyes gets tougher.  The meds I am taking, I am not sure they are helping.  I can't believe I have become reliant on a pill to get me through the day.  I use to think I was strong, unbreakable, then it happened.  The chest pains, the shortness of breath, the panic, the static, the fear.  A lifetimes worth of shit, pain, sadness, loneliness, alienation seemingly screaming forth from every pore of my body.  It had nowhere else to go, I couldn't swallow it anymore.  I couldn't entertain the demons anymore.  So now I am here, hoping for a miracle.  Hoping that one day it will all go away and I could resume normal living.

Its a helpless hope.  I have to keep fighting, I have to do whatever it takes to survive.  Maybe my purpose is to ride out the storm, to prove to the world and myself that I can in fact overcome.  That I am not the loser people foretold of, I am not.  I am more than anyone thought I could be.  Maybe my purpose is to conquer my demons.  Maybe my tale will be one of triumph against a world which hates me.  No longer will I be silent in my anguish.  May I be a voice in the silence, a light in the darkness, a beacon of hope in the void of despair.  This is my purpose.  Together, we can conquer anything.

Karma? Whats that?

People like to talk about karma.  They like to say good things happen to good people.  They like to say you get what you deserve.  Then I live in an upside down kingdom.  Innocence is crushed, lives are destroyed, good people suffer while the criminals and fat cats yuck it up on the finest the world has to offer.  Then you are going to look me in the eyes and say karma.  Let me tell you something about me, I am not an amazing person.  I am no a saint by any stretch of the imagination but I try to live by a moral and ethical code of honor if you will.  I try, to be good to people, to my friends, to complete strangers.  why?  Because we are all people, we all have feelings, we are all fucked up in some way.  I am not better than anyone else.  Yet I have been repeatedly made to feel that for all of my trying I am constantly getting the rug pulled out from under me.  Its as if what ever cosmic forces are out there get their kicks by shitting on my life.  Then they tell me Karma.

Here is the real truth people, karma doesn't exist.  Bad things and good things can happen to all types of people be they bad or good.  More often than not good people, nice people get the shit end of the stick  Nice guys finish last?  Exactly.  I find myself being very angry lately.  Angry at the world, the people around me, and myself.  I ask myself every day why I am the way I am.  Why I choose to be this way, or live with these standards when there has been no reward in it.  You want to know my reward?  Loneliness, alienation, sadness, anxiety, depression, just to name a few of my closest friends as of late.  The worst part about all of it is nobody seems to get it.  Nobody seems to truly understand why someone like me feels this way.  Why does every relationship I come across turns to ashes?  Why despite my sincerest efforts my hands destroy everything?  I just don't know.

I am not trying to say good things and good people don't exist, that would be stupid.  What I am trying to say is stop with this karma nonsense.  It doesn't matter how good you think you are, bad things will happen in your life.  For some, bad things will happen more so than others.  Lucky for me I seem to be in the bad things all the time club.  Yet I soldier on, I carry my anger with me because it has nowhere else to go.  I try again to hold myself to a higher standard, to buck the trends and NOT be anyone else but me.  That has brought me here, to this place.  For better or worse, I can't compromise who I am or what I believe.  It is those beliefs, those standards that define who I am, that dictate most o my actions.  I am not perfect, never will be, but I try.  Just please don't come at me with that karma nonsense.  Karma is a bitch just not in the way people think.

This is a short one today. I have had a lot going on personally, with family and myself and there are some big changes coming.  I will admit, I'm frightened by the storm brewing ahead of me.  I can see the clouds forming, and I don't know if I'm prepared for whats to come.  Are we ever truly prepared?  Like a blade of grass on the wind, such is life.  You can't predict it, things just happen.  Life persists.

My life, the open book

I am just sitting here alone in my room which is the norm these days.  I spend most of my days anxious, nervous about my future.  I have lost the will to carry on.  So I distract myself with video games and videos online.  It seems like my only escape, a prison that I designed myself to have some sort of comfort.  My body has given up.  All the anxieties and fears of a life abused have caught up to me.  I have been forced to swallow a lot of poison in my life.  Where to start?  I guess you could say it all started in my home.  The idea of a loving family was lost at a very early age.  I've stopped and thought about this simple fact many times over.  How losing your family at such a young age can effect your security.  I may have been young but I always said I wasn't like other kids.  I pondered death as early as five years of age.  I remember being so terrified of it, I still am.  So naturally I went on to ponder my family situation and it was probably the first of many times I asked, why?  Why when I look around me there are kids with moms and dads, and big houses and cars and money and I had nothing.  So I turned to my imagination to forget these things.  When I was young I loved toys, still do technically.  They were my very first escape from the whirlwind of uncertainty around me.  Oh I had them all, Ninja turtles, GI Joes, Power rangers but my favorite and most beloved are The Transformers.

I love robots in general, something about the metallic jagged edges really seems cool to me.  The idea of robots turning into things like cars and jets even cooler.  I love them still to this very day having amassed quite the collection of transformers and some even survived my childhood.  I love the idea of transformation.  I love to think that we as people can transform for better or for worse.  Take Megatron for example, leader of the tyrannical group known as the Decepticons.  Now depending who you talk to he is considered a freedom fighter.  He was a miner from Tarn, who well, mined, that was what he was created for, his role to play on Cybertron (Transformers home world.)  However there were injustices being done to the miners, they were being laid off, and suddenly had no purpose.  Megatron believed that it should be the right of the individual to choose his own path instead of having the ruling class decide what he was.  Then the injustices continued to mount, he was witness to innocent workers being slaughtered for protesting, and he himself committed his first act of murder in self defense.  It was all a downward spiral, working as a gladiator and taking more and more lives.  Ok Rich, whats the point you nerd?  My point is, he was an innocent worker driven to evil.  It started out with good intentions, a belief in something that is right and just but was carried out in a way that was evil and cost so many their lives.  Transforming ones mind, ones soul, and to some extent their own bodies.  Its what I love about The Transformers, there is indeed more than meets the eye.

So what about us as people?  Can we change for the better?  Can a poor boy from Staten Island become something great?  I haven't figured that part out yet.  I have had some amazing thing happen in my life and there was a transformation from darkness to light,  from despair to hope.  Now we are back in the dark, the only light coming from my laptop screen.  Alone....pondering transformers.  Pondering every step that has brought me here to this place.  When I was a child my world was shattered into a million pieces.  There was way too much uncertainty.  There was no security, my world was turned upside down and I grew to hate those around me.  I hated them for having what I didnt.  I hated having to go from house to house, from my moms to my dads and back again.  Holidays were so annoying, spent this amount of hours here, get picked up spend this amount of hours there.  Then the question, why?  When your first life lesson as a child is life isn't fair and doesn't give a fuck about you or what you feel, that is a tough pill to swallow and I learned it at a very early age.  That hasn't made that realization any easier to cope with 27 years later.

I spent my nights wishing my family could get back together but knowing full well it wasn't going to happen.  I think the hardest part was hearing how my parents spoke of each other.  Hearing both sides name call, blame the other for the failure of the marriage.  There was also the third voice in my ear, the world around me, kids who had way more than I did telling me how much of a loser I was because my family was broken.  As if I had any control over it.  As an adult I realize I didn't but 6 year old Richie didn't know that.  Did I do something wrong?  Was it my fault?  Would things have been better if I wasn't born?  (A question I still ask myself.)  I witnessed my mother go into a depression where she spent most of her days locked inside a bathroom or her room listening to music and smoking cigarettes.  I was parked in front of the television or playing with my toys.  Love has always come weird to me.  I wasn't a smothered child in the love department.  Don't get me wrong I dont doubt my parents love me, I know they do but it wasnt always expressed especially during that dark period.

So Rich why didn't you go outside and make friends and play with people?  Well, riddle me this, would you go outside and play if you were being bullied constantly?  Would you go out and play if you had rocks thrown at you while you were sitting on your porch?  Would you go out and play when older kids, teenagers would come over and break your toys in front of you?  Would you go outside and play when older kids shoved dog food down your throat?  No?  I didn't think so.  I was abused daily whether it was kids in the neighborhood or kids at school.  I was a scrawny kid, all bone, and naive.  I trusted people, I wanted to fit in and hang out and be "cool" and I paid for it.  To the point where the only real friends I had up through elementary and middle school weren't actually friends at all.  I was beaten up by them daily, picked on, name called, the whole nine but I dealt with it.  I allowed it to happen because it was either that, or be alone.  It was either accept this kind of attention or get no attention.  Its weird how that works out, I can sympathize with people who are in abusive relationships.  They are people with needs and unfortunately feel that this is the only way they can have whatever need they have met.  Its a sad place to be in.  I use to always say why don't people just leave those situations but you just never know whats going on in a persons head that keeps them where they are.  Maybe its fear, fear of loneliness, fear for their lives, fear of the unknown.  For some the enemy you know is better than the enemy you don't.  I think that is what it was for me as a kid.  I was familiar with these people even if they kick the shit out of me.  Let me tell you now, as someone who has been through this, GET OUT!  DO NOT let someone else trample on you.  DO NOT think that this is love, friendship,  what you deserve, or being afraid.  Please, do it for yourself and don't make the mistakes that I  made, I'm pleading, begging you, get the help you need no matter what age you are.  YOU are so fucking worth it.

I guess I'll wrap this entry up here. In the next one I'll talk about growing up in Staten Island which I absolutely hated.  We'll probably delve more into my family life as well.  Until then, I just want to say I don't know what good will come of this blog.  I don't know if anyone will actually read this at all.  However, if it can help just one soul know they aren't alone in this seeming hell then its all worth it and I can die at peace with my own life.  I don't have all the answers, but the best I can offer is to be completely naked and proudly display my scars.  If only so that someone else can avoid making the choices I have made, if only to save a life.  You arent alone out there in the wasteland.  There is still hope so long as you are able to breathe.  I implore you, get the help you need, please, find a way.  In the internet age, information is literally at our finger tips, there is opportunity today that never existed when I was a kid.  Please, friend, bro, sis, if you find yourself feeling alone, hurting, get some help.  Below is my personal email, RFULCINELLI@yahoo.com.  If you need to talk, if you just want to vent, I will do my very best to listen, to help and be supportive.  Please, I'm throwing myself out there, just make sure to post in the title that you are writing to talk.  Its time to try to do some good in the midst of my own sadness.  Take care all.  Much love.

Fool me once....

This wont be some long diatribe.  It will be short and sweet.  Don't trust anyone, especially those on the internet.  You are just a cog on the wheel and when you are dead and gone you are replaceable.  You know what you are, you are a serial number with an expiration date.  You are dropping seconds in a glass until you die.  Oh we all want to believe in the good of people.  You are better off believing in fairies, santa clause and the boogeyman.  They are more real than the "goodness" of man.   Oh and for all you ass clowns walking around talking about karma, fuck you.  Karma is the biggest lie of them all.  Good things happen to good people huh?  You sure about that because I have about 27 years of bones to pick with that bitch karma.  I am angry, because I got fooled again.  Shame on me.  What annoys me the most though is people who ignore, people who act as if you dont fucking exist  That is one of the single most annoying things you can do to me.  I am very much alive, I very much  have feelings and I damn will demand respect.  If you cant respect me enough to at least acknowledge me then fuck off.

The sruggle

It has been a really long time since I have even updated this thing. So much has happened and it went by so damn quick.  I'm not sure anyone actually read this thing.  Maybe its just therapeutic that I write from time to time.  Not sure if it helps but in a weird way its like releasing the demons if that makes any sense.  this past year has been utter hell.  I have lost so much.  I've lost my job, my health, my social life, money, pretty much everything.  Maybe I overachieved all this time.  Many people when I was younger said I wouldn't make it, that I would simply take my own life.  Funny thing is I'm terrified of dying.  I have a fear of things unknown and death is the greatest of unknowns.  You never know when or how, you don't know what lies on the other side.  I believe we are eternal beings, that there is more to the human than just the biological.  we are more than flesh and blood, we are spirit as well.  I know most people don't think about it, or really care.  I simply cant look into the eyes of another human being and think there isn't a soul that makes this person unique.

Then I wonder about my own soul.  At what point did it become so jaded?  At what point did I just say to myself there is no hope for us as humans.  Was it the repeated beatings of my youth?  Was it the alienation I had felt for so long, locking myself away for summers at a time.  Was it the loss of love? Was it the taking refuge in books and video games to help me forget the pains of my reality?  Physical pains are fine, those I can deal with, but the psychological scars are a bit harder to deal with.  I carry this weight on me constantly and I think my body just reached a breaking point.  I was having intense panic attacks to the point I thought I was dying, depression to the point where I couldnt even move.  I am legitimately worried about my future.  I feel as though Im in quick sand, just slowly sinking.  Every time I think I hit bottom I see to just crash through the floor and continue to fall and Im wondering how deep can hell get.

I am in a constant war within myself.  I love and hate simultaneously.  I want to be indifferent and yet I care too damn much.  I long to feel human when all Ive been made to feel like is something less than man.  I've given up the ghost of love.  Its sad because its the only thing I want in this life.   I don't care about money or material things, none of that matters if you are alone and nobody loves you.  Love is such a funny thing.  I try to wrap my head around it logically but it really cant be understood in such a way.  I wonder about its nature within us, how people can fall in and out of love all the time.  Why does it happen?  Is it true love if you can lose it? Do people mistake what love really is?  Do they think they are in love when they are really just comfortable or lustful?  I just don't know.  I know for me, I can fall and fall hard.  Im a committed man once I know I can trust someone.  the hardest part for me is the early stages.  I am so guarded, so jaded, and I make it very difficult for people to get in.  Not that many people are trying to anyway.  I am alone, some of its my own doing and some of it is because in order to be me I cant go along with the trended that people would consider attractive or hot.  I am a sports fan,metal head  superhero nerd, gaming geek, transformers lover, Lord of the Rings, T shirt and sweats kinda guy.  Not exactly what people are looking for.  I wont compromise it though, I tried and still ended up heart broken.

So there is this girl, and she is amazing.  I already know she would be perfect, not because she is perfect but because I just can see how amazing her heart is.  I mean she is beautiful physically too but its her feistiness(is that a word,)  her heart, she is so damn funny.  Ugh, its so stupid of me, I know I'm a nobody to her but god I'd give anything. I can go on forever, I really could, I guess I'm smitten by someone who lives a million miles away.  Yup, silly, hopeless romantic Rich.  If only I could catch a break, just one time.  She makes me smile, she makes me feel human, like I actually matter.  She'll never know, never understand it and most of all probably never feel that way about me.  So its a waste right?  If she only knew though, the butterflies in my stomach just talking about it.  I feel like a kid in high school again.  Embarrassing, yes that's what I am thinking.

So thats the update.  Sorry its not more upbeat or exciting but thats my life right now.  I'm working on it, trying to get better.  Its a long slow road to recovery.  Im just thankful Im not seeking drugs or alcohol to deal with this and just compound my issues.  I believe I am strong enough to pull through, its just getting my body back into fighting form.  I have to find the will to carry on, I need a reason, I need a muse. Some people will say well you should be the reason, but obviously thats not working for me, I need something outside of me to drive me.  I need a muse, I need a reason, I need a catalyst, its what I need now more than ever.  Fuck all your self help bullshit, I know what I need.