What's The Point?

Have you ever wondered what is the point to all this?

I am talking about life. Why do we live? What do we live for? Someone who had met me a decade ago would be surprised at my asking these questions. I believed in indulgent excesses and living for the decadent pleasures of life. By that, I mean food mostly. I had a small family, including my grandparents and uncle and I never gave death a thought. Then in the last decade, I lost all of them. I made some serious mistakes in life, hurt people in the process and here I am, at thirty years old, alone, regretful and as per the latest reports, diabetic.

So, I am asking myself, what am I living for? All these years, I had something to look forward to, but now it is all gone. I have these feelings that I feel like sharing with people, but when I call them, words fail me. You see I am unable to express the extent of the loneliness I feel or the all-consuming pointlessness of life in general. Lately, I have been doing a little bit of cost-benefit analysis about my life. Frankly, I think I would do more good if I stopped existing today. Ominous as that sounds, I am not suicidal. I am just not interested in living anymore. I wonder if that makes any sense.

There is no sob story here. I do not resent anyone’s death as that was coming. I cannot blame anyone for my diabetes but my unhealthy food habits. Moreover, I do not have the right to assign blame for the things in life that I regret. I did those things, irrespective of what my motivations were at that time. That brings me to today. A friend of mine was chalking out a meal plan for me yesterday, something that would be conducive to my treatment. I could not show much excitement for it because I lack the discipline required to plan meals and stick to diets. Add to this the fact that I mentioned in the previous paragraphs and you can predict that I missed breakfast again today, for the 4745th time. I did not take the medicine I was supposed to and am seriously contemplating just not getting the treatment and letting go.

If you were to define me, you would probably summarize my person within two distinct personality flaws – a constant void I feel in my heart and this cripplingly low self-esteem. I try to remedy the former by indulging in fancy foods and for the latter, I compensate by spending the money I earn and the little money I have inherited in a way that makes me feel rich. As luck would have it, both of my coping mechanisms are at threat, one by disease and the other by a mistake I made in life. So what happens when I cannot eat the food I like and cannot make myself feel better about myself? I am afraid to think about it, really.

Very early on in life, I realized the importance of people. I also realized that there were certain relationships I could do and certain I could not. My relationship with my folks was a product of our personalities. I loved my grandfather, greatly admired as well as critiqued my uncle and had a bittersweet relationship with my grandmother, for she and I did not see eye to eye on many topics. I realized I was bad at friendships, partly because I preferred spending time alone and partly because people did not normally like me. However, I did excel at romantic relationships, something I realized when I started “dating” this intriguing stranger in the seventh standard. It brought me the mental stability and “distraction” from reality that I needed at that time. 

Remember that “void in my heart” I mentioned? Well, it really is like a black hole I carry in my heart, something hungry to devour more and more attention and indulgence and still stay discontent. There were definitely other factors that contributed to the series of unfortunate events that followed my first romantic relationship, but I would like to think that the “void in my heart” which constantly craved for attention and validation was the main culprit there. 

I know it seems that am rambling about for no good reason. “There are children starving in Africa, for God’s sake,” as a dear friend would say. Compared to that, my dilemma and problems are puny and inconsequential, I agree. Yet, sometimes I wish I were starving. I wish my problems were so obvious and urgent. At least, then I would be more concerned about the hunger burning in my stomach than this perilous sense of hopelessness. I am essentially a selfish person. I do not have the altruism required to dedicate my life to the service of others who are needy. Instead, I obsess over the lack of people and love in my life. When I do look beyond myself, I only see the people I have wronged and the hurt that I have caused. I have written about guilt before and they say it is a silent killer. I hear, so is diabetes. I am just waiting to see which kills me first.