An Incredibly Depressing Piece For Melancholy Failures

1.

You don’t have what it takes.

Don’t react to that- not now. You know what you’re supposed to do; the doubling down, the sneering at the screen, and all the other empty rituals you do to assure yourself that you are, in fact, who you say you are.

But you’re not. Take a moment to remember those words – you don’t have what it takes (and you never will) – and process, for a second, the chance that it’s true.

Maybe your fears haunt you for a reason.

But you can change! Oh sure, you could – the way you could flip a coin ten times in a row, or could win the lottery, but aren’t you tired of relying on thin, cold chance for comfort?

You can. But you won’t. Because if you could, truly could, you would’ve already. But you don’t. What makes the future so unique that the past can’t read it? You’ve had frittered countless futures away – why should this tomorrow help?

If you were any different than you’ve always been, you’d know it through successes earned, not by a growing list of aging hopes.

You don’t have what it takes.

2.

Do you want to succeed?

Let’s talk about that.

If you want to succeed, that means you haven’t so far. If you haven’t so far, who’s fault is that? You need to change. Drastically. Everything about you so far has served you nothing but failure. Find distance and space to grow, and experiment with the natural passage of time.

Just kidding! Worship success as a savage God. Gnaw on your failures. If you want a throne of bones, you’ll have to wear through your skin.

Don’t just want success – desire is weak as you are. Hate is stronger, more potent. Let it boil inside you. Heat yourself with anger. Hate yourself, hate your rivals, simply hate until you can’t even live like yourself a moment longer.

You will not be happy. But you’ve tried being happy. And how’s that worked for you?

3.

Don’t confuse this for some gray, sad woe. Sadness is pathetic, blue and gray. Anger isn’t red, though – that’s a shorthand for those who’ll never know it. Anger is black, smothering even as it fills you. It is hot, uneven, bubbling and humid. It is an indulgent hate that seethes. Where self-obsession and failure meet in thunderous claps you will find me testing the outer limits of my hyperbole.

I have my failures memorized, each recited like a silent oath.

If you want to be better, you have to better than you are. That means you’ll come to hate you, and the gravity of your weaknesses that crash your hopes and plans.

You are your own worst enemy, but that too is misunderstood by the upbeat. It’s not that you’re an enemy of yours, and that you should be kinder – it is that your very soul has transformed. You are no longer “you” – you are your worst enemy, a new separate entity cobbled by distance and ambition, and one that wants hate the former you, the shell and living self, destroyed.

Suddenly, you’re split into two bodies; the detached hate, and the lazy, plodding self that’s held you hostage. And that is the enemy – that you, lazy, worthless, ugly, bad, alive. Avenge yourself. Tear their throat out. You know where they are – they are, after all, you – and you carry that enemy with you everywhere. They hold you hostage in the haze of his lazy life. You know his every failure with the permanence of having been him.

Familiarity breeds spite, and I know myself as thoroughly as anyone.

***

4.

The distance between desire and talent is a staggering, humbling thing.

But humility doesn’t serve you.

When does a humbling serve less as a setback and more of a reminder of your place in life? Of your weakness, your incompetence? Maybe your rejections are justified, your failures inevitable, and your desire and ambition does nothing but fuel your masochistic need to fail.

Maybe you’re not supposed to bounce back.