What The Hell Is Wrong With Me?

 What The Hell Is Wrong With Me?

While most people are enjoying their life in all possible ways, at whatever life stage they are in, at any age, any profession, doing normal ordinary things every day, I’m hounded by questions about the meaning of life, our purpose, who created us and what for and the annoying feeling of being insignificant in the greater scheme of things. 

This is not something I started doing in my old age. I remember when I was a kid maybe 6 or 7 years old after calling my mom so many times, I started to think why am I calling her mom? Who decided that she should be called that? Who created this language that I’m speaking? How did all other languages came to be? At that age I had already heard about God, and that he/she was our creator and that God is omnipotent, that he is the ultimate judge and can punish or forgive, that he decides if we go to heaven  or hell. 

The source of my information was the religion classes that we were taught in our Armenian school, our church and my family. I remember that my mother prayed every nigh before bed but I had never seen dad do the same. I don’t remember either of them talking to me or any of my brothers and sisters about God.  We did go to church but not every Sunday.  We did celebrate all the Christian holidays. At our church there were no sermons just the religious ceremonies and hymns. 

However at some point during my teens I stopped believing in God. The main reason being the Armenian genocide. I could not comprehend and accept that he, the Almighty had let such an injustice happen to the first nation that had accepted Christianity, a nation who’s land was dotted by countless churches and monasteries, a nation who had struggled and sacrificed so much to stay a Christian nation. What kind of god would let that happen?  I reasoned that if god existed all the atrocities that happened on Earth would not have happened. As I got older I decided that I am an Atheist and there was no going back. 

I have lived a fairly ordinary life, reached all the normal milestones that millions of people reach, I have most of the typical relationships that people have, I’m in no way much different than any other human on this Earth, except that I question everything in life and I’m unable to find satisfactory answers and therefor I can not enjoy my life even though I have a lot to be grateful for.  Since nothing seems to make sense, nothing matters.  I am in a constant state of apathy. 

I exist but I’m not alive. 

Random Memories, Picnic.

 

I have this one memory of my childhood that I cherish. One summer day my dad came home and told us kids to pack some bread, cheese and hard boiled eggs because we were going to have a picnic.  It was my three older sisters and I that would go. One of the older sisters packed everything we needed. We crammed in dad’s VW Beetle which was either light green or light blue I can’t remember and off we went.  We didn’t know where he was taking us, we were just happy to be out of the house, out of the city and with dad.  The whole time he was driving we were singing in our excited shrieking voices. He loved it when we sang but he kept asking us to lower our voice.  Finally he stopped the car and we all got out. The place was outside of town in the countryside. There was a stream gurgling happily nearby. Dad told us to pick some mint that had grown on the banks of the stream and wash it.  We spread our picnic blanket and placed a tablecloth in the middle. We arranged our Lavash bread, feta cheese and hard boiled eggs on it and also the freshly picked mint leaves.  The reason my dad asked us to bring eggs because that was his favorite breakfast food. He liked hard boiled eggs and also soft boiled eggs that he would spoon out of the shell with a little spoon and plenty of salt.  After eating we had a great time running around and picking flowers until it was time to go home. We all loved it when dad would do spontaneous things like that. To this day I love to eat hard boiled eggs with fresh mint leaves wrapped in soft flat bread we call Lavash and plenty of salt. 

I Wonder

 

I wonder if there will come a time when people will realize they are all the same. I wonder if one day they will accept, that in our core we are all made of the same substances. Race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, language, geographic location will not matter.  I wonder if they will understand that we all have the right to be free and happy. I wonder if humans will love one another like they love themselves. I wonder if everyone will value life. I wonder if we will survive until then.  

Now we are destroying our home planet Earth and killing each other in the name of race, religion and power. If there ever was a God he/she/it would put an end to this madness but alas there is no such entity. 

We don’t deserve this world, this beautiful planet, this abundant life. If we continue wagging wars and killing each other and destroying our home we will be doomed to be extinct. 

Maybe then will be the dawn of a new human who deserves this life. 

 Why is the world so chaotic?  It's September and it's hot as hell. California is burning and some other states are having floods and hurricanes.  We are still in the midst of the Covid 19 pandemic. Large number of people are still dying.  The world is weary of the pandemic because governments and people want to get back to business as usual but they can't.  The American election is less than 2 months away and Russians are at it again. Trump is still president and is acting crazier by the day. The mystery of this century is that he still has supporters.  Putin is still poisoning his opposition and all the other nations are paralyzed and can't do anything.  People are feeling isolated and lonely.  Vast number of people have lost their jobs, their health insurance and can't feed their kids.  Most rich people are getting richer like the owner of Amazon Jeff Bezos because I and billions of others are shopping online because we are too scared to go to stores.  My mind is melting from the heat and boardroom. I have been having weird dreams like dreaming about my childhood home being renovated or that I'm a murderer of child abusers. I hate cooking more than ever but I'm also sick of eating fast food. I keep thinking I could live with coffee and ice cream alone. Mosquitoes are bitting the hell out of me this year.  I keep finding more junk around the house to throw away witch is a good thing. I have started to envy singer songwriters because they can express the most mundane and elementary feelings and thoughts and still get rich and famous.  I wish I had more people to talk to.  There is nothing good to watch on TV or Netflix or Amazon or anywhere else.  Is the world coming to an end? I don't know anything anymore. 

PANDEMIC

These are historical times. We are witnessing the devastation that this pandemic has caused all over the world. People everywhere have been effected. Hundreds of thousands of people have died and millions are infected.  Millions of people have lost their jobs or have become homeless.  Places that a large number of people are in close quarters such as prisons, nursing homes, factories, refugee camps they all have been hit hard with the Covid-19 virus.  But wars haven’t stopped, the colossal migration of people from war torn countries hasn’t stopped.  

And somehow life goes on. People still get married, they still have babies.  Politics is being played and misused, elections are being run and people still die from other diseases than Covid-19. 

We have been staying home since mid march. We go out only for food, groceries, medication and gas.  We also order groceries and food from restaurants and it’s delivered. 

Most people are tired of social isolation and they miss human connections.  Some people who have to stay home have started new hobbies.  People have taken up  bicycling, gardening, baking and walking.  

I personally feel lonely, I feel down and listless.  I can’t motivate myself to do anything.  I feel that I am waiting for something to finish or start and then I will start living my life again. Honestly I wasn’t very happy before the pandemic but now its much much worse.

April 8, 2020

Mourning

I want to go to a mountain top and scream

And scream and scream and scream

I want to take a sledge hammer and strike 

The rocks and shatter them all to smithereens 

I want to pull on my hair 

Collapse on the ground

And weep and weep and weep

I want to wrap by body in a black shroud

Get on my knees 

Go from here to the tallest mountain

And cry  and wail and beg for mercy

If there is a God maybe she takes

Pity on us and stops this slaughter

Maybe we need human sacrifices 

Lets round up all the war mongers

The people who have committed crimes against humanity

Weapon makers, tyrants, dictatores

Corrupters, polluters, perverts 

And offer them to this God

My heart is broken 

Our hearts are broken

We are all in mourning 

For the thousands who have perished

To this evil virus 

Same Old Boring Depression

The feeling is not hard to describe, the feeling is hard to live through. The feeling is of despair , emptiness, loneliness . It doesn’t stop, it doesn’t go away, it doesn’t take a break. It clings on like stale cigarette smoke or a nasty food smell that some neighbor is cooking.  This feeling is feeling of depression, when no matter what you do you aren’t feeling joy or any kind of calm or normalcy. 

You think of so many things you could do to make this feeling go away, you attempt somethings but nothing works. You go for a walk and it walks beside you, you take a nap and once you are up it’s still there. You cook and clean and go shopping but you just can’t shake the feeling off. You attempt to read but after every sentence you ask “so what?” no subject seems important. You can’t concentrate so you loose interest in what you’re reading. It binds you with a thousand unseen chains, it wraps itself around your brain, it clouds your vision, it muffles the sounds, it numbs your sense of smell. Every day seems like a cloudy day.  

You feel defeated, you feel tired like you have just moved a mountain. All you want to do is to lay down and not even feel the weight of your own body.  Your head seems too large and heavy, your hands seem unnecessary, your legs are useless. You want to sleep but sleep is not voluntary it doesn’t come when you commend it to. At night when you are in bed you toss and turn and no position is comfortable. You make your neck hurt , your shoulder, your side, your spine, your lower back and not even after making yourself tired to the point of exhaustion sleep doesn’t come.  

Today I cooked dinner, washed dishes, did laundry, folded clothes, changed bed sheets, went out to get paint. I watched the news, a documentary, tried to take a nap.

But all the time that feeling didn’t leave me for one second. 

This is how I feel most days. 

October 16, 2019

Life In America

Sometimes when I’m sitting in my car behind a red light, I marvel at the orderly way life is going on around me. Cars stop at the red light, they continue driving at the green light, pedestrians cross the street at their white light, at least 2 airplanes are in the sky in high altitude and almost daily I see a plane either take off or land due to a local airport.  I see people going around doing their business.  There is nothing exciting going on, its pretty calm and quiet. You hardly ever hear a car horn here. The sky is blue and maybe a few puffy clouds are drifting by. This makes me feel blissful and safe, I’m never afraid for my life nor do I worry about theft of my possessions. I get my mail around the same time every day, the Gardner comes every Thursday and the pool man shows up every Saturday.  

You would think this is utopia, but no, it’s just life in America. 

Because of having Atlantic Ocean in the East and the Pacific Ocean on the west and two friendly neighbors in its North and south borders America is insulated from war, famine, drought violent revolutions, displaced people, and epidemics. Where at the same time there are so many countries at war, there has been blood shed and destruction of whole cities, great number of people have been displaced from their homes and have been forced to leave their country to be safe. 

There are still countries around the world dealing with famine.

America looks great from afar, in movies, music videos, the internet and Google Earth.

But the reality is far from those images. Here are some facts about life in the U.S.A.

• Every day 310 people are shot ,from those 100 die, every day 21children and teens (1-17) are shot and 4 die from gun violence. 

• In 2017  47,173 people in America committed suicide that’s 129 per day on the average. 

• In America 40 million people lived in poverty in 2017, and 41 million people faced huger.

• In 2018 the population of homeless people had reached to 553,000.00 The largest, most populous and glamorous cities have the worst homeless problem. New York City is number one, then Los Angeles, Seattle, San Diego, San Francisco in that order have the largest number of homeless people.

• The American Criminal Justice system was holding 2.3 million people in prisons. 

• Thirty million people in America can’t red or write, that is 14% of the population. 

•   Racism, LGBDQ phobia and discrimination are alive and thriving.  

Of course despite all of these problems I still prefer to live in America.  Always there are large number of people around the country working to solve these problems and find solutions.  Compare to some other countries individuals here have more freedom and rights.