A Sure Cure

For decades I've read and heard people say "Why don't you just quit?" It is a term which has been used for everything from nail biting to waging international wars. It is normally said by those who have no idea what they are talking about, little contact with the real world as others see it, and have nothing they can use or abuse -- other than the people around them.

Well, I've decided their question is worth answering in my own way.

I have lived with chronic pain for over two decades, gone from upper middle-class homeowner to one step from ending up homeless on the streets, have had every career I started crumble around me, seen a drunken ex able to live high on the hog while I struggle to keep food in the house, and have consitently lost battles with government agencies that are supposed to be there to help. I've lived with depression that pills don't really help, because I'd be insane if I were not depressed under the circumstances I find myself in. And I've become so tired of the every day, every week, every month struggle to survive. I've also just about given up dreaming and hoping.

Since the struggle, the hope, are the sources of the greatest pain, it just makes sense to just quit. Quit screwing with a budget and struggling to keep bills paid. Quit thinking about "when things get better," because I know that day will never come. Just quit!

It's not as easy as they think. The urge to survive is pretty deeply ingrained, the integrity and responsibility to self and others has been part of me for more than half a century. But I'm tired, so very very tired.

It's too much work to even contemplate suicide, and all the collateral work it would involve. So quitting giving a damn about anything seems to me my only recourse. But who knew that quitting something could be so damn much work? I don't think I have the strength to do it, but I want to so much, am so tired of hurting, so tired of trying, so tired of dreams being smashed, so tired of bad things making things worse at the worst possible moment.

Isn't there any easier way to quit