@Conscience:
My lord, I get it now. You're despondent. All gassed out. It's futile. Pointless...why go on?
If you were in court waiting for a sentence to be handed down you'd be arguing with the Judge to add torture before the hanging....and all he wanted to do was give ya a $50.00 fine and a weekend pickin' up papers along a highway.
So this reminds of the story my uncle once told me when he and his old college buddy were surfing along the coast of Australia when they were lads around your age. They're sitting on their boards waitin' for a beauty of a wave to come in when all of a sudden a huge dorsal fin knifes the water between them. It's a great white shark, must be to his reckon'n at least twenty feet long.
His buddy takes a long look at the fin circling back and groans, "Oh Fuck, we're dead!" and faints. My uncle, who is, by the way, a Marine Corp Lieutenant on leave, gulps and says, "Holy Mother of God, that's one frickin' big beast!" as he sees the great white lining up with his mouth agape, all 4 rows of four inch long teeth on display ready to chomp down on his leg.
This makes him more mad than a cat with a string of firecrackers poppin' off his tail and being who he is, a Devil Dog and all, smacks the shark on the snout as hard as he can, not once but one hay maker after another until his knuckles are scraped raw and bloody smacking the tough sandpaper skin of the shark.
To his surprise the shark shuts his mouth and swims off. Takes his sweet time doin' it like he's sayin' "Yer too skinny anyways...ain't worth my time."
He grabs his friend who's slumped on his board, wakes him up and they paddle to shore to have a couple of beers to ease the trauma. An old guy walks up to my uncle and tells him that he saw the whole thing and that what he did by instinct was the right thing to do. Sharks are alpha predators but what they want are victims. Somethin' to get all scared shitless and thrash around. As tough as they are they don't want to make a fight of it unless they're desperate hungry.
I think this story is a pretty fair analogy to where you are right now, Mr. Conscience. Only the shark in this instance is your thinking. Your beliefs.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can drum up one hundred years of evidence of "tried this, done that, and I lose my paycheck every Friday shootin' craps because Mama Luck won't ever give me a break."
But the thing is ... it's you who's declarin' the fight is over! And if you're gonna do that...well then, shit and shinola, you might as well as crawl into a closet and get into a fetal position and rock yourself to sleep and never come out again.
Smackin' that shark of negativity and despair is gonna take energy and a whole lot of jumpin' into unknown waters.
I can't think of anyone who could use more than you (at this moment) the help of some old masters of re-arranging your thinking and beliefs and mustering up the courage and perseverance to keep whackin' away until something does change....inside you...forget about romance and some tender honey lookin' at you like a love sick puppy. You have to change you first. Believe in you ... first.
My last bit of advice to you is to go check out these old masters, guys like Tony Robbins or Wayne Dyer. Louise Hays publishing has other folks like them on her website as well.
Conscience, I really do with all sincerity wish you the best....but I also know that this is somethin' you're gonna have to fight for and there's no one gonna help you until you make a decision to step into the ring with the gloves on.
Good luck to you!
