Dear Reader,

I miss when the stakes were lower.

Its funny how we always feel like what we are going through now is the most important thing that will ever happen. We care so much about now that we never seem to know that we are in a moment where we can relax.

Looking back at those idyllic days of childhood, college even, where nothing really mattered, where no mistake could ever truly be a catastrophe, it is so easy to miss how great those days were. But rose colored glasses be damned! I was miserable! For no good reason mind you, I was just to dumb to realize how great I had it.

We chose to be miserable more often than I think we are willing to admit.

I look at my life now and am staggered at just how precarious my position is. I have so much. And if I fuck up I have so much to lose. But think how much worse it could be! I can ruin my own and maybe 3 other people’s lives by falling from this place I have climbed to. It would suck, but I’d live, probably. Imagine I had children though? Dear Reader can you imagine the stress? At least now I can go home and be worthless and harm only myself.

So, with my own hypocrisy acknowledged, the view from up here, metaphorically, is great. As long as I don’t think about falling. But boy do I spend a lot of time thinking about falling. I miss the lower stakes, I almost wish I had nothing to lose.

Not to say I don’t enjoy having things. There are certainly perks to the gilded cage. The point is that I’ve trapped myself, the unfortunate reality of a society built on debt and credit is that the joy of being middle class requires a constant feeding of the machine. In truth I only get to enjoy the illusion of success so long as I continue to exist within the system that sees me as nothing but a conduit for money to flow through, from my employer to the banks I owe money to.

I’m being cynical and rambling. (Wow everyone is surprised)

There are reoccurring themes that come up in my thoughts (Brooding? Pondering? Delusions?). The Edge as a symbol is so easy to apply all across life. I so often find myself at some spiritual tipping point, a sheer cliff of the soul. I stand at brinks and wish for the fall. There’s no fear in falling. Falling is easy, letting go is hard. Stepping off and being free, letting go, giving up control.

Knowing some falls are necessary makes them no easier. Control is the truest thing I think I am afraid of losing. There are things I want on the other side of these falls, things I can’t get while staying in place up here, looking down at uncertain paths. But taking that step means I’ve chosen to let what happens happen. So long as I stay put at least I can keep things as they are!

That’s its own kind of lie too though. Life goes on, things change no matter how we try to hold them together, keep time in place.

This particular cliff is crumbling out from beneath me as I debate jumping off it.

It’s so hard to speak plainly about what’s bothering me. So I write these oblique, vague rambling nonsense letters to you. Do you understand? Reader are you confused?

The moral of the story is as follows. What life I have, I want to keep. And I stand at two edges, one that I want to be free of corporate life but I need money to exist, and two that living half in and out of the closet may be killing me. I playact at being a horrible thing at work and with my family, I hate that person, I hate his name, his face, his actions. But I can’t be free of him. To live fully and honestly as myself, to claim the person I am becoming, requires a leap and fall I may in all seriousness not survive.

How bleak

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I should write something positive sometime.