Losing Myself

To control a nation, you have perhaps two options. One is to provide for your citizens' needs, to give them what they need and they will maybe love you for what you have done. Two, which could possibly be the preferred option, would be to work them to hell and not give them the time or energy to think about what may be or what they can do to make things better.

That is the power of work. Facing a goal, moving towards it, sometimes you hardly remember what happens around you anymore. You lose yourself in the process, forgetting things that might be important to you in the past, present or future. Sometimes this is for the better: who hasn't heard of stories where people who are jilted in love push themselves to the limits in their occupation, trying to forget the unwanted truth that brutally confronts them.

I try. I used to think that the lax hours of my current posting would benefit me, give me some rest instead of being for example an infantryman/rifleman cleaning their rifles after "chionging sua". I thought that it would be good, but when I am trying to shake loose my past, time on hand is not something I want. I truly want to lose myself in my work, to seek goals related to my current work and my future occupation.

I used to hate running, how the pounding of feet on a track doesn’t do anything but bring about pain. I used to think it was pointless. There was no enjoyment I could glean from the activity. I've started running: Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays (although only on a treadmill) and I think it boils down to me not feeling the pain anymore. It is possible that mental anguish can drown out physical suffering. I think I have experienced that for myself.

I do not cry anymore. Sometimes I try to but I am too far gone to feel sadness anymore. I am resigned to the world being a cruel place, surrounded by faux laughter and pseudo happiness. I don't feel sad anymore, because there is nothing that deserves this emotion. Nothing. I cannot feel sad for a world that decided one day that what I considered to be happiness and bliss should disappear forever. Vanish indeed, into thin air, leaving me grasping for something that never existed, does not exist and will not exist. I leaned over a cliff to touch something that I could never have and fell into a valley that I will never leave.

Yes, I have changed. Have I lost myself yet? I don't know. But I do know that I will in the end and because of you, I will never be the same person. The old Matthew is lost to the wind, torn to shreds by the vortex of betrayals and lies.

Maybe I'll grow old and become a cynical old bastard. But that's what you get when you're a cynical young man.

I'm tired.