All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers

I know I've dropped out some. It's evident in most parts of my life, except perhaps this blog. But most parts of my life are not public or even known to an extra person beyond the immediacy of each part of my life. Most people I know don't know the others I know or else are no longer in contact with the others they used to know. My mutual friends have drifted apart. Every relation is an isolated one. I wander lonely as a cowpie, gradually mentioning people less and less to one another, as well as myself less and less to each of them. Email used to be a Godsend for old friends, now it’s something that one does mainly with strangers. Things change so fast.

I would like to say aloud that I'm getting more than a bit suicidal, but so far I've never had the nerve to even formulate a plan. So, how serious is that? And which is more frightening, life or death? I am sick to death, but I am also very sick in life. Stiffness and soreness and poor circulation all over and pains that come and go, but must be serious, for they have a great deal of kick. I could wait and be knocked off by my own bodily decay and enfeeblement, I guess, though the drawback is that I might be struck down where someone could Save me. Then, plop, right back in the cowflop, but with everyone knowing my mind. Too bad I was never a gun nut. I’d already be armed, instead of putting myself to sleep contemplating various implausible schemes.

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Title blatantly stolen from Larry McMurtry's novel.

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