"The devil inside, the devil inside

Every single one of us the devil inside

The devil inside, the devil inside

Every single one of us the devil inside

Here come the world, with the look in its eye

Future uncertain, but certainly slight

Look at the faces, listen to the bells

It's hard to believe we need a place called hell, place called hell" -- lyrics from "Devil Inside" by INXS

True. So true. Evil exists in all of us. Doing the right things in life is sometimes a punishment. That's my take on things, fwiw.

My life is falling apart. I've started smoking again. I'm depressed. I've been depressed for awhile. No secrets. No shame.

My heart has broken into a million tiny pieces. I'm tired and I want to sleep forever. My prayers from my believing days are being answered. Now I wish that they weren't. Fuck those prayers. Fuck the invisible man in his sky palace. Fuck him because he doesn't exist. Fuck him for sleeping on the job. Fuck him for ruining my family.

I want to blame a fictional character for everything bad that has happened in my life. Yeah, I should be past all of that. It's been 2 years since I left the Path™. Sometimes I wish that I could just believe again, believe that there's a loving God who is waiting in the wings to make everything all better. I want there to be someone there to help me out of this dark hole.

But there isn't. There never was and there never will be. I'm fucked and my family is fucked. I can't keep doing this, being there for everyone else, hoping that things will change.

They won't. I need to overcome this, get back on track.

I had a dream a few nights ago that I was shot as I sat in front of my laptop, scrolling Reddit. How pathetic. I sat in my chair for awhile before someone found me. I heard laughter as the people who shot me took all of my shit and stuffed it all into the hatchback of my car. Bleeding to death as my dogs cowered under my desk...I tried to hold on but I passed out before I could call for help.

I woke up crying, hugging my quilt as my chihuahua kissed me on the cheeks. I had been crying in my sleep. Ever since, I've been thinking that it was someone I knew. I recognized the laughter in my dream. It was spooky. But I still can't place it.

The dream was probably due to my depression. Last time I got like this, I wrote a novelette about killing the person I was mad at. I wish that I could channel my depressive energy into something somewhat productive. Chances are, I'll scroll Reddit and read a few chapters from one of the books in the stack by my bed. I went to the library and spent like 3 hours walking around. Then I sat on a couch in the back of the library and cried into my backpack for like 20 minutes. Finally a passerby asked if I was feeling okay.

Yeah. I feel fucking FANTASTIC. GREAT. I can't wait to get up tomorrow and do this all over again. WTF, humanity? A woman sobbing into her backpack (unzipped, head inside) in the midst of a busy suburban library is nowhere near fine. Do you really need to ask?

I keep thinking that maybe things will turn around once my family gets back on steady ground. I'm just not equipped to deal with the emotions that I've kept under cover for a decade regarding what happened to my oldest sister's youngest daughter. She ended up in foster care and now she's back in our lives, living at my parents' house. She's 18 and in love with a guy. She's adopted a 'ghetto' persona. She's disrespectful and takes advantage of my parents. They feel bad about the way things turned out. My dad is convinced that giving her everything she wants will heal all of the wounds and make her trust us. He can't see that she's using them...manipulating him and my mom.

I handle their finances since my dad travels a lot and my mom isn't in good health. I know how much is going out and coming in. So far, they've spent several hundred dollars on things such as bus tickets, hotel rooms, clothes, and cell phone bills. There is no end in sight and no effort to change things. My dad rolls over and gives her everything. It's sickening.

I'm tired of it all, tried telling him that he needs to put his fucking foot down. Say no. Don't just buy her boyfriend bus tickets because she puts on a little song and dance about how she's lonely and crying herself to sleep every night. Don't just believe everything she says because she managed to get a job at a fast food place and puts on a good show of wanting to do the right things.

What happened to the man who stood up and told me that getting an education was important? What happened to the man who yelled at me and refused to help pay for my college education? What happened to the man that woke me up in the middle of the night to scrub floors and clean the kitchen because I didn't do 'right' the first time? What happened to the man that hit me for crying and tried to choke me for raising my voice to to him when I was a teenager?

If I would have known that being an ungrateful pouty manipulative bitch with a chip on her shoulder would have gotten me everything I wanted without all of the hassle and abuse....man, I would've went that route and spared myself the heartache of doing the right things in life long ago.

So now I sit here and I can't wait for this depression to lift. I'm tired to the bone.