Inside the Mind of the Happily Depressed.

The picture of confidence, it's a common term people use to describe me, but I am so broken on the inside. I don't know how much longer I can handle letting myself, and my family down at every turn. My A- average may be good to some, but I am on the verge of suicide because I seem to lack the ingredients my parents so lovingly kneaded into my siblings allowing them to rise into the perfect loaves each of them has become, and I not. My mother always told me I liked taking the easy route, that I never quite did enough, thinking it was sufficient. I don't think she every thought that maybe I was giving all I had. Broken, bruised and beaten by self-consciousness, I pray. I pray for myself. I wallow in self-pity and ask the lord to not leave my side, though I don't even believe in God. Still the thought that someone may understand the pain I experience when the window pane turns opaque with my reflection and I see in my own brown eyes the failure I've become is a comfort. No I'm not stupid, but the wind is unforgiving when you're thrown to it before you learn to crawl. Other things must take precedence. That's fair. I cannot be the center of the world, but when I'm expected to someday rule it, it seems like maybe you could've made me the apple of your eye for one moment. But I guess some argue the validity of nature vs. nurture. Perhaps that's all this is, perhaps I was just born this way. Perhaps I was born to lie and cheat. Perhaps I was never meant to be what you saw in me. What I used to see when I looked into the mirror. Perhaps I am my own Judas selling myself to the pain of self-crucifixion for a few hours of television or the fleeting joy of a video game. Yet still I feel superior. Superior and envious. Envious of willful mediocrity. Envious of others who allow themselves not to look past their own noses, dreams of a two car garage. My nightmares. I feel as though my wish to change the world gives me some form of divine right. That deciding I'm better makes me better. Maybe it does. Yet here I am alone. Too broken and friendless to speak these woeful words to the world. Alone typing them out on a tattered keyboard remembering the times when I was happy. The first time the ball spiraled from my hand in the direction of his open arms. Holding her as she fell asleep during the Mike Burbiglia film "Sleepwalk With Me". In the kitchen, silently rolling pasta knowing it would be worth it if they'd only like me. Racing my brother down the long cement path of Berkeley Lake. But then I remember: he's dead. She's gone. They never accepted me. My brother only by blood now. I remember these things, I double over, and I weep for those like me. Those future rulers unable to conquer themselves.