Far too often the past few years I've felt as if I were C3PO dragging my robot-feet through the parched, endless dunes of the Tatooine deserts in the opening salvos to A New Hope.

"Oh R2, it seems be our lot in life to suffer."

The past 2 years, though it would be impossible to say each and every contiguous moment was terrible, has, in the aggregate evaluation of retrospect, been the worst 2 of my life so far. Two good friends have lapsed into the realm of death as a result of drug overdoses, I've slogged through episodic epilepsy which has precipitated a full return of my anxiety and major depressive disorder, seen the end of the longest relationship I've ever been in after 3 and a half years following which my ex-girlfriend (probably legally a civil-union 'spouse' by the point of departure) immediately leap-frogged into the newly committed arms of someone I thought to be a best friend less than 2 weeks after our termination as a couple, my compression-of-self to manically pursue academic ends, some of which would never reach fruition regardless of my best efforts, Donald Trump's election to the highest office of political authority in the United States and all that is contingent on this terribly seminal event, my manifest inability to accept that I am perhaps affected heavier by the loss of these two said friends than I often actively feel myself to be within any given moment, aaannnd.... where has it all lead?

This is perhaps the $64,000 question. I feel it is most certainly the reason I write today.

I have been, on many levels, classically defeated by forces of life known to human experience since the beginning of time. I am emotionally, intellectually, and physiologically exhausted.
I desire nothing more than the ability to take a period of hiatus, to retreat and regroup for a few months, let all bleed to paper, a catharsis permitted as energy levels allow. But I'm afraid because I don't have the money to support such a retreat despite my knowing exactly what I need. Rent will still rear its ugly head to guillotine my unprepared neck and truly substantiate a hard, physical contrast between the 'body' and 'mind.' This being said, it is only the dissonant forces of economy which maintain this illusion as a practical necessity.

If economy can't let go of me so I can let my soul soar to express, I often begin to contemplate yet again the only third option between a rock and a hard place: that of suicide, the ultimate and final release. The 'greatest' final "Great Escape."

Just let me go, or I'll do it for me.

Please, convention. Give me the space I need. Because I know, I know, I know I need it.