Please note this was submitted as “Other” it was going to be a rant but I don’t have the emotional strength to apply the verve and intensity a rant would require.

2005 began with my paycheck ending. I was part of a 15% work force reduction from one of the largest companies on the planet. I had a high-end, high profile position and was on my way to a notable promotion. Being in a “limbo” state at that particular time made it an easy decision for elimination. To be unemotionally tossed on the corporate death pile. Fifteen years in Information Technology and it all ended with a thud. My specialization was so attuned to proprietary systems, products and resources that my usefulness outside the company is nil. Seven months of unemployment has taken its toll in so many ways. The house, the cars the livelihood…the happiness is gone. Not like there was much happiness anyway. The severance package was nice but has dwindled to nothing. I was never materialistic but the humiliation to borrow money for insulin is hard to bear.

All personal relationships have waned and died years ago. Now my last relationship with my computer is about to die as well since the power disconnect notice arrived. What’s left to give or have taken from me? My soul?

I left the dismal and decrepit town of Joplin, Missouri behind over twenty years ago and I never looked back. Now I’m forced to return as the last remaining people who care for me are letting me back in their home. Their golden years of contentment ripped away by an intruder…a loser.

Where do you turn when there is nothing left? Life regression…one step away from homelessness. I came from nothing and spent decades making something of myself. I had the respect of my peers, subordinates and supervisors…all of whom can no longer look me in the face. They turn and hide their faces in embarrassed shame for me.

I’m forced back into a world that last I was in I was a teenager. All I know has changed, evolved and mutated. There’s nothing to look forward to. The light at the end of the tunnel? My tunnel caved in.

I’ve been feeling that familiar dread…the sweats, trembling, clamminess, and anxiety from low blood sugar. Probably about 50 by now…and dropping. Was it too much of my last dose of Novolin? No…not eating in the last nine hours more likely. Would it really be suicide if I don’t dive for the sugar or the “new improved taste” of the fruit flavored glucose tablets? What if I were to just sit here and do nothing? Then would come the confusion, seizures, coma and ultimately…death. Is it suicide? Is it suicide?

I’ve lived alone for seven years. Days pass without people hearing from me anyway. Why not just sit back and let it happen? I feel I’d welcome the sweet release.

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