What do you do when your existence doesn’t matter, because you’ve realized you’re too broken to ever experience the things you dreamed about when you were younger. Like, getting along with people. Going a week without fantasizing about starting a new life in a small coastal village with no retirement fund. Buying groceries AND paying a mortgage.

But most importantly, to accept and experience love.

That bit isn’t funny. Maybe none of this is funny, or supposed to be funny.

My question is this: If I’m unable to experience love, and I truly believe that to be true (and yet, the only thing I crave and desire in this world is to experience the feeling of love), them, what is the point of continuing?

The image of an amputee came to mind. Training to run a marathon. First with one prosthetic. Ok, doable. But then, with two. Still possible. There’s technology to accommodate missing limbs, though it’s certainly not without its severe challenges. There’s technology to help people reach their physical goals and to reach Mt. Everest; to help people overcome their vulnerability and demonstrate how fierce they are.

For sensitive and emotionally damaged souls, there are no replacement parts. There is only lubricant, a temporary spritz of joy in the form of espresso, cream filled pastries, or Double Big Macs with a side of french fries, gravy and chicken nuggies – best eaten hastily in private. Oh – I suppose there’s medication, but I haven’t attempted that yet. Is it a few neurotransmitters that I need? Or is it a proper bathtub time machine to return to a time before I was made to feel so worthless that it’d one day become my entire identity?

I’m suggesting the latter because the bathtub is the place I most often dispel my chaos, filling the basin with muffled screams and desperate tears, staring into my husband’s face wondering why he’s standing there beside me not turning away (but not saying much either). What a horrid experience it all is for him. He, who came to this country for a better life and instead, ended up with a deranged wife.

I don’t know what there is for me to do. I’ve done what I wanted to do, and I can’t have what I desperately want.

What’s left?