an exercise in futility

An exercise in futility. Just feel like giving up. Gonna put my blinders back on, gonna lose myself in my daydreams. Suffocate my sorrows under the weight of all my illusions. Leaving reality by the wayside, blundering along into oblivion.
Overworking and overusing my metaphorical vehicles. Overtaxing my own mental faculties. No escape route to speak of, no way to go but down. Money woes mounting as the months drag along, no end in sight to the endless spiral. Madness is but a manufactured escape, not wanting to admit, to see, or to believe.
The ugliness within begins to be transferred on those with out. The beginning of the end. The beginning of the decline. It has all been nothing but decline, nothing but entropy for as long as I can remember. I am a collector of trash, a collector of stories no one wants to share.
I am a living monument to mediocrity and unfulfilled promise. I wanted to pave my own path, to follow my bliss, but somehow ended up here. Where did it all go wrong, was it ever right to begin with? It is just a phase I’m going through, so people used to tell me. When is this phase going to end? It has been over twenty-five years, a whole generation’s worth of bitching and moaning, and so very little has changed within.
Numb myself from the pain. Drinking away the remaining years. Descending into madness, death, twelve ounces at a time. Following in the footsteps of my ancestors, turning my back on the world that long ago turned its back on me.
Anger and dejection passed down through countless generations. We were warriors.
Now we cannot even battle our own selves. I remember seeing my grandfather sitting at the kitchen table, nursing a cup of coffee, at the same time nursing his bruised and battered ego from the soulless, brutal march of time. Dreams and hopes long faded, his gaze empty and faraway, longing for the promise of youth.
Grandfather, I have let you down. The future is now in my children’s hands, perhaps they can redeem us all. Perhaps they will succeed where we failed.