Try

I apologize in advance for this post. It is super long, and ranty, and depressing as all fuck. It's just that my psyche is crumbling, you see. So today I'm just throwing my insanity at my keyboard and seeing what sticks.

 You know what it is that bothers me the most about my life? That I try so fucking hard. I genuinely believe that I try harder, in nearly every aspect of my life, than anyone I know. Yet I get damn near nothing in return.

As I discussed in my post from a couple of days ago, I am nice to everyone pretty much all the time. I'm nice to people who obviously don't deserve it, and to people who aren't nice to me. I'm fairly certain I'm going to give myself a brain tumor from the sheer effort it takes to be nice to people who do nothing but treat me like shit. You would think that this would cause me to have more friends or, at the very least, better relationships with my acquaintances; but you would be wrong. What it actually does is cause people to walk all over me all the time, that's it.

I saw this quote, on Pinterest, the other day from Gwyneth Paltrow. She was talking about how her amazing body is not due to good genes or luck, it's due to the fact that she works her ass off for an hour and a half five days a week. Then I realized that I work out for an hour and a half seven days a week. I put more effort into my body than Gwyneth fucking Paltrow! Everyone seems to agree that she looks pretty great, yet I'm stronger, healthier, and have better muscle tone than anyone I know and what do I get? That I'm "scrawny." Awesome.

I spend an absurd amount of money on animal food. It costs me just over a hundred dollars for a forty pound bag of dog food, because I buy the healthiest kind I can find. I also give the dogs fruits and vegetables every day (which they love, by the way. I don't force them to eat vegetables; they follow me around and bark at me if I don't give them vegetables.) I also let them climb on the furniture, sleep in my bed, and sit on my lap, which many people don't do. You would think that the fact that I am willing to be poor all the time and have every single thing I own smelling like dog, just so that they can be healthy and happy, would make them like me pretty well wouldn't you? Nope! Chuck fucking bit me last night! Not like we were playing and he got a little too rough. Not like he sort of nipped me. No. Like I have four puncture wounds on the back on my hand now.

I think the one that gets to me the most though, is how hard I have to try to just not appear as if I'm on the edge of a breakdown. People have no idea how many conversations I have with them after which I don't even remember what I said because, while I managed to respond appropriately and even smile or laugh in the right places, every drop of my attention was on not collapse into a quivering heap on the floor.

There's really nothing I can do about it though. I know that, if I were to stop trying so hard, I would only feel worse about myself. My life would still suck just as much, except then I would feel like it was all my own fault because I wasn't trying hard enough.

"....but you'll try, because that's what you do. You try."