Billy Joel had a song in the late 1970s called “Only the Good Die Young.” It reminds me of my current predicament and why there is such a large gap between the sentiment within this country and what the people in power tell us. I try to do what is right. I try to help people when I can. What does it get me? Shit upon by everyone. When I need help, it’s like I’m in the desert, tumbleweeds rolling past like I’m the last man on Earth. I look around, and I see people doing questionable (at best) things to the downright immoral and illegal. These motherfuckers are thriving! What the fuck is going on?

I try to do good by as many people as I can. Yes, I get taken advantage of in many aspects. Yes, I’m empathic, so I have a soft spot for people struggling. Guess what! I’m struggling too! I can’t make ends meet right now, no matter how hard I try. I could do more, but my health would suffer. What good am I to my family if I’m dead. Life insurance policy? Sure, but what else? Nothing.

Wait a moment! I’m being told by the government that things are going great! Fuck you! Quit gaslighting us! Things might be great for you because you gain more power and money when the plebes suffer. You motherfuckers somehow make millions of dollars on a roughly quarter-million-dollar salary.

I help the soon-to-be-ex-wife out by adding her to the deed of the house, solely for the purpose of if I died, she wouldn’t have to fight the legal system to have a place to live. What happens? I wanted to divorce her because she’s an alcoholic that basically left me to die after surgery while she was passed out on the floor in the living room. She wanted responsibility for the house, but now she won’t help pay the mortgage, and hasn’t for over a year. She plays the victim well. She literally spent her paycheck every month on beer and cigarettes, and somehow I’m the bad guy. Having had hernia surgery, she tells me to suck it up and load 40 pound logs into the wood burner, about 10 of them, twice a day because it’s too heavy for her to lift…. and I’m the bad guy. She got mad because the doctor prescribed oxycodone and gabapentin after my hernia surgery because I’m being a pussy for three tiny little holes that ended up really being an eight-inch incision for a rather sizable hernia. She filed for divorce first, beat me too the punch, even though she told me she decided we weren’t getting divorced, yet she never filed anything the magistrate asked for. I wanted to sell the house a year ago, when the market was at its peak. I still can’t sell it because she won’t sign the insurance checks to fix the house. What the actual fuck?

Okay, with that venting out of the way, how does she live life like everything is fine, yet I’m struggling? I was trying to be fair, but she would rather get less money just to cause me pain. I can see why people love vigilante shit movies. I can see why people love it when the bad guy gets what’s coming to them. In real life, it seems like the innocent suffer while the cesspool of shit bags profit. I couldn’t sleep. My anxiety was keeping me up. Meds didn’t help. I just want peace. I just want love. I just want my family to be happy. Is that too much to ask?