Buck up, O dilatory cunctatrix thou!

Your question cut into my softest and most tender flesh, my dear love, and I too have fallen into despair - no, let us be more accurate: a waking coma, a living death, my mere presence felt by those around me only by the gnashing of my teeth, the wailing of my disconsolation and the deep sighs which come from those places where weaker men fear to look. And because of it I have had to seek answers to this question deep within myself, many hours spent in fear and trembling and psychodynamic analysis, where I have come to recognize that we are quite alike, both suffering from what Kierkegaard termed 'masculine' despair (masculine as an ideal of course my love, even though you are sometimes mistaken for a drag queen and me as gay as a summer day), aka despair in defiance, viz. willing to be the self one wishes to be rather than the self one essentially is. But one has to *be* what one essentially *is* and, in so doing, one may gain a strength to survive, to see life as a gift and a joy, finding pleasure in the simple things, touching the hair of a sleeping child, the sense of accomplishment from a job well done, living the life one must lead, a conduit through which the economy flows, consuming until the peaceful slumber of death. Ah, but I lie, I can't sell this bill of goods, treating you as a mere dog fancier swindled by a fast talker offering border collies out the back of a panel van with poorly counterfeited AKC certifications. No, life is, as we know, a short painful ride, born between piss and shit, a runaway express train dashing headlong to the grave. But on that train, there are dining cars serving the livers of goose fattened by gavage, there are observation cars where one can see beautiful things, and there are those special dark places where one can find the true meaning of life with a partner or partners of one's choosing.