The Scrap Heap of Humanity

I used to have this theory, when I was in my deepest state of depression, that somewhere out there is a scrap heap of humanity. I was never suicidal; instead, my idea was this: I wished I could put my life there, the whole of it, on that scrap heap of humanity, and that people from all over the world could come and take from it what they needed. There is no denying it. I have been blessed. I have parents who love me, who would never harm me, who support me in whatever it is I want to do with my life, who have never pressured me to be or do something else. I live in a nice house, am never too hot or too cold. I always have plenty to eat--in fact, I have an excess of things to eat, to the point that I'm overweight. I've been so blessed, but I've never done anything with it. My life is a waste. So my idea, back then, in my deepest of down times, the medicated times, the times that hope was always a distant and unlikely companion, was that I wished I could offer my life up to be broken down for the parts, much like a stolen car is sold in pieces on the black market.

Are you poor and starving? Take my excess of food. Do your parents not understand you? Take my loving, awesome folks. Do you need money to get by? Take the cash that flows through my fingers like so much sand.... why should I waste it on DVDs and iTunes downloads when you could use it for food or to put clothing on your back or to buy groceries? Do you have an incurable illness? Take my good health. Do you have only months to live? Take all my time, every year of it, because I'm doing nothing worthwhile with it. Why waste it? Take it. Take it all. Even little things: do you struggle, spending hours studying for tests, only to bomb them because for some weird reason you just don't test well? Take my ability to glance over something 5 minutes before the test and get at least a 97 every time.

I have been given so much, and I have tried to be something, but I feel like I'm a waste of space. I feel like everything I try to do or be just falls so incredibly short of the mark. And I think if this were possible, if I could put myself on the scrap heap of humanity like this--even if I was, in the end, nothing more than a picked-over skeleton, I feel like that would be the most meaningful contribution to humanity I could ever make.

Take my comfort. Take my confidence. Take my health, my wealth, my happy childhood. Take the clothes off my back. Take the ideas out of my head. Take my past, my present, my future. Take any and everything. Take it all.

I am blessed, and I am a waste, and I am sorry.

If only such a thing existed.

But since it doesn't, I guess I'll just have to live.