Product of Fiction in The Secret Writings of Eros: Book 3- Fallout, Pain, Acceptance, and Perseverance

In a lot of ways, I am a product of fiction.

That can be as inoffensive as “Disney Movies and Charles Dickens and the like” or as offensive as “The Bible, the Torah, and the 8 Fold Path.”

I grew up hearing that the most important thing in the world was to be kind, follow the rules, and treat others as you want to be treated. I consumed books like “A Christmas Carol” which said, “It doesn’t matter how much money you make, life is empty without love.” I saw deep in the waters of various authors who spent millions of hours writing about love, sex, adventure, friendship. And always always the most important thing in the world was your relationships with other people. I love stories. Always have. Would have gotten a Doctorate in the subject had I seen any lucrative purpose to it. Ultimately, I think I did the next best thing. I got a Bachelor’s Degree in Religion. The Stories that Shape and Control the World. Years later, I got a Law Degree “The rules that exist within the stories of our lives.”

And quite sincerely… I can tell you… it is that upbringing that influences my depression. I acknowledge I have benefits and privileges. But tell me how the story of Scrooge goes when adapted to this existence?
Imagine that Scrooge is not an unkind man. He gives his staff Holidays off, a living wage, insurance, and enough coal that they can even take some home for their own fires- not just the fires of the office. But still, the story remains unchanged.

Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker’s book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide- and-seek with other houses, and forgotten the way out again. It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold.
Now it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact, that Scrooge had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the city of London, even including—which is a bold word—the corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley, since his last mention of his seven years’ dead partner that afternoon. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change—not a knocker, but Marley’s face.
Marley’s face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part of its own expression.
As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.
To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue. But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.
He did pause, with a moment’s irresolution, before he shut the door; and he did look cautiously behind it first, as if he half expected to be terrified with the sight of Marley’s pigtail sticking out into the hall. But there was nothing on the back of the door, except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on, so he said “Pooh, pooh!” and closed it with a bang.
The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room above, and every cask in the wine-merchant’s cellars below, appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and walked across the hall, and up the stairs; slowly too: trimming his candle as he went.”

But for me the Ghosts of Years Past simply mutter of all of the mistakes I made while trying to do “the right thing”… which, in an attempt to foster family, friends, Romantic Love and Erotic Love… left me with none but creature comforts, a house, and a job. The Ghosts of Years Present simply sit and remark “You’re so tired all of the time, how do you expect to change anything?” without any helpful recommendations to the quandary. And the Ghost of Years to Come? They are two. The one, with the face of the 10th Doctor and his catch phrase merely says, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” The one meant to be cloaked as the specter of death, who says nothing, merely points at a gravestone. Instead of question or fear, I race to the stone and see on it a death age of 94 and the epitaph “Rest In Peace” and nothing more. And as I fall to my knees, saddened by the long life and devastated by the impersonal epitaph I sobbingly beg how a man may change his future… how one might change his fate when his actions have been, as best as they could, already bent towards kindness, compassion. If my life is to be so permanently devoid of Family, Romantic Love, and Erotic Love… what must I do, Spirit, to alter this course? Why show me this if I am past all hope? Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life! I perish to think that an application of cruelty may beget the future I so desire; but what steps must I take to prevent so cold a future?