Here's the problem:

I face a lot of challenges in life. Serious, debilitating pain, every day. Injuries that significantly limit my mobility and activity. Difficulty navigating the maze of social interactions. A head full of bad memories and regrets, a traumatic past, and a natural disposition to melancholy anyway. It's a challenge for me every day just to get through the day in good order.

 

Everyone, even if they don't have those kinds of difficulties, needs something to give them motivation, a basic sense of purpose and meaning. A tangible reason to hope, something to work towards. I don't mean hope in the larger sense, as in metaphysical or eschatological hope. I mean something more proximate and immediate, more visceral and emotional. I mean a reason to get up in the morning. 

For me, with all my problems, I need something powerful and positive, to counter the mass of negatives that are stacked against me. Something that, when it's time to go work out, and I don't feel like it,  motivates me to get up and do it. When I'm hiking up a mountain, and my back is killing me, gives me a reason to keep going. When the negative thoughts come, and I feel like there's no point to my life, no hope, is a point of light to focus on, a star to guide me in the darkness. A vision of a better version of my life toward which I am working, to counter the one that arises when I look at all the negatives. 

When I was younger, it was my kids that kept me going. For the last decade or so, it was the hope of love, and for most of that time, the image of one particular woman. But now there's no version of that which holds any power. Now, whenever I try to imagine some better version of life for myself and get moving, the thought that my daughter is dead sneaks in, and steals any motivation I might have. Because I feel like I don't deserve to have that better life, actually would feel guilty if I did have it. It just lets all the air out of my tires.

Then, for a while, it was another girl, and her love. When that darkness came, especially this new darkness of having survived a child, there was the thought that someone loved me, liked me, was depending on me, to keep me going from day to day, even if I was just limping along the shoulder on the rims. But without even that, I've got no ammunition to fight with against all those negative, demotivational thoughts. And so I just sit here.