email excerpt (for posterity's sake)

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From: "·Brian Padua ·" bobo929@hotmail.com
To: *****************
Subject: dunno why, but...
Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 14:47:48 -0500

" ..............i woke up this morning around 6am unnecessarily (with about only 4-5 hrs of sleep, also for no reason)... with an overbearing and overwhelming sense of... grief? i think that's what it was... dunno why. of course, i remembered it was the "dreaded" "single's appreciation day" (S.A.D.! =s), but i wasn't thinking of any particular past moment. or memory. it was odd -- like a sudden.. "empty" feeling, like falling through an emotional bottomless pit. or more like.... i was being emptied of something......... i know what i was feeling at the time (a strong mixture of grief, sadness, emptiness, and even loneliness for no apparent reason), but even remembering Ps30:5 wasn't helping. ("though the sorrow may last for the night, his joy comes with the morning....")

and the question that's been atacking me over the past few weeks hit me... "what the heck's it all for?" ALL of it -- school stress, working, the strange drive to have a family someday.... what's it all for, when it's coupled with a hopelessness that -- even if school is done, and work comes along -- that no one will care, and that none of it will matter? i'll have the education, a job that can support the future of a family.... but no family to support! it may be the *wise* thing to keep going with it, but... why? this empty-feeling, deeper than any sadness i've known before... why?

i was even apprehensive to do my morning bus-rosary, just out of sheer hopelessness... "will i make a difference? is doing the rosary every morning even making a difference anymore? my thoughts wander everywhere nowadays when i pray, and the real meaning is lost...."

but once i started -- (oh, and you know where this is going)...

..............there was something about this morning's rosary that made me feel... not-so-alone anymore. focused. once i started (and it's always "The Agony in the Garden" that gets me)....... it came natural to focus on something else besides myself and the crap that i'm feeling. jesus went through SO much more -- both physical and emotional... and we all know the reasons why.
anyway........ just wanted to share that with you. dunno if i've made any sense at all... but from now on.... i pray that NO ONE has to EVER feel what i felt this morning. the world felt so... heavy. "