I just wanted to be Bukowski.
it’s three years on, and look at me now; a severe depressive, who doesn’t get out of bed before 12pm, and can barely handle his emotions. Writing has become an afterthought, my own ambition handicapped by my overwhelming sense of futility.
I need to stop using my blog in lieu of a psychiatrist. Then again when did talking about your problems to a professional get you anywhere but a psych ward or a TedTalk?
As you can see, all is far from peachy, on the pock-marked lunar surface of my mind. Of recent I’ve put a bar on the moon, and stocked it with Budweiser for drinking alone- I apologise in retrospect to Alex Turner.
Staying up till four staring at the nondescript white wall above me, as I lay in bed, long after the call has ended, and the anxiety kicks back, I get the horrible, paralysing feel, as my thoughts become pitch black, ultimately leading to the swirling all-consuming idea that maybe my life isn’t worth it?
It all just leads to abandonment doesn’t it?
Sure the good times where good, exceptional even (circa summer 2017), but there’s no denying, the events went a little beyond debauched, the nihilistic horror that pervaded the rooms or backyards as people stuck their noses to little mirrors, to ascend to the heavens or rolled the weed up with more energy than a sleaford mods song, experiences of which were affecting upon me to say the very least, I never left the same person, people’s lives ended those nights, they just couldn’t see. Maybe mine did; ah but then there was the unspoken events prior solely centred around me, that is just a sad, melancholic joke between friends now, and a couple of saved Snapchat messages as a throwback.
Ultimately though If I wasn’t already a pessimist before, I would have been by the time the summer ended, and the dream itself had ended (to a degree). Here I am on the 10th June still trying to piece some parts together.
Although, I remember distinctly wandering around people’s houses, in the same oversized Hawaiian shirt in various states of disconnection and inebriation, trying to write a novel. Now I lost the shirt, and I’m still writing the novel. Albeit the last time I worked on it was two months ago.
Since then it’s been trying to keep myself together, whilst falling apart and falling in love, I’ve juggled the two perfectly. The hardest part has been trying to show I am falling apart to everyone. Because when you do live a decent, middle-class life like I do, there’s a tone to the responses, deep down you know, they shun you for having depression, they’re disgusted at you, they act like they aren’t, but you can feel, and t kills me. Of course it’s understandable you’re (a synonym for I) not a poor, homeless kid. You’re an educated, guy who has money, and a nuclear family, ‘how in the fuck could you be unhappy?’ ‘Goddamnit, I don’t know, it was alright, until it all went wrong so slowly, but then the realisation came so quickly and now I have the overwhelming yearning to be dead’ Nonsensical, isn’t it?
Middle-class apathy is a bigger killer than smoking, didn’t you get the memo? No? that’s okay, apathy is an understated look.
It’s 5:36pm, and I’m outside in the hot sun, drink in hand, wishing I was in bed, with the curtains down. I probably will be when, I’m free.
Spending the week having an emotional breakdown is cliched, but the experience is invaluable. I learnt that so along ago, yet it’s a repeated nightmare.
What’s one lost future, in the grand scheme of things? Freeing up a uni spot for someone who deserves it more than me, the taxes come in one person lighter, and doing the ultimate good of easing up pollution? You tell me?
I need to stop talking shite and telling people my problems.
I shouldn’t give myself permission to go back to self-destructing?
Or am I just telling myself I’m not doing just that, to hide the fact that’s what I am actually doing, just in a far less stylised way?
I’m terrified of the public/social gaze upon me, tearing into the Freudian-flaws, and pernickety self-awareness, and maybe discovering the heinous fact that I just suck as a person sometimes. Oh, but the online gaze! Give me all your faceless stares and judgements, I won’t flinch.
now here goes my delirious train of thought, falling off the tracks and collapsing in a wreck. That’s ironically used because I collapsed last Wednesday- the red carpeted floor was comforting.
Now there’s not much left to say, if anything at all. The greatest joke I ever played on myself, is that what I’m writing isn’t shite, but rather good, oh who am I kidding? It’s great.
Ben Brizell 