This life is filthy. I should be dead and buried but I’m still here somehow. My liver and lungs are rotting. I’m fatigued from the hangover. What day is it darling? I often forget. The world’s changing and I’m changing with it. Slowly my existence is corroded I’m drinking Whisky most nights, reflecting on the past, present and future. All I truly know is that ever since I shook his hand, I knew I’d sold my soul. Trying to find a middle ground without it is terribly hard. I’m still going back and forth with Madison most months. This month’s no exception. It’s adoration one minute, loathing the next. It’s disorienting. Shit, I seem to have misplaced that history of ours; something about a year and an icy dislocation between us that just won’t thaw.
This year I’ve got nothing left to lose; alcohol, drugs and self-harm will have me dead by 20 or so they reckon. Last March I was doing coke in a Wetherspoon’s toilet just to get through that date chatting shit, she still invited me back to her room afterwards though. I hardly ever commit to anyone I’ll admit. Fuck it’s funny that some of the girls I used to fuck with are really messaging me ‘I miss you’ when they’re with their boyfriend. Ruthless. Yeah I saw that message and I just laughed. It’s pathetic. Gives my ego a stroke though, but you already know that.
With an egregious furore these days pass; a rakish miasma of sex, drugs, alcohol, overdoses and chaos till that one day I don’t wake up. These shadows and figures crawl up the nape of my neck and tightly hold my hand with utterances so delightful and claims so enticing that it’s no surprise I’m descending deeper into the belly of the beast, o’so far from the possibility of civility and sedation. Although it seems after some kicking and screaming I feel ‘somewhat’ at home within these bloody innards, for here there’s few regrets to languish in. Nevertheless the stark reality that I should be dead still permeates, not that it bothers me too much.
I live as a spectre. A means to an end you’ll never truly see coming. From the sunny, twisted disorder of 2020, to the dark twilit frolicking of 2021. I should never have lived past that day, in 2019, yet it appears I did. It’s a heartbreaking torment. Oftentimes I awake covered in sweat, in the corner of my room, in the darkness they stand there. They’re clapping me. You couldn’t imagine that; everytime I try to sleep, they stand staunch, eyes pointed straight at me, eerily clapping. Perhaps they know what I don’t, as if the greatest sedition has yet to happen, a disconcerting possibility.
Is this too personal? You see I’ve always been one for oversharing and spilling my life out onto the page, as it makes for terribly good conversation; leading to all sorts of gossips, murmurs and rumours. I get giddy just thinking about it. Let the wonder take centre stage I say.
In a fascinating turn of events I find my mind darting back to last September, the old autumnal backdrop. Reminiscing back to that last minute, hookup, rather messy and chaotic. There was quite a bit of class a in my pockets on a train, that was risky shit. Frankly though I couldn’t imagine a life without these white lines, especially when I’ve got this trauma baring down on me. 40 fucking pills in my stomach a few months ago, it was a suicide attempt; overdosed and intent on dying. The entire night I was throwing up so much my throat was bleeding. Whilst we’re with this reality; truthfully I must admit I’m not too bothered that I tore my last relationship apart, I remember that night and how she was so pissed that I fucked a girl I told her not to worry about, she trashed my room. I’m lucky that the macbook was left intact. It is what it is. I watched her leave and just stuck some Sinatra on and poured a glass of vodka.
Now anyway whose missed me? I’ve been busy all these months as always; dabbling in all sorts. You couldn’t imagine what I’ve seen and what I’m privy to now. Well darling these experiences are accoutrements, of sorts. Frankly if I talk about any of it openly then it creates outrageous questions and from there it’ll all open back up again and I’ve only just stapled those wounds shut, it’s a gory mess admittedly. However I’m back, who knows for how long, but this fog needs to be cleared. Too much has gone by and some things need to be affirmed or perhaps reaffirmed. Take your pick.
Last year was meant to be the beginning of something better; moving on from the overwrought self-discovery of 2018, and the histrionic laziness of 2019. 2020 for me was the time (it seemed for a moment) in which I’d vividly etch out a half-decent life for myself in the grand graveyard that is Liverpool. To wryly let myself lounge in and amongst brutalist bourgeoisie. Spending the early days of last year, enveloped in my notebook, scrawling down my sights, feelings and experiences. Yet nevertheless finding time to inundate my body with deleterious delights. I skulked down backstreets, amidst evening sunsets. my crisp white shirt flowing in the wind, whilst I looked for cocaine, chasing whatever high could consume me that day. Oh baby, this was the big leagues; all that a blue-eyed boy from the ether could want. Amidst the self-harm marks and malnourishment you’d almost think I was thriving, of course only they know the gory truth. No. Not you, them.
It seems there is no reprieve to be found though and so I continue to wade through a myriad of murky personal attachments and businesses; shaky connections and backstreet murmurs. The verdict’s been in a while; I seem hellbent on bringing about my demise in the most salacious manner possible. It appears that trying to fix your mistakes usually leads to the stark reminder that no matter what, failure is everything and any iota of happiness will become moribund before you know it.
When you have it all, then all you can do is lose it all. Of course it’s nice admitting that there might have been a nicer year ahead of me before dear old covid-19 obliterated the world as we knew it. A year later and we’re still in deep; our lives are in tatters, graveyards are filling, and our beady eyes ingest hopeless governmental announcements. The world seems to only get grimmer. I do wonder that if there had been a true final, third term to my first year at university, that I could have quelled some of the fires I’d started. Less loss, more gain. I had the yearning for change, I just didn’t have the chance for it to occur or so I like to think. I find myself reflecting on last year with shaking hands and a cigarette hanging loosely from my lips, looking up into the ghastly clouds lording above. It wasn’t initially all doom and gloom, as on occasion I do reminisce fondly on the hectic beauty of the initial three months of 2020; foreboding, salacious, hazy, drunken, druggy and beauteous moments, filled with weak hearts and heavy hands. I was concocting mighty leviathans of prose, seafaring and waylaid. The future seemed to gleam if only for a moment. Soon enough though that once grand jewel of promise, became nothing but a cheap trinket, rank with dirt. The doom and gloom could brusquely be put down to a torturous lesson in how my own failures and missteps result only in a more laborious burial process. I’m fucking muddied with regrets and resentment all I can do is shower under boiling water till my skin’s raw and whatever remains I’ll cut off and bin whilst I’m still bleeding. I’ve done it all before anyway.
My realities seem to be leading me further away from any form of steady reality instead into the damnably dispassionate moment I’m persistently entwined in. Memories seem to act only as warped reminders that even when I have so few things left, there’s still more pain and loss to feel. Spending so long in this rotunda has taken it out of me. There’s been too much self-harm and suffering. I saw my reflection in the mirror last month and I smashed it, sickened by what I saw. It cut my knuckles up good, caking them in blood. That experience had me feeling my own fragility once again. Each new day brings only pain. These months feel final and these truths finite, as if everything is serving to bring me closer to my final moment and the looming judgement encased within, as terrifying as it is, I think I’m okay with that.
Ben Brizell 