I had to let go of the fantasy that my common sense turned out to be. The common sense that was given to me by my family, my school, my friends. The thing we all believed, the truth that applied to the people giving the advice. That if you went to college and did well, you would get a job.
I began to blame myself, and I still do sometimes, I didn’t look hard enough, I’m not the sort of person who networks easily, being a touch of a social misfit. I’m not the sort to search repetitively and fruitlessly for a job that may or may not exist – I just can’t focus on an undefined goal, can’t motivate myself to stick with it rather.
Then I said, big strong me, I’ll do this hard work, this unpleasant, unfair work, because it saves Benny from doing something worse, something that was having a detrimental effect on his health. So I was doing it for the team.
Then, and up to now, I realised, no, it’s none of that. No other job existed for me down here at this particular time. This was all I could get, so this is what I have to make do with. If I want to be here, this is what I have to do.
One lucky break. Just one phone call, one good word, one nod in the right direction, and we’d be happy. We’d have what we wanted.
And now someone sent me into the path of a man who led me to realise my house isn’t the greatest place in the whole world to live in. And my muse and my teacher are pushing me to write. And the sensitive one is telling me to throw my hands up in the air and ask for help, to affirm and accept in myself that the perfect job is coming.
Then I realise, I’m not writing, not fixing any of this because I simply don’t think I can. I’m not writing because I don’t have a plot. I won’t ever have one because I don’t really think I can come up with one. I don’t really think I can write. I think my grammar is too poor, my personality too off key for anyone to really understand my references. My imagery too convoluted, my descriptions and similes too personal. The urgency, the questions I’m asking, too much my own, too riddled with my own demons to make much sense to anyone but the keenest and most interested and dedicated of readers.
I realised tonight that I am getting a little lost as to what’s important to me. That my personality, what I consider to be essentially me, is being battered at a critical time by a negative and draining influence. That I am forgetting too much. Forgetting too many people, becoming isolated and braindead.
I started off with an attitude of, I work to live, not live to work, and now it’s all going arseways. It’s all going completely arseways. And I feel so bloody trapped. That’s the bullet I’m dodging all the time. Trapped.
I had so many dreams. So many possible futures to pursue, so many lies told to me about what I could do. And I’m disgusted by the bastard injustice of what the people with the money are doing. And then I’m not, then I know why they are the way they are and I’m not angry anymore. I raise both my eyebrows in that slightly Rushdie-esque way and try to rise above it.
I feel like the liquid terminator in the molten metal. All the me’s are pushing out, reaching, some in horror, some that when I see them in my minds eye I cringe. I’m changing fast, but not fast enough. I know it’s a learning process. I know that’s what we’re here for. But there are some things I think I should have figured out by now.
I have some working out to do. I have to grab a hold of these feelings and do something with them, because I am just so sick of this turgid fucking going around and around in circles. I hate my repetitiveness. Why do I have to keep working this crap out over and over?
I need to work out what it is that I want. I have to find some way of sorting through the pie in the sky stuff, the realistic stuff and the demons and really, really ask myself what it is that I want?
I’m tempted to be a depressed bastard and say what I want is to die and go to the heaven where you can do what you want. Where there is no money, no stupid selfish cruel people. No self doubt, no negotiating. No power. Just people who talk straight, and play by the rules, people who know what justice is and know that if we all acted in a just manner we’d all be alright.
I feel born in the wrong time, a lot. Maybe I want to fuck off and be Gandhi and rewrite all the rules. Maybe I want to go back to my home planet. Maybe this trip of a lifetime wasn’t all it was cracked up to be in the brochure. Maybe someone made a filing mistake when I was being sent back down and didn’t get everything quite right.
Maybe I should be thankful I’m not starving or missing a limb or that an earthquake hasn’t torn my life apart.
But these things shouldn’t be something to be grateful that you’re not experiencing – in the perfect world that only seems to exist in my head the houses would be built in such a way as to withstand the forces of nature, or not be built there. There would be adequate aid and help and hospitals and money there to rebuild. It would be dealt with properly, not just ‘as best we can’. Because the money people pay in taxes would be spent correctly, honestly, sensibly, to ensure that there was fairness, that everyone would be looked after equally. Foresight, accountability. Things that I must really learn to accept are not possible where there are large groupings of humans.
I rail and I rail and rail against this world sometimes. I think it’s possibly some kind of existential depression or something. No doubt I’m not the first or the last to suffer from it. Why can’t I just accept that what I want is unreasonable? That it wont change, that it hasn’t changed, that it can’t work the way I want it to when there are so many human beings on the planet that do not think, that can not think, that just work off their set of learned off/received beliefs and assumptions. That were never given the education to do any more, they are simply not biologically capable of doing more.
But that still leaves the question, why the hell do I exist then? And the other people like me, that see the injustice, the ridiculousness, that loathe the cruelty etc. – the people that just know right from wrong, in their hearts and souls. Why are we here, if it will never change? Why have I a mind that is capable of complex abstract thought, and a level of maturity and ability to commit to something that leaves me sitting writing repetitive, whinging blog entries with a stomach full of wine in the mid part of a two week stint with no day off. Why? Why am I so fucking smart, and so fucking useless?
All of the roars that go up in my writing, the flames, the sand ghosts and the dogs that chase them, the woman on horse back, leading the charge. All the flashing, speeding neon, all the swooping, all the death and hot needle pain – it’s me, but really, who gets that? Who gets that a lot of it was to do with Kevin dying? That I felt I should have known, that it was my fault for not paying attention. Who would know the flames and plumes are the colours of the words that describe me, the imagery that floats about in my mind when I open up and explode into light on the top deck of a bus on a daily, daily bog-standard commute? Who gets all that intensity? And that’s all that wants to come out. Painting with words. Making a description that matches the emotions, the imagery, the heart stirring that I feel when I listen to music that opens up my emotions. I’m trying to figure out how to write a novel, when all I’ve got is semi-poetic channels for the stuff I’m bottling up.
I feel like writing, shut up, shut up Louise you whinging arsehole. Full of wine and piss and vinegar and bollox. How insincere it all is. All of your stretched out, overdone crap. I am bored with you. Shut up.
I think I’m just irritated because the depressed part of my brain is cutting out all the positive and leaving me with a feeling that all I ever do is gripe, I never change anything. Even so, my written voice is becoming tiresome. The voice in my head is tiresome. The situation is tiresome. To be in the present, and the present alone, and to keep turning your head from a headache-inducingly blurry future, well, it’s depressing. It’s the equivalent of not having the ability to future think. That’s definitely a depressing place to be. So fair enough, maybe I do have a right to feel like this tonight. Maybe it will do me good to say that that blurry future isn’t enough, the what if is draining. We can’t plan anything because we don’t have direction, and even in terms of going on holiday, we don’t have money. Yes, that is depressing. Fair enough. I accept it and get on with it 99% of the time (for the past 5/6 months), but, on a night like tonight, yeah, it’s going to hurt when I start to examine it. This is not how I was expecting it to be.
There’s a thick steel rope, going right through my stomach, while it hurts, it’s helping me to pull my way through, to give me a direction to go in. I have little choice but to let it guide me forward for the time being.
