Ep. 4 Loneliness is the coup de grâce
Dear Ana,
Here’s me with arms spread wide and a shit-eating grin on my face. I stand and welcome back everything that sucked about myself and my life in general. Every negative shade of every overclocked feeling, every detail of an existence gone to shit. I still chuckle at the memory of me thinking “Can’t get much worse than this” and then sticking my nose into the first line I ever did. I can still taste the hubris of that reckless kid, can still remember the backwards fucking logic of those days.
It’s been almost a decade since I last saw my real self. I had to deal with fear and anxiety; Had to deal with loneliness and sadness; Had to deal with everything you had to deal with, Ana. Problem is that I dealt with it while subjecting my nasal cavities to being carpet bombed, every other day, by some poison that a skinny white dude mixed with battery acid in his bathtub. So I dealt with it but in reality… No, I didn’t deal with fuckin’ anythin’. Every time I felt one bad way, or another, I just self-medicated myself into a 3 day bender of degeneracy.
After so many years of chemically manipulating my state of mind into behaving like a restless otter, it’s difficult to welcome back the feelings that I never dealt with. To be completely honest here, Ana, I don’t even know if this shit is part of the old me or something new that’s been catalyzed by whatever the fuck I am now.
I’m lonely, Ana. Every morning, as soon as I open my eyes, I feel the immense weight of being alone and unwanted. I can’t figure out if this is the same shit I felt as a kid or is this because of the journey I’ve set myself on these last few months.
Is this from a decade of being a degenerate?
Is this from finally getting clean?
Or do I feel this from… just me?
My old habits, my old tendencies, are still quite present. I struggle every day with this fucking loneliness but also with my mind reaching for quick solutions. Can’t really tell you how many times I’ve downloaded, and immediately deleted, dating apps these last few months.
I wake up every day to the same thing, to the same status quo between how I feel and how I want to feel; Every morning I think to myself, “How about just one party?” or “How about just a single one night stand?” “How about just a few lines?” “How about hanging out with them one last time? ”. Every single fucking morning I have to fight the same battle… Groundhog day but with a coked-out horny teenager in remission.
Loneliness is the coup de grâce that drags you back into the filth of never amounting to anything. That’s the voice whispering into my ear, convincing me that I’m a loser and I should go back to my loser life. Doing it’s best to persuade me that I should be happy with the abuse, content with the procrastination and all that chaos was supposed to bring me joy. I should be thankful for all the bullshit because some people are missing even that.
I sleep on a fucking couch. A piece of furniture which, much like a decepticon, transforms into a bigger loser. This thing looks like a Komodo Dragon going through chemotherapy: shedding it’s skin flake by flake. It stinks of cigarettes and mouldy cum and there’s a football field’s worth of gravel stuck in the cracks.
Is this the bed I want to bring somebody home to? Is this how I’m going to perpetuate me being a loser? By subjecting another person to this shit-show? By allowing them to see the utter state of my life?
Every morning I fight loneliness and every morning this fucking couch just reminds me of everything that’s wrong with me. Every day I’m tempted to go out and find some Methany that’d be more than happy to obliterate ourselves and then fucking like rabbits on ecstacy. Fuckin on a couch that’s basically ground zero for every Hepatitis from A to Z.
Every day I decide against going back to my old ways and you know why, Ana? I’ve come to realize that my life is immensely better than it has been at any moment in the last decade or so. But the mind being as it is, I just instinctively look for reasons to make myself miserable because misery is what I grew up in. It’s like constantly getting the shit kicked out of you and then flinching even when a gentle touch might finally come your way.
Each day I woke up and braced myself for the coming anguish, squared my shoulders to the solution of instant gratification, borrowing from the future so I don’t have to kill myself in the present.
I don’t know if this sense of isolation is born from the past or the present, I’ve no idea… What I do know though is that I need to resist it’s temptation. I need to win this battle every day. No more half measures, no more makeshift solutions.
Loneliness is such a cancer that it can find the cracks in your life, it will shake your resolve and question your goals. Do not give into it, Ana. In one way or another, we are all alone, much better then to be left with a version of myself that I like, instead of a half measure to what I could have been. I’d rather be alone and the person I want to be, instead of a disappointment to myself, in the company of a life that’s not really worth living.
So I’ll do two things: Embrace the loneliness for what it is and then throw out this filthy fucking couch, HOLY SHIT how is this thing still in my fucking apartment?????
I know that some years in the future I’ll look back to these days and romanticize them, miss them even. I’ll look back and be amazed at the strength I’ve shown and the hope I found. There is strength in us, Ana, don’t ever doubt that…
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