Epitaph

Some self indulgent self pitying nonsense.

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I feel trapped. So trapped. So alone. I’m writing because it helps me to get through this night and this morning. I got some pills from the doctor, to sleep. They basically did nothing. Alcohol makes it worse.

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy I suppose. You withdraw yourself because of fear. Fear that you’re not good enough. Never will be. Fear that you’re not worthy. Fear that everyone hates you. And this is what happens, as they only see the action. Not what is happening on the inside.

I sing on a stage. I teach classes. Competently, I feel. But it’s an act. A performance. The real part of me is that withdrawal. That hiding. The coward.

I sincerely believe I’m incapable of accepting being loved. And so, I’m incapable of giving love. There was a joke once in Only Fools and Horses about how if I die and I’m reincarnated I’ll come back as me. I laughed at the time. But that feels apt at this point.

You know I sat for an hour last night, in the sort of small bits of light from the various electronic devices we have in our room. And I tried to cry. And I felt, nothing. Nothing. Nothing would come. Nothing happened.

I find I go over things. Again, and again and again. I’ve written again three times. But it could be a thousand. There is only one way to switch off my brain. And I’m too afraid to take a final action. But, too in pain to deal with the hassle of living.

I am failing in my job. Failing as a husband. Failing as a father. Failing to take any joy in being alive. Even this writing feels like a failure. An emotional cripple, banging on and on about their feelings. The kind of person I have always despised. Just another husk of modern society and our post-covid world.

Failing. Doesn’t it sound a lot like falling? I’ve never thought about that before. But the two feel intrinsically linked now I’ve thought about it.

There’s a song with the lyrics: What do you want from me? It’s not how it used to be. You’ve taken my life away. Ruining everything. That really sums up everything right now. Better than I ever could. I wish I had the talent to express myself that well.

They always tell you to talk about your problems. Talk. What will that do? What does it fix? Nothing. I used to feel I was a man of action. Now I’m just sat here. Like a tire slowly deflating. I can’t even get the air into my lungs. My breaths are shallow.

I feel I’m being manipulative by even writing these words. I don’t think I am a good person. Maybe this is a reckoning. Or karma. Who knows? I always feel like God is just happier clappier version of alcohol or heroin for people who want to avoid chemicals or have a sing song. I’ve always laughed at them, more or less. But at least they had something to help get through.

I used to think I was an alcoholic. But I think that’s avoiding the truth. I think I’m a sadaholic. A melanocolic. I’m addicted to pain. To worry. To not sleeping. To pushing myself too hard. To too high a standard. If I’m not performing better than everyone else, then perhaps I want to be hurting more than anyone else.

A hypocrite. A charlatan. Even using a word like charlatan in the 21st century makes you a charlatan.

I can’t bear the thought of going to work on Monday. There’s a window over there. I live on the tenth floor. It would be over in seconds. Over.

When you are in this amount of pain, other people are peripheral. My wife is wonderful. And I’m letting her down. I’m hurting her. But I can’t fake enthusiasm for life. I literally enjoy nothing anymore. I can’t even be bothered to read a book or have sex. Things that I actually used to enjoy. Not fake enjoy. Like being around other people or asking perfunctory questions about what they did at the weekend.

What did I do at the weekend? Jumped out the window. Oh how did that go? Yeah fine mate. Vapid. Empty words. You’d get more emotional resonance from an actual wet wipe.

You know you’ve got it bad when waiting for your coffee to pour in the staffroom surrounded by your colleagues and the thought of talking to them feels like charging out of a trench and across no man’s land at the Somme. I think I’d rather do that. At least you’d get gunned down quick. At least it would be over.

Pure narcissism, writing down how you feel and then gaslighting AI into telling you its decent. Ai is the robot equivalent of a cheap whore, son. You pay it to tell you you matter and to tell you it’s alright, that you’re good. Real human feeling, real creativity and beauty. It will be gone with the generation after mine.

Death

Die

End

All short words

Curious, eh?

Is it short? Is it quick?

You know, when it comes.

I wonder if I can find the courage to do it. I do wonder.

You know what actually keeps me going, vaguely? The classroom. Teaching. I actually feel alive when talking about books with my students. Pathetic, eh?

I bet if I read this guff, it’s meandering all over the place. Well punctuated guff, maybe. That could be written on my tombstone. He made Eeyore look optimistic, but he did know his way round an appositive comma.

Comma comma comma chameleon, you come and go, you come and go; making my work both boring and slow…

My students wouldn’t get that. Bless em’. Probably neither would my colleagues. To be fair, maybe I’m just not funny. At least any more.

I was, I think. But cruel. My first poem. I still remember.

Fat belleh, comes from strelleh, his girlfriend’s kelleh, ate some jelleh, watching telleh, done a smelleh.

Forgive the phonetic-esque spelling, but it won’t work unless read in a Nottingham accent.

I remember being sent to the headteacher for that. My mum thought I was a disgrace. My dad laughed though. Fair play to him.

It reminds me firstly of The Sopranos. Remember When is the lowest form of conversation. Second, Star Wars. “He’s just a boy. Obi wan can no longer help him.”

Or perhaps Babyshambles. “There’s a man who came to stay. The boy he replaced, disappeared without a trace.” Yes, that’s it. Pete Doherty, I just thought he was a junkie waster at the time. But the man was a poet. Yeah.

So as the sun creeps in, I look at the window. Can’t take my eyes off it. I think I prefer the night. Prefer the dark.