Life, reduced to a box.

August 2nd, 6am

I haven’t been able to write anything for this blog in a couple of weeks. After going back to work, I had some blood tests done, attended my Grandmother’s funeral (reuniting with my Father after a 3 year long hiatus) and started to drink again. I’m not drinking too much, just a little. One or two glasses of whisky after work, a few on my day off. I don’t drink every day, which is an improvement. The blood tests came back and showed that I have some liver damage. I am taking a mixture of vitamins to help, and am supposed to be abstaining for at least one year; that was the Doctors advice.

When we were stood outside the chapel and the hearse pulled up, and I saw my Grandmother for the first time in too long, I was a little shaken to see her reduced to a box. It had me questioning a lot of things about life and death, my own mortality, the meaning of it all. I haven’t been able to write anything for this blog in a couple of weeks because I don’t really have anything to say. Besides the fact that I’m obsessed with the idea that each piece of writing needs to be perfect and profound, I haven’t had any clear thoughts or any ability to articulate the multitude of emotional maladies plaguing my mind right now. Life, reduced to a box. What is life? Life is going to work when you don’t want to get up and it’s raining outside and you just want to stay in bed. Life is going shopping and doing laundry and taking your medicine and calling your family to catch up on how much laundry, shopping and work they’ve done. Life is not something we choose, but something we have to do anyway. Life is not always something that we want, and it’s those days when you really don’t want it that you have to find ways of living it the most.

Some days I don’t want to live my life. Going to work is like climbing a mountain barefoot in the snow with the flu and a backpack full of gear. Sometimes going to the shop feels the same, sometimes just getting out of bed and turning on the light feels just as hard. Other days I’m fine, excitable and energetic, but the more I go on the fewer and farther between those days seem to be. It seems to me that most of the time I’m just faking it, playing at being alive. Playing at being a real boy whilst my nose grows longer with every smile. I often wonder if I’m just lonely. I haven’t been in a proper relationship since my ex L and I broke up. That was about three years ago. Everything since has been casual and fleeting. I wonder if I’m ready to love someone, or to accept being loved by someone. I wonder if I’ll meet somebody I can feel as strongly for as I have felt in the past for others long since left. I wonder if love is just another one of those things I’ll never understand; like life and car engines and people who enjoy Justin Bieber.

I called this website Love & Nihilism and I haven’t really spoken about love at all. Not until now, and I’m barely covering the subject merely touching upon it. Love confuses me and frightens me. Everyone I have ever fallen in love with has fallen out of love with me and whilst I understand that that is a perfectly natural thing (especially when you’re young) I don’t find any comfort in the normalcy of it. Love is a terrifying thing and as I see it, can never end well. Unless you fall in love with someone and they fall in love with you and you live a long and lovely life together then die peacefully at the exact same moment, someone is going to get hurt. They either die before you or leave you, or you die before them but even then they end up with a broken heart. Someone always ends up with a broken heart. So what the hell is the point? As with life it all ends one way. And it’s never good, is it? Ending.

I’ve had several love affairs begin and end and although the middle part is always wonderful, the ending is always shit. It always hurts, and I hate to hurt. We all do, don’t we? As things stand I don’t see a light at the end of this tunnel of depression. I’m living my life on autopilot and the only pleasure I have is the occasional laugh, and the occasional drop of scotch. I have some liver damage and I should be abstaining but hell, why bother? I’m only going to end up in a box anyway. And when I do I won’t even have a clue that I’m in there. I’ll just be gone. Worm food. A memory, which like all things will eventually fade. All I can do is try to enjoy the small moments, and try to give as many of those moments to as many different people as I can.

I haven’t been able to write anything for this blog in a couple of weeks, and I haven’t had much to say. This piece is short, and of little to no consequence. It isn’t particularly well written and it is in no way profound, or original. It’s just more self absorbed rambling from a late night melancholic drunk. Wondering about his place in things. Wondering about life and death and love and nihilism. Wondering if any of it will ever mean anything at all; and knowing that it probably won’t.

- Walter Laurence, on Laundry and Heartache.