And now for something a little different
For the last two years I've been keeping a handwritten journal. For some reason, I was reading it tonight. The following two entries bother me. I read them and they call up my state of mind back then and I marvel at how precariously I was teetering.
7:06pm, Oct 25, 2002
For the last six years I've fought a series of battles with an existential funk that always threatens to paralyze me.
The first came in the wake of a fatal car crash that mom and I witnessed. A car flipped and rolled 4 or 5 times down the highway in front of our car. I saw a person hanging from one of the windows. He was whipped around like a rag doll. And he was the one who survived. His buddy, the passenger, died. I watched the paramedics pull a sheet over his bloody, broken body.
I couldn't bring myself to do much of anything for a long time after that. I remember putting my back to a lab counter in biology one day and sliding down to a sitting position on the ground. Staring at nothing. Our teacher let me leave for the rest of class. That was typical, though it didn't usually happen in class.
What did anything matter when it was all going to end in death anyway?
I was 16.
It comes back every year. In fact, it never really goes away. It's not centred on death anymore. It's been centred on other things. The futility of life when you will only spend it doing something you hate. The futility of life when you know that everyone and everything you love will eventually die. The focus changes, but the message is always the same. "What's the point? Who cares? Why do anything? Nothing matters."
It's an overwhelming sense of emptiness, of meaninglessness. It's probably why, whenever I drink, I drink so bloody much. As if maybe I could fill this empty void in me with something even if that something was only alcohol.
Here is part of another one that bothered me.
1:30am, Oct 26, 2002
I am drunk.
Shannon came over tonight. She came around 9:45 or so. I cooked her dinner, we drank some and then went to the Keg. It was raining and we got soaked. She's gone home. I'm here, in the apartment I share with Bronwyn. Alone. Alone. Aren't I always alone? Bronwyn's at a physics conference. I drank some more after getting back. Not home. This isn't home. There is no home. I don't have one. I carry it inside. Home is internal, if you make it so.
7:06pm, Oct 25, 2002
For the last six years I've fought a series of battles with an existential funk that always threatens to paralyze me.
The first came in the wake of a fatal car crash that mom and I witnessed. A car flipped and rolled 4 or 5 times down the highway in front of our car. I saw a person hanging from one of the windows. He was whipped around like a rag doll. And he was the one who survived. His buddy, the passenger, died. I watched the paramedics pull a sheet over his bloody, broken body.
I couldn't bring myself to do much of anything for a long time after that. I remember putting my back to a lab counter in biology one day and sliding down to a sitting position on the ground. Staring at nothing. Our teacher let me leave for the rest of class. That was typical, though it didn't usually happen in class.
What did anything matter when it was all going to end in death anyway?
I was 16.
It comes back every year. In fact, it never really goes away. It's not centred on death anymore. It's been centred on other things. The futility of life when you will only spend it doing something you hate. The futility of life when you know that everyone and everything you love will eventually die. The focus changes, but the message is always the same. "What's the point? Who cares? Why do anything? Nothing matters."
It's an overwhelming sense of emptiness, of meaninglessness. It's probably why, whenever I drink, I drink so bloody much. As if maybe I could fill this empty void in me with something even if that something was only alcohol.
Here is part of another one that bothered me.
1:30am, Oct 26, 2002
I am drunk.
Shannon came over tonight. She came around 9:45 or so. I cooked her dinner, we drank some and then went to the Keg. It was raining and we got soaked. She's gone home. I'm here, in the apartment I share with Bronwyn. Alone. Alone. Aren't I always alone? Bronwyn's at a physics conference. I drank some more after getting back. Not home. This isn't home. There is no home. I don't have one. I carry it inside. Home is internal, if you make it so.
