I've maintained a few versions of the bit that our lives are a TV show with you, B----, and R-----. This doesn't need to be stated, but I don't mean to lump you all in together. These are bits I have/had with each of you individually, despite the fact that it's a variation on a theme. You get what I mean.
I like the bit because it says a lot about how we view our own lives, but at the same time, I don't like what it says about how we view our own lives. I don't think life should be aestheticized. I do, however, think life and the aesthetic are divided by a very, very, very thin line, but that line exists and should be maintained. But that's a completely different story. Right now, I'm going to ignore that problem and instead keep the bit going for a little bit longer.
If our lives were the TV show that I imagine it to be, I think this would be the last season, which is an indirect way of saying I've succumbed to a strange, anxious loneliness. What I mean is that I feel like The Gang - this show's ensemble cast - is over. Deetergate seems to be the nail on the coffin. It feels dumb to mourn that because "The Gang" is a toxic mythos I invented, but once again, it's an abstract way of saying I feel like I'm losing people in my life.
It's weird saying I'm lonely because I sure as shit am not. I know too many fucking people, and a lot of those people care about me. So what I'm describing isn't exactly loneliness. It's something very similar, but a lot less tangible and entirely familiar to the both of us. What it is is this cursed kind of inwardness that some unholy combination of real life, the earth, and the neurochemical has cast me into some shadow realm of the soul where actual contact with outside of it is impeded by a cruel illusion of it, and you're left to rummage in an incorporeal solitude. A dark pit, the evil light, and a futile flesh!
I feel as if I will never see anyone again, even if I'm around friends and family. There's a real feeling that I've somehow been cut off from others, and it's meant as a punishment. I've forgotten how to be alone, even if I know I'm not at all. The Road has taught me what being alone really means. Regardless, I actually have forgotten how to be by myself, if I ever really knew at all. I have to figure it out.
I just want everyone to know I still love them. No matter how terrible I often feel about myself, knowing anyone like I have makes life worth living. I feel the deepest reverence for just having met any of you. I hope to the God I actively deny that that's not lost on anyone. I often hope there's a heaven because I see how much you guys hurt, too, and all I want is for you all to be forgiven. I want it to be over, and I want something to tell you all that. I want something to tell you all that you hurt and that it's over now; all you have done is forgiven. And now, forever, you will know you were loved. You are loved, and it is over. I want that love to be total, divine, mysterious, and collective, like both a haze and a summit. I want it to wipe away lifetimes of pain, rendering it void. You won't hurt anymore. You're forgiven, and you're free to go now.
If these are the ramblings of a guy who is probably very unwell and a closeted Christian, I apologize. What remains true is that I love you guys, and I always will. I hope you know that.
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This next one is significantly more upsetting than the last, so apologies in advance.
I'm going to stop drinking for a while. I'm not sure how long. My deadline is until May, which I just decided right now because in my head, the deadline has only ever been "the summer," which having to write this down, comes off to me as unclear. I'm not sure how reckless I have to be to make a decision like this, but I feel good having made it, so that's all I'm going to go off of.
I've written about my relationship with alcohol for as long as we've maintained a Wattpad, but I'm really bothered by it, especially as of late. Especially as of the last 3 months. I drink a lot. In that time, the longest dry spell was like two weeks. And when I do drink, I don't pace myself at all. One drink always gives me the seldom resisted thought of "You should have another," and once I act on that, the thought of "You should have two more" pops in, and if that's acted on, I'm a bottomless pit. I have three beers for everyone's one, so do the math for a night out. On top of all that, I've maintained a genuinely dangerous impulse toward secrecy about it, particularly around drinking alone. There's been a couple of weeks, specifically during Christmas break and this last week, where weekends of drinking are divided with a secret couple drinks on the Wednesday night between them. Nothing happens on those nights, which is why they're the most miserable.
I'm 100% prone to being neurotic, and I've been reassured in the past that I drink like a typical university-age male (specifically by Deeter, who never excused it by itself as healthy, but definitely as healthier than her roommates, who were the definition of functional alcoholics). But I'm raising myself some serious red flags. I am not comfortable with this at all. This is a net-negative to my life, which I'm interested in actually sorting out. So this has to fucking go. I don't know if it'll be hard, but I feel like business-as-fucking-usual could be way harder. I'm scared of it, truth be told. So, again, it's gone. I don't know for how long.
You know that I find addiction really interesting. I find anything that approaches oblivion really interesting, and that's obviously because I see myself in that approach. I see exaggerations of what I understand to be my impulses and whatever mysterious sociobiology that gives them their runway. I understand addiction to come from a deficit of some kind being made up for. I have plenty of deficits, and I know exactly the ones alcohol makes up for. So, for the third time, it's gone for the time being.
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To think more long-term, maybe I'm the kind of person who has to be sober. Weed hates my guts, and I have never been able to strike a balanced relationship with booze. I'm holding off on psychedelics until my 30s (that last trip didn't work out). To be honest, a straight edge lifestyle doesn't bother me. My family has a secret history of alcoholism that I've written about before, and it's led my parents to become pretty much straight edge besides a who gives a shit enjoyment of some wine every once in a while. I could swing that. Real-life is an acquired taste (not my line).
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I need to figure out what I'm doing with my life. And brush my fucking teeth.
