how to lose your life (in 12 easy steps)
I had a good time. More than ever I needed someone to tell me it would end well, but I realized that this was probably not the case. Sitting alone by myself in my house, I was drinking, trying to forget that soon this party would be over. My life had run its course and the near future looked bleaker than ever. It wasn’t hard to end up in this place, but it would be much harder to escape it. For a good while I was thinking of committing suicide; that seemed like the easier option in my case. The only thing that kept me from actually swallowing the bottle of sleeping pills was the thought of what this would do to my mother. If she heard that I had ended my life, she would not be able to bear this life anymore herself. It wasn’t my fault life had turned out so unbearable, but I still felt responsible to not make the load heavier for the people around me. I was living not for myself, but for the people around me. The small number of people that cared anyway.
This didn’t mean, of course, that I wasn’t going to try to escape my depressive state and loneliness in other ways. I was going to try to kill that off by consuming alcohol, by smoking cigarettes and harming my body little-by-little with a million chemicals flowing through my veins. At night, after work, I would be at home by myself. Often the evening started with me eating some fast-made noodle soup. Then I would turn on the TV to watch some Netflix, hoping it would provide enough distraction from the empty feeling I had in my chest whenever I started thinking about the lonely direction my life was heading. Laying on the couch, I would sometimes fall asleep for an hour or two, which was bliss. I would be free from my thoughts, just for a short time. Sometimes I would wake up from dreams of a life that I was sure I would never experience. In this dreamworld, I would find a girl who was similar to me and had dealt with much the same issues. We would talk for hours into the night, holding each other. Waking up was the hardest part; I would realize that I had no one to share these dreams with. It was just me by myself in my house. I could talk to no one but myself and slowly start driving myself insane.
This made it important to provide my brain with plenty of distractions. I would take out a bottle of red wine from the fridge and fill my glass. As soon as I was halfway into the bottle, the wine would warm me and make me feel better about being myself. It would kill off the worrying part of my brain and give me the chance to enjoy the rest of my evening. At this stage, I would often take a good book and fall down into my hammock on the terrace. Slowly swinging from side to side, it would help me drift further into another world of someone else’s brain for a good amount of time. Inevitably at some point, I would get tired of reading as well. The next stage was my favorite, which is why I kept it for the end. It was my dessert after I had eaten my main course. I would slowly roll myself a joint, put on a record, and blast off into another world. Sitting in a comfortable chair overlooking the evening sky as the sun dropped to end another day. The orange glow was mesmerizing, and being privileged enough to enjoy an amazing view from my rooftop terrace, for a moment I was happy, realizing my life wasn’t so bad after all. It could be worse.
Once the sun set, I would go back to my room. Sad music would play as I continued smoking and drinking. I would try to smoke and drink as much as possible in order to make falling asleep easier. If I tried to fall asleep sober, this often meant having to fight off dark thoughts. However, if I was high, drunk, and tired enough, this painful process usually would be cut short. I would fall down on the mattress laying on the floor. My windows open as far as possible, hoping a cool breeze would cool me off from the hot summer night.
I have a good life by all accounts. However, there is always something lurking beneath the surface of my thoughts that makes it very difficult to enjoy all the good stuff. Fundamentally, I suspect I am not made to be happy. I don’t know whether this is by nature or nurture, but at this point, it doesn’t really matter. My childhood has come and gone, and I have to play the hand I have been dealt. By writing this, I’m hoping to fix nothing except to distract myself from the fact that I should be working instead of writing out my life story. Ah yes, right now I’m sitting in a boring corporate office, which couldn’t be further from being an ‘inspirational’ place if it tried. I have a good friend who thinks it’s best to write in interesting places with beautiful views. I tend to get distracted too much then. The only times I can force myself to write are when I’m trying to procrastinate on some other work (such as is now the case). I have this idea of writing 12 stories about my past. My hope is that by writing them out, I can gain some new wisdom about my current predicament and hopefully sort myself out before I once again fall into a bottomless pit of depressive thoughts.
1. Use drugs to make yourself feel better.
Yesterday, I was feeling bad once again. This had some pretty normal causes, including: most of my friends are unavailable at the moment. One is busy writing his thesis, two are off traveling the world, and another one, for some reason, I cannot call upon when I’m down. For some reason, I don’t think he’s the right person to confide in about such matters. Not that he is a bad friend; he’s just not someone I can use for that particular purpose.
Yesterday, I was done working pretty soon after I started, which meant I could sleep a bit more during the afternoon. I woke up from a one-hour nap and felt a tiny bit better, but still not very good. I ate a bit and then laid down on the couch once again to look at the ceiling. This was made a bit awkward by the fact that my extremely sociable roommate had invited a friend to our house. They were off rattling away about whatever while I was just looking at the white ceiling. I was trying to zone out as much as possible by forcing a thousand-yard stare on my eyes. This was going pretty well; however, I think I might have freaked out our guest quite a bit, causing my roommate to ask me if everything was alright. “I’m fine, thank you,” I replied. It was about time that I retreated to my room upstairs, I thought. I might not care for their presence, but my silent presence was probably weirding them out very much. I lay there a tiny bit longer, just so as not to raise any suspicion when I would eventually leave them. If I left just as soon as he asked me if I was alright, that could cause him to think I was annoyed with his question. This was not the case, and so I delayed my departure for a tiny bit longer. As their conversation resumed, I waited for a moment when my roommate would start telling a story that would feel long enough to cover my silent departure to my room upstairs. I succeeded in leaving them without raising any additional questions.
Right after work, I had gone to the store and bought some ice and sangria. It was a hot summery day, and so I was in dire need of a cool beverage to cool off. I decided to have a glass and relax on the rooftop terrace that was adjacent to my room (which meant I could still avoid the conversationists downstairs). My evening was about to take a turn for the better. Laying in the hammock, I felt safe and happy. The cool drink made the darker thoughts subside and allowed me to continue reading the book I had recently bought. In “The Doors of Perception,” Aldous Huxley lays out his experience on mescaline. In deep detail, he describes what he felt and the way even seemingly normal objects such as a rose and a chair acquired a certain divine quality. Though I have never done that particular hallucinogenic, at this point, I have had enough other similar experiences that I could relate to his slightly different one as well. He theorized that the human mind is like a filter for our external reality, strictly allowing the necessary and omitting everything else. Certain experiences allow one to widen that window slightly, giving an entirely different perspective on reality as you know it. From experience, I can say after looking at the world through the view given by different perspectives, it has been very difficult for me to tell what view is the most congruent with reality itself. I often find myself thinking thoughts that would be very difficult to find sober when under the influence that help me achieve something much easier in my life than it would be if I only had the sober version of reality.
Nowadays, I see people and their actions much more clearly. There is an understanding that I have gained by observing myself and others that all people are like mirrors, reflecting whatever the world shoots their way. A girl that gets cheated on will unconsciously inflict the same on someone else, just to pass on the hurt that she feels. In her mind, she is just dealing with her own set of problems, while she doesn’t realize that by involving herself with someone who is already in a relationship, she is passing the same pain that she has onto another. Most people are merely mirrors to the outside world. It takes conscious effort to try to filter out whatever the world throws your way. Reflect the good, absorb the bad. Everyone acting in the best interest of everyone else would make for a more beautiful life. However, it is easier to remain ignorant of your own responsibility. It is much easier to accuse outside forces for the messed-up world you live in. Enlightenment cannot be bought; it can only be gotten by accepting responsibility for everything in life, the good and the bad. Especially the bad.