Pain

After several years of a band I like being on indefinite hiatus, I did some digging and found out that at least part of the reason is the lead singer was having a drug problem with pain killers. Much is speculation, but having seen some of their live performances on YouTube, and reading the experiences of many fans in comments sections across the internet, it seems like a reasonable guess.

Of course there might be other obstacles as well, like the fact that they're all at the age where one begins focusing on family and school. It never really occurred to me that even if you're in a very successful band, launching on some rock n' roll career might not be what you want. Or it might've been at one time, but you've changed and so have your priorities.

Anyway, going back through their small discography and listening especially to the lyrics, I could really feel the deep wounds from being abandoned by one's father, abused by his stand-in, as if the limelight troubles of love and identity weren't enough when growing up. All that pain being expressed in music. But at some point it seems the catharsis we get from such mediums seems to fall short, as I began to notice the lyrics about addiction.

To an extent I can relate to being pained so greatly, and yet clinging desperately to life. It tears you in two. And so trying to split the difference through resorting to drugs doesn't come as a surprise to me.

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We were supposed to go out to a bar in town, a 15-minute drive more or less, and I could get my first legal drink. Write it off the bucket-list; that's really the only reason because the novelty wears off quite quickly.

So I texted. Asked when he wanted me to meet him up there. No response for over an hour until finally, 30 minutes past midnight.

"Why don't you come by the house that way you won't have to drive"

Well, I'd planned on having a beer, maybe some late night bar food if they had any, hanging out for a while and then heading back to hang out with a couple of my friends.

I say, "Do you just want to do it another night? Like next week when you don't have to work." Because he does have work in the morning. After he texted me, I wouldn't have been home until almost one in the morning anyway.

"Never mind. Just forget about it."

The narcissistic gas-lighting that has gone on since the day I was born. Seems innocent enough over text to most pairs of eyeballs, but I've heard it come out of his mouth and I'm not naive. Every little thing that I do that isn't following his master plan, I need to be guilt-tripped about it.

My mind has been poisoned enough. Forget buying me some stupid watch which you were going to haggle-down on anyway, forget whatever else. Stay true to your word and pay for my school. I'll stay true to my word and not waste your money. That'll be that.

I'm done. My whole world is always turned upside down. Or, is it turned right-side up, when behind what I thought was an activity that I enjoy, a person that I love, a promising opportunity, I find some sick evil joke being played on me? Because that's *my* experience. If you don't have that experience, good for fucking you. But this is what's always been real to me. Doubt and malevolence and false hopes playing elaborate pranks on me time and time again.

If I could float through life on a heroine cloud, I'd be alright with that. This isn't working out. I don't know what to do anymore. I want out. I'm not fit to be anything but a useless burden. A wet bag of salt that some Auschwitz guard orders a Jew to haul all the way to the other end of the camp, and then all the way back to put it down where he got it.

While I recognize I am often very cynical and nihilistic, I actually don't buy into the idea that I was just born this way, and have this arbitrary chemical imbalance in my brain. Unless I hit my head and suffered a severe life-altering injury, I didn't magically get depression. When I was young I was excited about things, and with most things I could believe in myself, and had some confidence and knew what I was good at. I was energized. Sleep fulfilled it's one and only job, for fucks sake.

Now I can only "see the end from the start", as Soto sings. Who wants to read the tripe I write? Who would pay me for this? Who would pay me to write anything other than some political horse-shit about how great leaders are measured not by how big their genitalia are, but what genitalia they have? Or is it by their skin color again? Is that back in style?

Who would want to read anything that I have to say when I'm sure there are plenty of people who have already said it, and certainly people who can say it better? I played a video game called Rocket League for about ~1500 hours and I'm top .2% on the face of the planet, but that's not good enough to have a real chance against any of the professionals who do it as their day job and have 4 times the amount of play-time as a result. What chance do I have in writing, which I can't even sit down and do regularly anymore? The genius Nietzsche had a hard time writing in his "dying days" due to incapacitating migraines and blindness or something another; I'm having a hard time because I'm essentially a below-average fuck-up.

Two steps forward, two steps back. Five steps forward, five steps back. Ten steps forward, ten steps back. Over. And over. And over. Up the hill... almost there... aaaand roll back down. But keep going Sisyphus! Keep cheering me on from the side-lines! Watch me discover every conceivable way to get back to square-one!

I'm always stripped of motivation. I can't focus on anything. Every existential problem I have, I can't solve any other way than with drugs. Want to get better? I should fly to Colorado and micro-dose shrooms. Want to focus on my WIP that torments me every day, but can't sit down and work on without hating myself and feeling incompetent? Try to connive an Adderall prescription out of a shrink. Yeah, I tried that. Didn't work, so I shopped around until I found somebody who could get me some. Doing illegal shit freaks me out though because half my mind still cares and can't seem to be convinced to stop (it's pretty torturous to live in such perpetual inner-conflict, in case you wanted to know), so I only bought it once and never again.

I use drugs to get out of my way because I can't do it any other way. Nicotine or caffeine to wake the fuck up. Alcohol to help me be happy. CBD to help relax and sleep. Adderall to block out attractive women and video games and other distractions. Adderall to make me not care about the fact that I'm unhappy, because all Adderall cares about is "do work", and like a substitute-teacher it gets to be in charge of my brain for the day. And all the kids hate their actual teacher, so any day that their favorite substitute-teacher is on duty is a good day.

Happy 21st to me. I'll celebrate with an 8-hour shift because I don't get the days off that I request well over a month in advance anyway. It was either my 18th or 19th that I wished would be my last. I wrote a haiku about it. Maybe this time around. This is the last one that matters to me, after all. Maybe soon I can no longer annoy people by mailing out invites to these pathetic pity parties, and disappear into irrelevance, having never made a noteworthy mark on the world, which wouldn't have changed even if I lived to waste 121 years instead.

Sorry you decided to read all this. Or any of it.