Dumb Angsty Bullshit

Dumb Angsty Bullshit - or "A Short Piece on Feeling Like Shit"

Some may mark the changing of the date on a calendar as just that, a change. But it happens every day. It is a constant, another small reminder that each day is actually one in the same. It is light, and then it is dark. You are cold, and you are warm. You are with others and then you are alone. All of these repeat, just more constants that stretch infinitely and have no end in sight. One calls to mind Bill Murray, how he suffered this fate of having to repeat the same day constantly. But he broke free. He had an answer. One does not seem to be in sight for you.

All these markers of change, of time, of rhythm, might as well not exist. Because ultimately they are only markers of change as we perceive it to be that way. But why is that? Why is is that despite the fact that the world is spinning, children are born, old men die and new couples find love every day it all feels the same? It is because there is a binder, a glue between it all. One recurring theme that emphasises the humdrum, the constant cycle you repeat every day. And that binding force is the emptiness. The absence.

You don't know where it came from. You used to have optimism, hopes, dreams. A goal to achieve and a strategy of achieving it. But every day the dream erodes a little more. It is too far away. It seems less attainable every time you think about it. You even question whether it's worth achieving at all: you see what makes those you love happy, why do you aspire differently? You need to copy them. Emulate them. Have fun, leave the house. You live every long second of your own day, but you see only the quick seconds of theirs. Their happiest seconds. The ones they want to share with you, because they care. Because you care.

Even as such, when you see others have what you do not, envy creeps in. You see the ones you love enjoying themselves and you almost feel sickened - "How could they leave me behind? I would never do that to them." But you know this anger is artificial. You care about them more than you do yourself, you just want to find something to be angry at. Anything. Realising you've treated others wrong, even if they don't realise it, shifts the blame. The only one to be angry at is yourself. You do not live the life they do because it is you who has not tried hard enough.

But the question, like everything else, repeats. "Why try?" - you've been trying this entire time and yet nothing has changed. You're still in this room, your chest on fire from anxiety, sighing to yourself like you do every other day. You were always a happy person. Most people think you still are. It's not how those strange people on the internet describe it, "like I'm wearing a mask". You're not. Every time you're with others you feel fine, happier than ever. But once reduced to your lonesome you question the nature of this happiness. It's more like a dam. You push others in the way of the tide to keep it from flooding you, and once they are gone (as they have every right to be, they are people too), you are overwhelmed. And afraid of being overwhelmed again, you try to keep the dam up yourself. And as you focus on this more than anything, failing the whole time, you fail to see the world has changed around you. Friends call to you, offering to help, but your head is submerged. You can not hear.

You care too much to harm yourself. However much you might deny it, these people do care. You don't want to hurt them. But you wish there was some way, any way, to break the lethargy. But opportunities come rarely to people who sit in their pajamas all day, and you are too stubborn to chase them.

You sit and you study. The dream is still there, as empty and as hopeless as you think it'll be once you achieve it. But why still try? You're convinced the days will never change. You're convinced those old constants of the sun coming up and down, the temperature being cold and warm, and the lonely bitterness of your heart will be forever perpetuated. You feel like you're running on a treadmill, why not just give up, turn if off, and forever fester in your own mediocrity? Because ultimately, there is still one spot of hope you hang on you, one mantra you repeat to yourself to make sure you never, ever do that.

Maybe tomorrow things will change.