Just a Writer

Even though I often go through these periods of melancholy — the grime enveloping everything from the hardly used gaming desktop to the overused Kindle with so many e-books about topics ranging from climate change to a dark, soul-crushing nihilism, there’s this unexplainable lust for life that pushes me forward. 

It sometimes throws me in Elysian fields with aquamarine skies and muses alighting on every leaf- blade — a cornucopia of inspiration, and sometimes in arid lands where the symphony of creation is barely perceivable. I should give up. Quit and resign with the cynical fatalism of a pessimist when you present him with visions of utopia with golden skyscrapers and sonnets sung by the masses. But I persist. I can’t explain it, but I do. I press on. 

Maybe it’s an apathetic, I must move forward, even if it’s for no reason or a suppressed, enthusiastic hurrah! emerging that remembers when I loved playing football on the streets and the warmth of friendship. Whatever it is, I’ve noticed that it’s there even when Stygiophobia consumes me and I launch into compulsions to ward it off. Praying on the cold marble floor until my knees hurt. Shaking my head, and saying, “No, no, that’s sin. Forgive me Lord!” Confessing my innermost thoughts to my mother because I believe God has forsaken me. Writhing in anguish. 

It has popped up even when I’ve lost touch with everything real — Delusions like phantoms with spectral daggers threatening to stab me while I waged what I believed was a holy war with myself. The punitive need to suffer and guilt myself for disobeying God. The concept of God as a destructive, terrifying judge. Words of some puritanical Boanerges who enjoyed frightening people and leaving them there without a glimpse of redemption damning me for eternity. You can’t question God because you’re like a mule compared to Him. He can do as He pleases. The possibility of salvation becoming impossible — A dream vanishing faster than a pop song fade-out. 

Maybe I push a boulder up a hill while I wither, the cigarettes smoked and energy drinks consumed adding to each day’s fatigue, even though they should give me a dopamine rush. I move like a shadow, blending with dusk and fighting away darkness. I silently crawl. I don’t know why, but I do. I may have lost all reason to live, but if tomorrow they gave me a time machine and said, “Go back and prevent your mother from marrying that horrible man. That abusive coward with his faux-sentimentality and selfishness,” I’ll say, “No,” because I want to continue in this twisted way. I want to destroy myself and hate my life while I fall in love with it at the same time.