To be happy we must not be concerned about others. — Albert Camus
Once you stop trying, it all goes to shit. Once you stop caring, it’s all over. I used to be this recluse who would spend weeks closed in his room. All that’s changed is I have learned how to put on a persona around others. Put on a smile, keep the small talk going, and make this day work. I am superficial with people, I can’t seem to be able to get to the heart of the matter of being fully human. A functioning human. The problem is within. It always has been.
After a day of work. After a day of pretending and acting. I retreat.
Then once you retreat into your solitary confinement you become restless. You dread being alone by yourself. For those demons, you try so hard to hide come to the surface. They bring thoughts, bad thoughts. They tell you how undeserving and bad you are. Incapable of love, how boring you are. Who do you think you are? I spent today inside the hotel room. I wasted my time because I felt too drained and moody. I hate it when I feel this way. I smoked about 6 cigarettes. Every hour I’d go to the balcony and light up a cigarette. It’s like a ritual at this point. It’s my meditation, my release.
At some point, when I was younger and tried to smoke for the first time I’d just do it for I saw it in movies and loved the look of it. A cigarette between the fingers, this classy almost badass look. The smoke would make me nauseous before, but as of late, I have been lighting up a cigarette daily. I guess you could say I built up a tolerance to it. The body got used to it.
Why do I do it? It relaxes me. It’s not about looking cool as I don’t smoke around others. I am alone when I do it. Smoking on this hotel’s balcony reminds me of the time I was sneaking into the balcony at the old apartment my family and I used to live in. It was right in front of the school I studied at. I was perhaps 9 or 10 and I’d get there and light a cigarette and look below from the 8 stories height at all the kids that went out for recess in the courtyard.
I remember I noticed that my brother was in the yard and he looked up at me. I just hid right away, the little fiend I was. I hid and prayed to the gods he did not notice me smoking. I’m pretty sure he did, my memory is vague on that. But of course, I stank of smoke and he came home at that moment and asked what was I doing there. I begged him to not tell anything to my parents. My dad was a smoker as well. I promised him I’d never do it again. Of course, I did. I remember at some point getting caught with a lighter and a pack of cigarettes. My dad asked me to give them to him and he just raised his voice at me. He didn’t hit me though, I was scared to death. It felt like I committed the greatest crime of all. And perhaps, at that age, it counted as one.
But I am not a kid anymore, and things have changed. I know what smoking does and perhaps that’s why I do it. The regrets with this decision will show up later in life. If I’ll get that far. That’s my thought process, if…
Tonight as I went to the balcony and lit another cigarette I looked around the block. I noticed some people doing the same thing as me. Some sit on a chair and smoke calmly, others chit-chat in the distance. Their voices echo in the distance, I can barely hear them. I gaze around and into space. I don’t fix my sight on anything in particular. Constantly shifting around. It’s a cold night, my hands get cold but it feels nice. I love exhaling and seeing this smoke go into the night and disappear in that very instance. It’s fascinating, it’s childish.
I feel like writing something. Write about nothing. Write about the indifference that paralyzed me today. I put on some music and daydreamed. Could I perhaps become someone else? Could I change? For no matter what I do I feel like I am stuck with the same person I have forever been. I see things the same way. I can’t find salvation, I don’t hear god.
Bukowski wrote that those who preach god, are the ones that need god. Isn’t that so? I don’t believe in god, but sometimes I do think that I could make use of one.
I obsess over love and relationships when I am no boyfriend material myself. I put high standards on others whereas I don’t even come close to that. Am I limiting myself? Yeah. But who isn’t? Am I the only one who stares in the mirror and isn’t impressed with what they see?
Am I others? No. Are others me? No.
What a fucking shit show life is, and what in the world are we doing with it?
I can speak only for myself. I am going with the flow, I never reclaimed anything of life for I never felt a belonging to it. Life — what a word. It looks nice on the screen when you type it. Four letters that mean the world and yet how empty for some it can be.
Life.
Cheers to life.
