my little bitch page

myspace mood feeling pretty hollow. unwrapping sanity. I haven’t read a book in years and I feel the combination of that and menial labour has rot my brain to the point that I’m just a devolved youtube mammal blindly nubbing the next video with my nose and lapping up the frequencies. i haven’t been stoned in 3 months which could be a good thing depending on your personal persuasion. i thought it would make me smarter (or at least sharper) but there’s been no physical change that i’ve noticed. i can’t tell if i feel better or worse because I forgot what the status quo was a long time ago. christmas isnt the same without the crystals falling off the tree though. it sneaks up on you and regardless of how subtle it is, you seem to find yourself in the middle of the hit anyway. the silence of the empty city is off-putting, like when a fire alarm finally stops ringing and you realise you were kinda vibin to it. no one has a reason to be here. most people who live in the shitty apartments find a more homely home to visit to feel at home for christmas but my bridges have finally burnt out. I’ve gotten better at being an alcoholic. so I drank all night with the one friend i have left and proceeded to text the people i still think about thinking i might get pity replies at worst or rekindle friendships so they can die again at best. and so the perfect storm of the fear hitting as the drink wears off, the emptiness and cascading silence of the city around me, and the realisation that out of all those people you still think of, you maybe got 2 formalities and all you really did was spark up bad memories for as long as it takes to leave a text on read. it’s hard to get comfy settling for a life where i never peaked. it’s hard to swallow the emptiness when last year i had a job and friends that meant a lot to me. it’s weird how everything dissipates so quickly and you realise you’ve always just been a passerby, occasionally getting in the way. i don’t talk so much about suicide because it’s selfish whatever way you cut and slice it but i really wanted to give it another go this year. i wanted to put a cute christmas film on, my comfy christmas jumper, my little reindeer horns and hang. thinking about it brings me comfort. writing about it not so much because there’s not much to brag about fetishizing the easy way out. but i do have one friend left who gave me way too much stuff to counteract the situation and now i feel that classic christmas guilt and begrudging indebtedness. the biggest depression is the realisation that some people still need you and you cant shake your responsibilities just yet. it’s somehow your duty as a bag of badly arranged cells to keep living as a worn out husk for the one or two smiles you inject into someone’s cheeks and the hope that maybe they’re contagious. probably the biggest issue with my personality disorder is i have a chip on my shoulder and feel i deserve the world for simply staying in it. maybe not the world but the benefit of the doubt sometimes. i don’t think i ask for a lot. forgive me father because my mood has swung and i’m not sure which way the momentum is shifting. 

I've been having these recurring dreams haunt me lately, usually a few times every night. By night I mean all day since I just take 14 hour depressive naps only waking up to change the podcast that’s playing. The dreams always feature a recurring cast of friends I’ve lost.  I had one last night where I got fired from my job for fighting with my brother who was still inexplicably the age I last saw him which had to be over 10 years ago. I thought brothers fight and get over it but my corporate overlords didn’t share the sentiment. They decided the crime was so egregious not only was I fired but I was given the death penalty. So I lay on the train tracks and waited to die. I felt the weight run over me and the wheels cut up my body and while it felt slightly uncomfortable it was outweighed by the relief that it would all be over. But I was still alive. And everything was different. It was dark and nobody was around. After walking in the emptiness for a while I bumped into my old friend that left his job when everybody turned on him for bragging about fucking an underage girl and even though I was on that hate train too and one of the main reasons he left, I was so exhausted from the drain of social persecution we forgave each other and became friends again. I told him I’d been sentenced by my peers to death and so we walked off together looking for somewhere to die. And I sang into the darkness and the melody shone a light that grew brighter as I approached until I realised it was her. But it wasn’t quite; it was the best parts of her, it was the pure before the ugliness. And before I knew it I was safe and comfortable in bed, lost in her eyes again. But somebody else showed up, although I couldn’t look at her directly, I knew it was the rest of her. It was all the bad parts. And she wanted to lead me astray from the safety of where I was. And I guess I wanted the drama of the bad times because as soon as I contemplated going with her I woke up eyeless, all sad and alone in my not so comfy bed. I used to wonder if dreams were an astral plane where people’s subconscious spirits went to hang out with each other. I think I wanted to believe when somebody showed up in a dream to squash whatever negativity there was between us that it was really them. I’m starting to think it’s just my confused lonely brain working overtime looking for closure I’m never going to get. Walking to my death in the darkness with my persecuted friend, waiting for someone to save me, even though I know I’ll always choose to ruin it again in the future and repeat my mistakes time after time like a ghost doomed for eternity. So for the time being I’m sentencing myself to the isolating dark and the hope that one day lights will pierce through it, be it a train or otherwise. 

falling in love is a trip. getting fired is a trip. i suppose everything is a trip just in different doses and you end up back where you started eventually with a situational hangover. i’m trying to stop eating so i can really focus on my alcoholism. i had some big balls energy in gainful employment for a minute, most days i’d show up hungover or high and i’d still be the best on my team. i never wanted to commit to trying until i realised i could self sabotage and still come out on top. i made really good friends and got into really complicated relationships and finally felt like the protagonist. but one bad break up and i’m chewing at anything else that ties me to sanity. like every ex has said, as soon as one thing goes wrong i have to burn everything else to the ground. and two months later not one of those friends still talks to me and the only complicated relationship is wanting to speak  to someone every second of every day but not being able to. on that stalker hype. on that you shit. i was in denial about it for the longest time until i found myself one day thinking of her and had the craziest brain zaps. like my whole brain was taken over by something else, a visceral, pounding headache that felt like a straight charge of emotion electrifying my brain. all i could do was laugh because that’s when i knew i’d really fucked up. sometimes you meet someone and none of it makes sense. even now if i look at old pictures of her before we met, she doesn’t look the same. the eyes, the facial structure, she doesn’t look like the girl i fell for like we shapeshifted into each other and became something else. and i’ve dealt with breakups before but there’s always that side of you that’s glad to get rid of them. the last few months i’ve felt nothing but this yearning and underneath it an icy depression like all now is harmed. it wouldnt take much for a sane person to write a list of bullet points of bullets i’ve just dodged or reasons why this girl just wasnt good for me but in whatever swirl of mental illness i currently occupy i just want to talk to her again. in some ways i got what i asked for because it’s been 10 years since i got thrown out at home and the first time i really felt that boundless emptiness. from one day having a family and a circle of friends to 24 hours later sending pathetic texts to see if i could crash on a couch and only getting one reply from someone i’d never even met who hooked me up and in turn saved my life. since then i’ve had to repeatedly realise that without family you really have no one. you are no one else’s responsibility. as soon as things get really bad they will be gone and you’ll be back at that constant zero. and i’ve never had a reason to live to begin with. i’ve never had a motive. i’ve always been a deer in the headlights. i can get a job, make friends momentarily and play the part of a normal guy but it’s built without a foundation and you’ll end up at the bottom of everything again, this time older and uglier. i haven’t romanticised anything since i stopped writing.  it seems ugly and pointless to care about things that most people don’t. i feel like a beggar occasionally getting scraps of normality thrown at me and placing them on a pedestal like civility is religious. so the lure of the drug addict becomes greater. to live in daydreams where my neurosis never manifests itself and sends me down a thorned arterial pathway of realising what’s actually wrong with you and the harsh reality when the denial doesnt get you faded anymore. the more i consume the less i write and i tell myself it’s because language is a prison and i just want to feel without attributing words to the process but in hindsight i think im just struggling to swim in the waters where i once stood. i think i’ve burnt out my dopamine receptors and no combination of words will ever mean as much as the intimacy i'm chasing. i think of her eyes and how i used to make them sparkle and glow and their beauty seemed limitless and infinite but they were just another hit and im back on my lonely eternity trying to figure out what it all meant. the answer is nothing. the meaning is a playlist of songs you won’t be able to listen to until your next peak where you’ll maybe take a minute out and remember someone that made you feel some way. but the peaks are never as high and the lows get more prolonged and defined every time you find yourself in the same place for the same reasons but with different excuses. the recipe for nausea and a grief that won’t shift.

I don’t know what I want. Writing is supposed to be therapeutic and help get your head straight but I feel like I’m a completely different person every few hours so everything I do disgusts me in a regular cycle. I keep telling myself it’s just til I get used to my new job, til I get used to working nights, til I get used to walking home, and then I’ll be me again and things will be okay. Somewhere in that cycle I lost myself and looking back I realise most of the past was like musical chairs and I was too scared to take a seat. I see myself in some people at work, and not the way I like. I see it in anxiety, I see it in the doubt on their face, I see it in the way they don’t interact with others the same and shit maybe they have an inner monologue where they’re dark and edgy too, but I see it in the context of social exclusion and it’s not pretty. If I keep things superficial people seem to like me. But that superficiality varies with mood and time until I feel stretched and transparent.  I can’t tell if I need to rebuild or just destroy the bad parts. 

I’m actually not the biggest piece of shit in the world and I’m not sure I can handle the reality shift. I think I use it as a defence to avoid the things I don’t want to do in life like make eye contact with people or ask how their day is without gagging or accidentally laughing at their answer. But every now and again someone will come through the line with a genuine problem and my voice will suddenly gain some bass and I’ll drop the robot persona I’ve programmed into myself. We’re supposed to keep our calls down to 5 minutes and for every second they’re over the bankers pay us less money lol but lately I’ve been hanging on the phone for a half hour or an hour talking through psychology problems on recorded lines they could probably take me to court over as I spill parts of my heart to make people feel a little more sane with the shit that they be dealing with. It’s a nice feeling to have someone well up on the phone and tell them how much it means to finally talk to someone who understands what they’re going through or that in one call I’ve made them feel better than they have in months. At the same time I feel a little empty because it doesn’t necessarily fuel me. It doesn’t inspire to me to go get that masters degree or to open my own 0900 number. It’s nice feeling valued in the moment but that’s the only place I seem to exist, and when it’s gone it’s gone and reality is a much longer draw. I think I’m understanding how I felt as a kid now. Like I wanted everything at once. One good thing could never be good enough, I want constant comfort, constant adrenaline, constant chaos. I want everything to happen at once. Maybe it’s the girls I’ve left too much of myself inside, maybe it’s the impending doom of finally ageing and not getting IDed for that red bull no more. If everything is moving towards its end then why not just go out now with a bang and a wink face? So anyway, shout out to the boys and girls who let me momentarily feel something by picking them up and brushing them off and maybe one of these days someone might even do the same for me. 

There’s this guy in work who does crazy overtime, like 16 hour shifts with pretty much no breaks. I used to think 11 hours was something. I used to still bitch and complain and over dramatise the exertion of a mediocre day’s work in the 21st century. Wouldn’t it be cool if I held my breath and carried my cross until I paid these gross student loans off in a few years? Maybe it would help pay back those lost years I spent finding myself in abuse as a cover for the fear that there was nothing to find. There’s this other guy who works in our building who has wilder scars than mine. Better hair too. I only talked to him once but he seems really nice. I wonder if it’s meds. I wonder if it’s the girl he makes out with before getting on the bus every day. I wonder how old those scars really are. Picture me lifting up my sleeves like a secret handshake with a toothy grin and a manic look in my eyes. I feel the old me come out in work sometimes. I don’t know how much I’m supposed to hate it. I don’t know how much I’m expected to really change. Maybe I’m not and it’s all in my head. Just like uni, most of the people I actually made friends with have left already. They try to lure me with them and it gets to me that I’m still so basic I would never take the chance to go. For more money, for better hours, for less travel, to a place I’m already gonna know someone. The mediocrity of a no risk life has fully ingrained itself. The fire inside me has died. 

I had my first live suicider. They typically be the benefits crowd that spend all their money the first day they get it then spend the next week on the phone to the bank threatening suicide if we don’t reimburse them for their “mental health.” Usually it’s just immature boys getting their unfortunate girlfriends to phone in for them but this guy reminded me of old me. Not really sad about it, just sort of matter of fact, this is the situation I find myself in and these are the pills I have access to. I think the reason it got to me was because I realised in that moment how little I truly care anymore. Like a suicide sellout, I got through everything by myself and everyone still stuck there can stay behind. I used to have these vague ideas that when automation really kicks in they should shift people into a psychology based help system where everyone gets basic training to act as a designated support friend for someone who needs the help. We get these garbage human resources meetings where they explain that 60% of students are studying for jobs that don’t exist yet, which is the glass half full version of another menial labour apocalypse nobody wants to deal with yet, but I feel like if they ever go through with universal credit then being a designated therapy friend would get you those sweet new world benefits like gilded tattoo chips that increase the brightness of your aura. But now I feel caught between so many versions of myself, knowing full well that all these “mental health” buzzword boys are the types that ruin weed for the straight ones by getting lost in their psychosis then playing the victim and there’s very little you can do about it. And I know all this because I lived through it and I have very little pity for the past me. In a politically correct world I’m supposed to have empathy for people that don’t want to help themselves. All I could think about with that caller was how little he mattered and how much he ruined my day. Even if you sent an angel herself to his door he still would cling to his labels and scripts and refuse to be helped; only clipping the wings of the ones sent to save him. Empty statistics would be thrown around and people will bring out the paragraphs in full force trying to tie a bow around a problem with no simple answer. Anyway, I obviously phoned the ambulance and sent them to his house, and they usually get back in touch to let us know everything’s okay, but they didn’t, so I guess they weren’t. I feel like it’s karma payback for the tantrums I threw while my wrists bled out, waking up in a hospital bed feeling like you’ve pissed on somebody’s conscience and who the fuck do you think you are to put somebody else through that? All I could think was if you’re gonna die then do it quietly and with some self respect like I should have. So that’s two on the tally of people who have died talking to me and I probably have at least 5 to go before I pay off my past sins, so here’s to it. 

Mood swings and call swings. I’m trying to accept my new job as hell and be okay with it because in my head I can’t think why people choose to stay (and to be fair most of them don’t for very long). I have the same problem with choosing somewhere to live. Which shitty town do you pick in your shitty country? Which run down terrace house with damp problems do you wanna pull up in front of for the rest of your life, how close is it to the corner shop and what capitalist relics do you want sprawled across your tiny bedroom? What makes one job better than another if they’re all paying the same and sucking the soul from you? It’s like that dystopian nightmare where humans plug themselves into machines to be willingly drained of their life, except you’ve added an hour to your commute and now actively need to exert energy when shifting from the aimless hell of your work life to the empty void of your personal one. What are hobbies now that stress management is apparently a key issue you need to consider and the only way you can unwind is to leave your head at the door and reattach a hungover version on your way back to work in 6 hours? I know the simple answer is to like use half my brain and get a better job and buy a whiter shirt and start thinking of the future like who’s the next girl you’re going to piss on? I guess I’m feeling more like a real person in that I could maybe handle a tinder bio at this point, but only if I was summing things up in bullet points and committing to that character. For the last year of my life I’ve worked for 5 different banks, making customer’s lives as difficult as possible including telling old ladies and disabled people that if they can’t figure out the internet at this point you may as well get your power of attorney to google assisted suicide in your area because your money is useless and your need for customer service is a drain on our profit margin. Somehow in spite of this everyone on the team is really competitive and love the little participation challenges that offer extra work for no incentive other than the feeling that you’re somehow better at your shitty job than the people who choose not to play the game. It’s like those crowd psychology experiments where they separate a group of friends into Team A and Team B with no prerequisites and immediately they’re at each other’s throats over one letter of the alphabet, a false sense of belonging and the mirage of a carrot somewhere at the end of really long fucking stick. I understand people need basic goals and social hierarchies may increase productivity but it kinda reminds me of the fresh faced uni kids fighting it out in competitive endless debt because that’s what society told them to do. I can’t help but feel there’s easier ways to make no money. Maybe if I stew in my negativity for long enough it’ll force me to fix the problem and find something better. Maybe I already had it and lost it because I just can’t manage more than one thing in my life at a time and if I was coming home to a mixed up cutie cutting a mix like a mad scientist then the haze wouldn’t seem so crazy. I feel like I’m mellowing into perma dad mode and there’s little I can do about it at this point. I miss the 2010 post hardcore scars and blinded by the stars me, I miss the 2012 Courtney Love Brody Dalle hybrid moments me, I miss the 2013 balls dropped inside vagina and finally a real boy Pinocchio me, I miss the 2014 exchanging drugs for sexual favours me, I miss the 2016 soulless soulmate / perfect post ironic fantasy me, and I even miss that little period in 2017 where things seemed like they were getting better just for it all to fall apart again. I feel like now life is a just joint I keep passing on, maybe a polite draw for show sometimes just to look conscious and even if I get hit that’s it because nothing sticks together like skins and I really miss hitting yours. 

Dya ever like sit in awkward silence with a semi stranger for six months, comfort eating joints, accommodating friends, feeling like a fucking creeper but catching eyes like you know you’ll be connected but you’re not quite sure how ugly the end will be yet? Dya ever trip so deep you remember your old pal Jesus Christ and ask him to catch you a break and throw you a catholic girl for a year and a half and she actually shows up the day after with a friend expecting you dead but finds you somewhere near the end, dragging what’s left of you into a safe space for someone more responsible to deal with? Dya ever think she let you treat her like shit one too many times just so one day you’d realise that you’re secretly still your parents and you still have a lot to let go of before you can call yourself the fabled good guy? Dya ever just like bury a huge period of your life because you can’t define the past without context and you had to take up the challenge of being that one man island? Dya ever just like fucking scoff sometimes when a new female girl is in your flat and you feel like you’re not who you should be lol please leave? I feel like I say this a lot but the last lil bit of my life has felt like saved by the bell the new class the college years and I deeply resent everyone I’ve met in that period because they weren’t what I needed and yet they were there. Maybe I’m coming out of that now and trying to be a real person™ again. But if I’m being real then there’s a lot of the past that I feel really lucky to have been there for even tho my modern friends would tell me to literally fuck up. I have more stories than most people I know and the weirdos I make friends with have even more than me. I don’t know where I am in the cycle right now but the current plan is to hold my breath until I get back to where the present is as pretty as the past and that past is contextually ugly again. 

I remember one of the last times I seen her. She was dressed up weird for some uni thing, like her mom’s jacket and a new skirt or something, trying real hard the way Catholic girls tend to do. The memory has kind of been corrupted because of how fast things move and how little I really pay attention these days. Different girls exist in that jacket and I have to try real hard to remember if it was really her. The vague memory of walking her to the train station is mostly replaced with the time I walked another girl there, met her mom, made the worst first impression you can document and then walked straight out in front of a car because my head was twenty places at once. The memories overlap and the night and day disparity gives everything a sunset haze and if it was all the same girl it might even make me fuzzy inside. But it’s not. And I don’t know which ones I’m really allowed to give significance to. I had another Job phase, made a bunch of friends and then lost them all and I’m not sure if I’m supposed to feel thankful for the respite or frustrated that my constant is zero and the hoodie doesn’t hide the bags under my eyes anymore. I think about the things I’d be right now if I’d stuck with certain people for longer and if I could look at that person’s facebook feed would my initial reaction be to tear down the mediocrity I refused in favour of a limitless nihilism. I place warning signs periodically around those in my life and if they don’t take them seriously I get up and walk away. I remember playing I Don’t Love You all the time, not sure if I was dropping the hint to myself or if I’m actually that much of an asshole, but I listen to it now and I think how it was always yesterday. I can’t love anything that sees value in me because that’s a pressure to at least not fade out when I’ve already burnt away. Maybe the city’s too busy for a vanilla cherophobic and it’s time to pack up and pick your smaller suburb to push your pen and pushchair. All those girls that pulled my sleeve and asked me to dance but I was too scared of sweating under the lights so I called them a bitch and shot up the school. My head hasn’t been straight in a minute and my sense of self is lost somewhere in the claustrophobic frequency. If I could just exist for a while, stripped and reset; slate clean and memory wiped. Everything in life I wanted, I got a taste for and realised there’s no satiation, it’s cyclical, and you’re creating holes just to fill them. Everything is empty and it’s your energy that gives it life, and when it’s gone, oh, it's gone.