Everywhere I look there is death. Television, games, books, music and most importantly our everyday lives as if experiencing it first-hand isn’t enough. It’s almost like we crave it; we want to fill our lives with death until imaginary dead bodies are piling the streets of our minds.
We want to see dead bodies overflowing from our screens and pages and speakers. We want to drown in cold blue skin and choke on the stench of rotting. It’s death for goodness sakes! Death! Why are we so obsessed with it?
Through every possible medium we experience it. Murder mysteries, gangster style rap, first person shooters and of course our pets, grandparents and more for the unlucky amongst us. Why don’t we focus on the important things like, oh, I don’t know… Living? Breathing? Waking up? Seeing the sun just to feel alive?
I’m not going to lie to anyone. I can count the video games that I’ve played which don’t involve death on one hand and a mysterious or untimely death can be the best scenes when it comes to the big screens. Maybe it’s because… Well, what am I supposed to say? Maybe it’s because I enjoy those games, those films, those books and those songs? Maybe it’s because what else is there to glorify? Maybe because both.
We will all come to expire, all of us. Any single person in the whole of humanity who draws breath will not always have the privilege of life. For that reason shouldn’t we find something else to obsess over? There is enough death already.
We all think of cancer patients or terminally ill people as dying. We see the incurables and we say “They’re dying.” And while that is true who is to say it isn’t true for each and every one of us? The truth is we are all dying. With each minute that passes we come closer to our inevitable death.
I say we start living while we die. Forget about death, it’s no more than a living process that we each go through. Like a twenty-first birthday, a wedding, or even your first day of school. Let’s stop making living about dying; instead we should make it about feeling alive.
Friday, 21 January 2011
Ambition.
As children the question “What do you want to be when you’re older?” is asked of you hundreds of times. Teachers, parents, friends and anyone who crosses your path will ask. At five my answers was “A princess!” at ten it was “A popstar!”. In the teen years reality sets in and you realise “Crap! I need to actually do something one day!” and so serious thought is put into the once harmless question. You find that you’re asking yourself what your dreams are. You want to know what you wish to achieve from your life. At fourteen, I decided I wanted to be a photographer, but as usual the reality was far from the dream and I was back to questioning myself.
Now, at eighteen, I still don’t know what I want to be when I’m older and I don’t know what my dreams are. Not everyone has to have a successful dream. Not everyone even has to have an unsuccessful dream, like me. There’s nothing wrong with being dreamless, ambitionless and probably miserable in later life. Hundreds of people with their precious dreams and wants end up in dead end jobs that they hate. Why can’t I just blindly stumble through life and end up the same as them without being frowned upon.
Now, at eighteen, I still don’t know what I want to be when I’m older and I don’t know what my dreams are. Not everyone has to have a successful dream. Not everyone even has to have an unsuccessful dream, like me. There’s nothing wrong with being dreamless, ambitionless and probably miserable in later life. Hundreds of people with their precious dreams and wants end up in dead end jobs that they hate. Why can’t I just blindly stumble through life and end up the same as them without being frowned upon.
The Happiness Buffet.
Am I happy? No, not necessarily. Is that so wrong? Is it so wrong that I’m not happy? Not everyone can be happy, it’s simple logic. Some people are born to be happy, others aren’t so lucky, but what am I supposed to do? Kill myself? Yes, maybe but what would that really fix. I’d be dead, not being unhappy anymore wouldn’t matter to me and so what is the point.
Sometimes I feel happy. Sometimes I feel like things are falling in place and that maybe I was meant to be happy but almost as soon as the thought filters into my mind I am somehow reminded of my so far unbeatable logic. If I were to assume that happiness could be contained then there can only be so much to go around and so first come first serve at the buffet of happiness ensues and those who get there first over indulge themselves, eating up the happiness given to them and just keep going back for more and more until there is none and late comers like myself are left with nothing but dry plates and tap water.
Sometimes I feel happy. Sometimes I feel like things are falling in place and that maybe I was meant to be happy but almost as soon as the thought filters into my mind I am somehow reminded of my so far unbeatable logic. If I were to assume that happiness could be contained then there can only be so much to go around and so first come first serve at the buffet of happiness ensues and those who get there first over indulge themselves, eating up the happiness given to them and just keep going back for more and more until there is none and late comers like myself are left with nothing but dry plates and tap water.
The Dramatics.
The dramatics send me wild, into white rage. Tears pour and teeth ground and I don’t think I ever frown so deeply as when we argue. I hate it, every second of it but somehow it keeps happening. Every single day I become annoyed, upset, angered, infuriated at times, because of you.
Somehow you seem to fuel my anger. Your words are filled with such distain for humanity that they scold me even when whispered. Forever you chime that you’re not perfect and that you hardly think anything of yourself but through this you glare down at everyone within distance to do so. You’re hurtful and cruel and every day I tell myself that I am done with being the person it falls back on, every silent moment after an argument, every delayed response, I am telling myself I’m done, but I never am because I can’t help but to love you. Constantly you tell me that I’m your best friend and that I’m to only one that means anything, if this is true then why does it seem that I bare the bane of your anger and distaste in human-kind.
You’re never going to change like you say you will, but perhaps one day I will. I will stop simply saying it and I will be done with you, one day I mentally won’t be able to handle anymore and this will stop. Is it really what I want? Do I really want to be done? No, but I feel that soon there will be no other choice.
Somehow you seem to fuel my anger. Your words are filled with such distain for humanity that they scold me even when whispered. Forever you chime that you’re not perfect and that you hardly think anything of yourself but through this you glare down at everyone within distance to do so. You’re hurtful and cruel and every day I tell myself that I am done with being the person it falls back on, every silent moment after an argument, every delayed response, I am telling myself I’m done, but I never am because I can’t help but to love you. Constantly you tell me that I’m your best friend and that I’m to only one that means anything, if this is true then why does it seem that I bare the bane of your anger and distaste in human-kind.
You’re never going to change like you say you will, but perhaps one day I will. I will stop simply saying it and I will be done with you, one day I mentally won’t be able to handle anymore and this will stop. Is it really what I want? Do I really want to be done? No, but I feel that soon there will be no other choice.
Lewis.
He really hurt me when he left, I admitted it to almost everyone, but I don't think they really understand that I mean it. I can tell. The way they look at me, they don't consider the pain I might or might not feel, their eyes don't ask me how I am when their mouths are pretending I am fine by nattering on and on. It's horrible that I don't care for what they say, I'm healing.
They try to tell me I need someone else, try to get me to flirt and put myself on the market, I am young I know, I am foolish I know, but can you not consider for even five minutes that perhaps I planned to be young and foolish with him no matter how wise or old I become, can you not just understand for five minutes that I'm not interested in sleeping with another boy to forget the boy I lost. I'm not interested in meeting new people or winking at the guy that was checking me out all day from across the Starbucks store, because no matter how available I am right now, I still belong with that one guy, the one who ignored me most of the time and was too wrapped up in his own stuff to acknowledge my existence.
It upset me the majority of the time, that he didn't look at me when I would wander in to check on him, it upset me that I put myself out and allowed him to be my everything, and he was, my everything. When he left he took everything with him, everything that mattered to me, and that was him, just him, and now I sit here and stare at all my material possessions and think, "I would give all this to have him back." XBOX 360? Who wants one of those? Wii? I don't need that. Nintendo DS? What’s the point? iPod Touch? Mobile phone? Car? Money? Music? Films? Laptop? I don't want any of this stuff, it's all so boring, and pointless to me now. All the things that once held such significance in my life all are nothing but dust collectors. Anything that was ever important is now not even as much as a blip on my radar of things I could not live without. Music is bland; films leave a bad taste in my mouth. I would give a hundred million pairs of shoes for one more day with him.
I could happily give everything I ever loved and cherished for him, no matter how much he has hurt me by leaving, I would have him over anything else. I'm so angry, and filled with hate. My hate for him is what fuels me, what makes me feel better about his leaving. My white-hot anger and my bitter pain is all I have to hold onto and perhaps I shouldn't bathe in it, but if I didn't what would I do, cry all the time? Yes, I probably would, and the worst part? Despite all this I want him to cuddle me at night, I want it to be him that I fall asleep next to and wake up with, I want to make him dinner, and make him coffee, I want to hold his hand and watch him play computer games. All the things I despised about him, his hairy nipples, his cold feet, the way he took up the entire bed, how he spent more time talking to his arsehole of a brother than speaking to me, even though he lived with me, how I was always the one to cook dinner and how he used to let his beard grow out, even though he knew it irritated my sensitive skin, all those horrible things that I cursed when he was here, I would welcome back with open arms if it meant I could have him.
Sure, day by day the pain lessens, the hurt dulls, the love grows distant, but that doesn't stop the raging hole in my chest that screams at me every morning, afternoon, evening and night, "Something’s missing!" and it is, he is missing and as a result a part of me has disappeared with him into oblivion. What's worse? That he left, or that one day I won’t remember his face, or his voice, perhaps one day I'll forget his favourite food, or how he has his coffee? It's been a little over a month and I've already forgotten his middle name, was it Lee, Jacob, James, Philip, John? Will the day come that I will pass him on the street and not even know who he is?
I think no one realises he was my everything, the thing that kept me sane. Everyone has their thing, it might be a best friend, a child, a parent, their job, money, sex, a pet, a husband, a wife, a combination of some or all, well he was my thing, the thing that made life a little more worthwhile. It made missing the bus not seem so bad, it made the rain pleasant and it made the tears I cried over silly things go away. It caught all the spiders and it changed the light bulb, it encouraged me and listened to me natter on late into the night about stupid, meaningless, jibber jabber. Had I of known we didn't have much longer together I wouldn't have filled our nights with such pointless conversation, I would have spoken about all the important things, but, what are the important things? I no longer know, I've lost grip on reality which keeps spinning around me, reeling out and spinning webs that don't involve me and him being together, but rather me being alone.
They try to tell me I need someone else, try to get me to flirt and put myself on the market, I am young I know, I am foolish I know, but can you not consider for even five minutes that perhaps I planned to be young and foolish with him no matter how wise or old I become, can you not just understand for five minutes that I'm not interested in sleeping with another boy to forget the boy I lost. I'm not interested in meeting new people or winking at the guy that was checking me out all day from across the Starbucks store, because no matter how available I am right now, I still belong with that one guy, the one who ignored me most of the time and was too wrapped up in his own stuff to acknowledge my existence.
It upset me the majority of the time, that he didn't look at me when I would wander in to check on him, it upset me that I put myself out and allowed him to be my everything, and he was, my everything. When he left he took everything with him, everything that mattered to me, and that was him, just him, and now I sit here and stare at all my material possessions and think, "I would give all this to have him back." XBOX 360? Who wants one of those? Wii? I don't need that. Nintendo DS? What’s the point? iPod Touch? Mobile phone? Car? Money? Music? Films? Laptop? I don't want any of this stuff, it's all so boring, and pointless to me now. All the things that once held such significance in my life all are nothing but dust collectors. Anything that was ever important is now not even as much as a blip on my radar of things I could not live without. Music is bland; films leave a bad taste in my mouth. I would give a hundred million pairs of shoes for one more day with him.
I could happily give everything I ever loved and cherished for him, no matter how much he has hurt me by leaving, I would have him over anything else. I'm so angry, and filled with hate. My hate for him is what fuels me, what makes me feel better about his leaving. My white-hot anger and my bitter pain is all I have to hold onto and perhaps I shouldn't bathe in it, but if I didn't what would I do, cry all the time? Yes, I probably would, and the worst part? Despite all this I want him to cuddle me at night, I want it to be him that I fall asleep next to and wake up with, I want to make him dinner, and make him coffee, I want to hold his hand and watch him play computer games. All the things I despised about him, his hairy nipples, his cold feet, the way he took up the entire bed, how he spent more time talking to his arsehole of a brother than speaking to me, even though he lived with me, how I was always the one to cook dinner and how he used to let his beard grow out, even though he knew it irritated my sensitive skin, all those horrible things that I cursed when he was here, I would welcome back with open arms if it meant I could have him.
Sure, day by day the pain lessens, the hurt dulls, the love grows distant, but that doesn't stop the raging hole in my chest that screams at me every morning, afternoon, evening and night, "Something’s missing!" and it is, he is missing and as a result a part of me has disappeared with him into oblivion. What's worse? That he left, or that one day I won’t remember his face, or his voice, perhaps one day I'll forget his favourite food, or how he has his coffee? It's been a little over a month and I've already forgotten his middle name, was it Lee, Jacob, James, Philip, John? Will the day come that I will pass him on the street and not even know who he is?
I think no one realises he was my everything, the thing that kept me sane. Everyone has their thing, it might be a best friend, a child, a parent, their job, money, sex, a pet, a husband, a wife, a combination of some or all, well he was my thing, the thing that made life a little more worthwhile. It made missing the bus not seem so bad, it made the rain pleasant and it made the tears I cried over silly things go away. It caught all the spiders and it changed the light bulb, it encouraged me and listened to me natter on late into the night about stupid, meaningless, jibber jabber. Had I of known we didn't have much longer together I wouldn't have filled our nights with such pointless conversation, I would have spoken about all the important things, but, what are the important things? I no longer know, I've lost grip on reality which keeps spinning around me, reeling out and spinning webs that don't involve me and him being together, but rather me being alone.
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