My Mask

I wake up every day. As you do. Either to my alarm clock or just… cause. Let’s go with the latter. I usually sleep late though. Like, early-evening-late; just a few hours more and the sun will be gone. I prefer the night anyway. It’s quiet and private; the only time I can get either.

Hauling myself out of bed isn’t really the chore, so much as is finding a reason to do so. So… why? I’m not tired. Am I hungry? Let’s assume I’m not. So should I bother? Doesn’t matter. I do it anyway. I barely move when I sleep, so making the bed is as simple as pulling the covers taught and smoothing out a few wrinkles. Done in like 10 seconds.

So, bed’s made; it’s an alright bed. I’m not going anywhere—never do—so I don’t bother to get out of my sleeping clothes.  No, I don’t call them “pajamas” because it sounds infantile. I have my schedule written on a whiteboard in my room: nothing but work dates and hours. I don’t have a life. My life is where I head next: the PC across the room from the foot of my bed.

I boot it up. Takes forever because it’s over 3 years old at this point and it was made with outdated parts when it was new.  But I’m nothing if not patient. I learned that as I grew older because nothing good comes quickly. In fact, more often than not, it doesn’t come at all. You learn to deal with the fact that you can’t have anything nice and when you do, it’s not that nice anyway. Mediocre limbo.

It gets the job done. I don’t ask much of it anyway.

This is where I live. I have no other home. The roof over my head is less qualified to be called a livable dwelling let alone a place of refuge and comfort that I would have the luxury to call my own. But who cares, right? I’ve got shelter, so I have no right to complain. That’s the rule, isn’t it? “Never want for more than you have because you don’t deserve it and there’s always someone else out there that deserves it more than you.” Thus, all my problems are meritless.

Fine.

So what do I do, anyway? Here’s the gist of it: nothing worthwhile. Ever. I waste every moment I have, every day that goes by, every breath I take doing nothing. Because I hate committing to anything and it’s going to be a waste anyway.

When I commit to something, it stops being an escape and starts becoming a task. I don’t do it because I want to anymore; I do it because I have to. Because I’m making myself do it and thus I don’t want to anymore. I don’t like being bossed around, even when it’s me doing the bossing. I’ve grown up so adverse to being told what to do and how to act and what I’m supposedly like—so sayeth the powers that be over mine own livelihood; of course they know me better than I do—and what’s expected of me and when I’m expected to do it, the mere thought of having to do something, even of my own free will at this point, seems unpleasant. My mind makes it out to be a task forced upon me because it’s all I’ve ever known. I’ve never had free will and I’m not allowed to have it. And it hates it. I do too.

But that’s just how it goes, right?

It’s also a waste of time. I said it before: I do nothing worthwhile. I spend the majority of the day—hours and hours and hours and hours—doing absolutely nothing. I watch videos online. I surf. I check emails (with some chagrin at the fact that I’m making myself check them). I fantasize about doing something useful, but I always make the excuse not to. Whatever I do is lousy anyway because I have no talent. I feel jealousy at others that can be useful—wonderful even, amazing and talented that they are—and animosity at myself for not trying. I gripe that my ass is sore because this chair sucks. I attain meagre self-gratification when I see someone I don’t know and never will know liked a comment I made or said something constructive or positive to me because I’m a clingy, pathetic introvert that needs that kind of reassurance that I’m not useless to feel not-useless.

But then I do anyway.

I only eat because I’m hungry and don’t want to be, not because I want to enjoy a delicious meal. I don’t get delicious meals very often, so I stop tasting it. When I do, it seems I forget to bother. If it’s really unpalatable though, I will taste it even though I don’t want to and won’t be able to finish it. So I go hungry. Yeah, I’m a picky eater and I don’t deserve the food I’ve got because there’s always someone else, yadda, yadda, yadda.

I bemoan most irrefutable human necessities actually. Sleeping? Waste of time. Evacuation of waste? Gross and a waste of time. Bathing? A hassle and a waste of time. Eating’s up there too. What would I use that precious time for if I could save it? Probably nothing of any worth or merit anyway. See above.

I worry too. I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders every day, separated between a million little things that take their toll on my will by attrition. No one thing is too big, but combined together, they become a mountain of woes. A mountain with teeth and scorn that demands I climb it, but all the while it chews on me and pushes me back down and won’t let me feel like I’m making progress because I deserve to feel every single drudging, aching step.

“Where’d my future go…? Is it at the top? I can’t even see the top.”

So I turn away and I go back to my PC and I waste my fucking time. Instant gratification to mask my confliction. I don’t even care what it is at this point—I’m just doing it to forget for a while. Instant distraction to mask my guilt. I re-check everything I’ve already done in the faint hope that there will be something new there to keep me going for whatever reason. Instant realization of the mask for my pointlessness. Instant realization of the pointlessness.

Grief.

A spiraling rant.

I talk to myself, for I am alone and no one would give my bullshit the time of day. I barely do.

It goes nowhere, as it always does, falling on deaf ears that aren’t even there.

I realize I’m talking to myself/wallowing in my own misery and trying to justify it.

I realize how pointless that is.

I don’t usually cry, but sometimes I want to, just to be able to work up the emotion again. But then I realize how selfish that would be, to cry for my own woes when they don’t deserve tears. Self-indulgence is evil and I should feel bad and I promise I do so please don’t hate me. Please.

And by now, the dawn has cracked the sky and the world around me whirrs to life and with it I lose the security of the night that gave me my peace and my privacy and allowance to wallow in my own evils because no one is watching or judging or giving me orders. I need sleep again, though still don’t want it. I may stave it off for a time longer, but eventually I do succumb. I either pass out in front of the monitor or I occasionally go out of my way to actually get into bed.

Either way, I’m going to sleep now.

We’ll talk about work another time. Today was my day. Enjoy yours whilst I sleep it all away. I already wasted mine, yet again. I will tomorrow too. And maybe the next day after that.




I sometimes wonder if everything I do is a cry for help.