TITHONUS' DIARY!!
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number down, awayies Hey hey, here I am again, almost like a regular update, amazing, isn't it? - Ahem. - Actually, mainly I'm here because a mysterious person signed my guestbook as "one of your many followers", and left a lovely complimentary message, but no diary details or email address or anything. So, um, reveal yourself, masked stranger! Please? - In other news, I was thinking something today as I rode my bicycle home, which resulted in me nearly getting killed by a van, which was mainly my own fault, because when you're cycling on the streets of a big city, it's important to concentrate. - Anyway, I was thinking about... life, and stuff. There's this joke I told my sister and her girlfriend last night. I'm thinking about moving and worrying about the dangers of becoming a shut-in if I live on my own, and one of them asked me if I was ever going to have a girlfriend again. And I said (this is the joke, you're likely to miss it if I don't signpost it) "I had a girlfriend once, and it didn't work out. I won't be making that mistake again." - Anyway, it seemed very funny at the time, but thinking it over later, I realised this is more or less the attitude I've been taking. And so I've been thinking about... how to get what I want from life without having to have a girlfriend. Part of it is sex, of course. But also, having enjoyable conversations, having the feeling that my life is for something and that I'm not just killing the days between today and my funeral, feeling that I'm not totally selfish on the one hand, and that I don't just exist in order for other people to exploit me, on the other. I'm not explaining this very well. - Part of the conversation is about how I'm a pushover. See, one of my flatmates has been using my internet connection, and I don't like it. I would feel petty telling him not to use it, but it's just... he leaves things in my room, he takes my CDs out of the player or the computer without putting them in their cases, leaving them randomly strewn about to gather dust, blah blah blah... and the other day he broke a medicine bottle of mine that had been on the floor. I arrived home to find him using my computer and it was lying there on the floor and he said, "oh yeah, sorry, I came in here and it was dark and I trod on that and broke it. Sorry. I was going to clean it up later." And as I picked up the pieces and put them in the bin I said, "No, that's fine, don't worry about it". The thing is, it totally wasn't fine. He fucking came into my room and didn't bother to put the lights on (is he brain damaged?) and then broke something of mine, which is not cool, and then didn't fucking bother to clean up after himself. This is not fine. It's the behaviour of an out-and-out fuckwit. Except he's not a fuckwit, but... I am not assertive enough. I hate conflict. For me conflict means... standing up to my mother and getting belted for it. HOW DARE YOU YOU UNGRATEFUL LITTLE SHIT *smack* So yeah, I hate conflict of any sort. I will do anything to avoid conflict. - But the result is that I find it painful to be around other people because they tread on me and don't realise it because I don't say anything and then I want to get away from them and they don't understand why. - With the result that I am becoming a hermit. I swore off ever playing computer games again last night. Wish me luck. But with the internet, my CDs, books, and computer games, I basically hide from the rest of the world and recover from all of the unpleasantness... until the loneliness is so bad that I have to venture out into the world a little way... and then I find that the long stretches alone have made me socially awkward because I've forgotten how to talk to other people, and then I resolve to spend more time with other people to "get back into things", and I spend some time doing that and find it exhausting because I don't stand up for myself and I get used and I don't even realise it because I don't know what my boundaries are, and the only sense I have of it is just this urgent feeling that I've got to get away, get away from them, get back to my little cave, my little den, to my computer and my books and my crap... it's all just garbage, what does it mean? All these things I use to fend off reality, to dull and distract myself so that I won't have to address the way I really feel... I feel fucking terrible. I am angry and in pain and lonely. But I'm not a saint or a martyr; this is what I was saying in a roundabout way in the last entry. I take those bad feelings and do bad things with them to other people, who don't deserve it. I find underhanded ways to make other people take part of my burden. But it doesn't make me feel any better. It doesn't work. Nothing works. - So, here's what I was thinking about when the van almost killed me. Two futures, two possible futures: - 1. I am a sad, fat, middle aged man, who lives with his mother, knows only other hopeless-case nerds, hasn't had sex in twenty years, owns a huge collection of pornography, owns a huge collection of computer games, owns a huge collection of nerdy videos and entertainment equipment... and has no conception of a possible future that is any different to the misery he is experiencing now, or that is to say, is doing his damnedest not to experience now. - 2. I am a harried, sad, slightly less fat, middle aged married man, married to a demanding and controlling woman he doesn't particularly know or like, with two children he never sees, who resent him for his absence, with a job he doesn't particularly like but can't quit because he is responsible for these three people who he hardly sees, owning no pornography but constantly dreaming of leaving his wife for younger, sexier women, hating himself for being a bad father, resenting other men who are better fathers than himself, seeing no future that might be different to this, trying desperately to stay numb to it all (perhaps hidden alcoholism?) and waiting for it to end. - Those are the futures I see for myself. I am... I am young and strong and clever and capable of learning new things, I am soulful and good-natured and want only to do the right thing by others if I possibly can, avoiding hurting people if I possibly can, but that is what I see for myself in the years ahead, and I want so badly for it not to be that way but that's what it looks like to me. It really scares me. I want out. This is why I've sworn off computer games. I don't want future number one. But I don't want future number two, either. But I don't see how I can avoid both of them. - I have so much going for me, I'm so lucky. I am really a very, very lucky guy. But... is there any hope that it will turn out differently? Is there something else that guys like me can become? - "Baby I don't know Why I go To extremes" - Billy Joel |
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