Man Of Few Words

Chapter 14

I interrupt this no-doubt very entertaining tale of sexual discovery (it's not finished yet) to bring you... death. Sort of.

Having promised frequent mentions of death at the start, I feel I've been neglecting that particular subject for a while now. Writing this book has been helping take my mind off it, actually.

But not tonight. Tonight I feel like a dying man.

I just want it now. Death, that is. I'm just in a limbo and it's... it's not even the pain. I'm feeling no pain right now. It's the... emptiness, the pointlessness. I've spent my whole life steering myself towards a comfortable future that just isn't going to happen.

And I have a past I can't change, can't go back to.

You don't need to be dying to realise this shit – but it helps.

What's the point in writing a book. It's just a way to connect with people without going anywhere near them. Just me and this fucking laptop screen. Some pastime that is.

Why didn't I ever take up ballroom dancing? Or mountain climbing? Or music? Something I could have done as part of a team.

I thought I didn't need people. Just a few words and plenty of money.

This fucking book. If I'd lived the life I wish I had, then I'd have actual people to tell these stories to. In person. They'd laugh, they'd cry, they'd tell me how much they were going to miss me, and we'd all agree not to talk about that. Better to talk about yet another one of my wonderful anecdotes.

All this book is good for is stringing my brain along into thinking I still have some use for it, when the truth is that my mind has become a burden. There's an almost overwhelming numbness... a feeling of impotence and redundancy. It just makes me want to destroy. Just to feel like I have some meaning, some energy.

My mind is yearning for some meaning, when in fact it's the very thing to blame for leading me to the watertight conclusion that there isn't any. Not anywhere. Not in anything.

I wish I could cry, I wish I could bolt to my feet, pick up this laptop and throw it through a mirror. I wish I could scream myself hoarse. I wish I could wake up the whole neighbourhood. I wish I could beat my fists against this desk 'til they were bloodied and broken. I want to gnash my teeth so hard that they break.

But I'm doing, and probably will do, none of these things.

I'm just going to cling to this book... it's not even a book, it's a document. It's a file. Nothing more. I'm just going to cling to it until I die.

No one is clinging to me.

And that – that one thought – pokes a hole in the numbness. Lets in a little bit of pain. Not the kind you can kill with morphine. Only a little, just very little. I can barely feel it. I still can't cry or gnash my teeth. But I can feel that the emptiness isn't just on the inside. It's on the outside too.

Is that progress, I wonder? It doesn't feel like it. I don't feel I've achieved what I need to achieve to be at rest. Not "at rest" in the biblical, dead kind of a way. Really, I just want a break from feeling this way. A time-out from dying. If I could just take a day or two off of dying, I swear I'd get right back into it with a revitalised level of commitment.

As it is, I'm really dragging my feet here. Totally disillusioned with both life and death.

You know death is, in a way, a total disconnection from everything. But I can't imagine feeling any more disconnected than I do now.

I can't wait for my funeral. I hope I get to watch.

Even this writing is becoming disconnected. I'm still alive, but I have apparently ceased to flow. But I can't stop. Not until I can rest. And I can't rest. I just... can't.

It would've been deliciously ironic to have ended the chapter there, wouldn't it? I'll end it here instead. Way less satisfying, but you know what? Fuck you.