Apatheia, Athambia, Aphasia.

It's been a while, for a few reasons. Blogging takes willpower, which I have a deficit of. I also thought that I needed to try to express more personally and keep some record of my monotonous days, so I kept a journal on my laptop in March and the beginning of April. Another thing is that I like my own posts to be rambling, opinionated, and strewn with attempted humour, and often I don't feeling writing that sort of thing.

I think I should preface this post by saying that you don't have to read it, you probably won't get much out of reading it, and we might be both more comfortable if you didn't. It's glum, uninteresting and entirely self-indulgent. I also need to stress that though I may waste your time with dollar shop angsting and emo whining, I know that my so-called problems are extraordinarily insignificant in comparison to what most people on this planet, in this country and even in my suburb would go through every day. I have absolutely no entitlement to feel sorry for myself, and though my attitude and directionless is concerning me a little at the moment, my life still is pretty good as much as it is mediocre, and a lot more than at it is bad.

Today, for example, had several fantastic things. I had tea and brownies with the wonderful Anna Hyde and I saw 'Waiting for Godot' with Mr Tongs, which was easily the best thing I've ever seen. The title of this post are three words I liked from the play and looked up when I got home. Apatheia is the absence of caring, Aphasia is an inability to communicate and I have absolutely no idea what Athambia means but would love to find out. Try them some time (I'm also getting into "visceral" in essays, it's a guaranteed breadwinner).  

Well here goes. Bits from my diary thing and between me writing now.

12 April

The train rattles to the city and I sit amongst the passengers. One guy has a hash brown in held in his mouth, and quickly raises his hands when I look at him. Some read books I'll never read. Most of the others are staring out the window, or into their own reflections. I'm feeling very unenthusiastic about university today. I don't like the anxiousness it gives me about assignments. I don't like them because I'm afraid of their difficulty and because I seem to inevitably delay them till pretty much after their due. This procrastination, in want of a better term, is one of my biggest problems in everything. I'm incapable of keeping promises to myself.

Tomorrow, I will be completing and submitting two assignments. One is worth 30% of a subject and was due yesterday, the other is 10% and was due Monday.  

18 April

Should I leave university? I appear to hate it. I have a horrible cycle of declining weeks and no achievements, at the moment the stress and self fucking frustration that comes with things like this totally outweighs any indifferent cheeriness I feel on a good day and a passing interest in a lecture. But what would I do if I deferred?  

A few weeks ago at work, the guy I was working with told me of how he was studying international relations, was planning to work for Oxfam and then eventually the United Nations. He asked me what I wanted to do. Desperately attempting to look interesting, I said maybe a novelist, but I knew that it was practically impossible to get into. He frowned slightly. 

"I know this sounds really wanky man, but if you put your mind to it you actually can achieve pretty much anything you want to." It didn't. I agree with him completely. It's the want that's the problem. 

28 April

I realised that all of the vague aspirations I have are pretty much a childish desire to be famous. Artist, author, comedian, journalist, tv person, actor, politician, activisty thing, musician. They're all purely craving affirmation. I feel a little knot in my chest typing this, because it's probably one of the things I want most. 

On the same day, on the way home on the tram, I noticed an old man taking to a woman in her 20s. Their conversation seemed interesting so I turned off my ipod and listened in. They'd never met before. He was 70, born in China, and had an infectious smile and charming stories about the friends he'd made on trams.  He sung in a choir, played in an opera, wrote poetry and had two grown up sons. He told the girl and her sister that the one thing worth having in life was happiness. Within a fifteen minutes he had a quarter of the tram happily chatting, quickly graduating from total strangers to old friends. One middle aged woman with short Burgundy hair joined in, talking about her own children. A lawyer of maybe thirty in a woolen grey suit and hat moved down the train to join the conversation, telling the old man:

"I couldn't help but hear your philosophy on happiness being the only thing in life that matters. I had cancer when I was 14 and have epilepsy now, but in some respects it's been a blessing."
I eventually took out my headphones and introduced myself, glowing inside. Minutes passed. I said nothing else, and no-one had anything to say to me. The old man hopped off at his stop, waving to all. The middle aged woman and the girls kept talking. I joined in briefly, asking the same question twice in a row then said nothing, head downcast. Eventually I put my headphones back in. This time I played music. The girls left three stops before mine and said "Goodbye Ben!". I dropped my book as I attempted to wave, and mumbled "Goodbye...". I'd forgotten their names.

25 April

I've always been too curdled with self-revulsion to even get close to making a move on a girl. I can read that fleeting distaste at my more awful jokes, that barely conscious disgust at my ridiculous over-articulated self-indulgent attention seeking bullshit. The fact that I go up three steps at a time with my head bowed like quasimodo. The fact that I'm forever pawing my greasy hair. That my arms are like bones thinly mummified with yellowed serviettes. 

The patronizing, the regular hookups, the glurgey cliché romances I'm supposed to appreciate, the break ups I'm supposed to feel for and the "it's SOOOOOO much worse when you've had sex and then you don't get it for months!". It hurts, people have no idea how much it hurts, how wormlike and pathetic it all makes you feel. I have reached a point that is crushingly close to acceptance.  

It's almost five a clock, my eyes are drooping, I'm still wearing a three piece suit and have donned a bowler hat.

26 April

Waste deep in the tepid sludge of miserly thoughts and awful words.

I'm lying in bed. I think my parents unplugged the internet to try to make me go to bed, thinking that the sole reason for my solemn glumness was sleep deprivation. I heard it again today.

"He doesn't care about anyone except himself."

They're doing their best to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. My main issue is with the second part.

I feel like there's nothing at all to do. I'm aware of cheapness of my ricepaper writing, the shoddiness of my bloated adjectives. It's like I'm stifled by a self-cringingness. 

I have no tragedy, however tiny and dint-like, to store these thoughts and so I float in them. No storm-water hole, no outlet or joy or oppression into which the grey washing water can recede.

I hate people who can write, I have nothing to say.

I need to sleep. I need to go. I feel alone and awful.  

Thanks for reading that. I'm really not like this all the time, or even often, but I wanted to get some this off my chest. Appreciated.

"If only I had an enemy bigger than my apathy I could have won." — Mumford and Sons