Today, while talking to my therapist, I admitted I have a problem with alcohol. I don't drink vodka straight from the bottle in the mornings or hide whisky in my jacket pocket for when I'm out and about, but I have realised that I compare everything I do to the fun of getting wrecked. My depression and anxiety are so acute that when I'm sober I am either so anxious about a range of racing, unfocused thoughts that I can't concentrate on anything or I feel so miserable that I don't get any pleasure from anything. One of the reasons I've always felt as if there was something wrong, is that I don't enjoy wholesome, supposedly naturally "fun" things like country walks, football or any sport for that matter. The whole culture that is attached to sport or exercise alienates me entirely. Pushing yourself, feeling the burn, being part of a team, all that shit means less than nothing to me. I work better alone, hence starting out as a freelance writer and I feel nothing but exhaustion and a sense that all the shouting and running around taking place near to my person is not only utterly futile, but extremely irritating. I don't enjoy displays of machismo or bravado at all. I have punched people in the face in the past. Even headbutted somebody once, so when it comes down to it, I can express my inherent sense of testosterone driven lad, but it's almost always a last resort and never something I find fun. I like to think we've evolved beyond using grunts and shouts to communicate and the idea of hoofing a ball around, climbing up and over stuff or driving dead fast around a track just makes me shrug as if someone had offer me a segment of unripe, bitter orange. I'm just not interested.
When I'm at my happiest I'm dancing around at a drum and bass night or similar, noisy musical event that involves getting a little bit wrecked. I can and have enjoyed a few nights like this sober in the past, so all is not completely lost, but at the same time, the warm, fuzzy feeling of being surrounded by bass and bouncing bodies while you are half cut is literally irreplacable to me. Similarly, the lazy stretch of a Sunday afternoon high watching TV that's so basic you have to be a little bit hammered to watch it, is a definite high point for me. I'm INFJ if you go in for Carl Yung and his personality types. That means I'm not naturally sociable and need my own space to recharge as I find social interactions both enjoyable and exhausting. People irritate me, what can I say. Sometimes I like to speak to them, other times, I really don't want to hear their shit. I have enough to deal with, what with feeling suicidal at times and having been through more therapists than you would imagine for a man of 36. So happiness to me has always been cerebral. An escape from my own poisonous thoughts or a soft focus around the edges of an intense musical experience, a film or a game. Sober activities like mixing can provide enjoyment but I need to practice feeling a sense of pleasure rather than just a sense of innate criticism of my own abilities and the poor quality of my DJing equipment. I can just focus on the music when I'm high or drunk, but not when I'm sober. This and a range of many other things, is why I have decided that I need to take a sustained break until I can feel some kind of pleasure or enjoyment in day to day life.
I have always despised going to work. Not in the cheeky, wink wink, oh you don't need to be mad here, but it helps, kind of way. The actual, feeling physically sick at the thought of having to spend so much time in the same room as people you would happily never see or speak to again if you were given the choice, way. I never felt good for giving advice to young people, no matter how much they thanked me for my time and I never felt good for teaching kids English and other things in schools and colleges. All I felt was a sense that I had managed to fake it through for another day and that eventually, probably before the end of the week, I could get shitfaced and do something cool again. I know a lot of people dislike their jobs, but to regularly think about suicide because you can't comprehend a life of doing things you hate, if that's normal, then somebody has been keeping it a secret.
I have literally no idea what I'm supposed to do now. Everything that motivated me was based on the promise of getting wrecked. I couldn't give a shit about food and the process of preparing it, shopping for it, talking about it or even thinking about it too much bores the living piss out of me. I have as much interest in food as I do in taking a shit. It's just something that has to be done. I don't like kids or the seemingly monotonous, bland lifestyle that comes with raising a family, so I have no aspirations in that direction whatsoever. I appreciate that some people might want that and like everybody I can smile when people show me cute pictures of their offspring or relations, but in my gut, I don't want that for myself. The sleepless nights, the worry, the expense and the restrictions on lifestyle put me off so much that it doesn't seem worth it to me. Travel is similarly unappealing. Admittadly, I would like to travel if I could afford to stay in four star hotels and eat in good quality restaurants every night while watching bands, going to nightclubs and doing other things I enjoy; but the majority of travel stories I hear involve roughing it, living out of a backback, sleeping on trains and a whole lot of walking about and looking at temples. I just don't care about shit like that. I'm aware of architecture and art, cultural and heritage sites etc, but if you asked me to choose between wandering about looking at a thousand year old castle or getting high and listening to loud bass in a club, it would be the second one, every single time.
I've tried these things. I've tried sport, I don't like it. Food's fine but I couldn't give a shit about talking bollocks about ingredients or the cultural resonance of my black pasta and truffle shavings. Raising a family seems like sacrificing the freedom, privacy and autonomy that I consider one of the only reasons it's actually sometimes alright to be alive. I just can't imagine giving up all the things that make life enjoyable to eventually rot away watching terrible TV about other people who watch terrible TV but say cleverly written sound bites at opportune moments. If that's all there is, I'm in trouble. I would rather be dead than so unhappy that my only release is kicking a ball around or cooking an elaborate meal. Yes there's always beer or other things, but that's been my point all along. If that's all there is to make me happy, something isn't right and I need to find something else. I have no idea what that something is, but the way I'm living at the moment is doing nothing but setting me up for a fall that I might never get up from. So from tomorrow, it's done. I'm going to be a miserable, boring, angry bastard, but I will be alive and trying to stay that way.
Sorry to end on a downer, but depression tends to do that to you.
Cheers.
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