Tonight it was not the 12:30am Saturday night closing, or the ritual humiliation of minimum-wage work, or the wait for a train that never came, or the hour-long search for a taxi, or the freezing cold. It was the hammering realisation of my own powerlessness in the world.
My life is a hollowed-out shell, unlived and unpopulated, lonely and characterised by escapism and cowardice. My intelligence has not resulted in success, or my education in wealth. I have run away from all the things that make life valuable and good, leaving a string of half-completed satisfactions and conversations which trail off into silence. I have no skill in making life, of building a foundation for gladness or for continuity of any kind.
My hit-and-run existence has lead me to a bleak and desolate place, and my punishment is to be alone with my thoughts.
I am monarch of all I survey;
My right there is none to dispute;
From the centre all round to the sea
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
O Solitude! where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?
Better to dwell in the midst of alarms,
Than reign in this horrible place.
The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk
William Cowper (1731–1800)
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2 comments:
Look man, we all been there in out late twenties, regret and dissatisfaction abound but you just need to get out of it one step at a time. Get a low paying office job, just temp so you cna be a desk jockey for a while and get out of customer service and then move up from there. winter does suck though, summer will be better, just stick at going to all the job intervies you can.
About those things which hurt, you write well.
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