we are born alone. we die alone. between that we have moments where the loneliness seems to fade and we are connected. but it is never to last.
I’m lonely.
It’s just one of those moments. I don’t consider myself scared of death. But dying alone is a frightening reality in this moment.
The other thing: I am thinking of moving. I like my apartment accept for three things: (1) It is small (2) I share a bathroom (3) I share a bathroom with an insane german man.
I want more space, er, possibilities to say, watch a movie on a couch, make art, make a mess, play bass really loud. To be creatively expressive.
Sharing a bathroom is fucking disgusting. It’s a gross bathroom to begin with, combined with thinking about the gross dude’s bathroom activities and the remnants of such that I have to clean up, or more often than not, choose not to clean up.
He is insane. He is disgusting. He yells, but not anymore cause I got the landlord to tell him to stop being such a twat or else he would have to go to the mental health board. for real. power is being more sane, or atleast able to control when I yell obscenities, or atleast being able to sick the authorities on the insane.
Pete’s place is a viable option. His roomies are all splitting, so i figure he’ll be looking for new ones. I like his place. It’s comfy, for the most part. He has a studio, which is the nice thing. I can set up my drums and play them whenever. I can record and make music. I will have ceiling height and space to make art. I will be living in Gastown again, which is convenient, but not homey – not homey like 7th and Carolina is with it’s view and trees and park and nice people out walking their nice dogs in their nice coats on a nice sunday.
Gonna think a little more about it. Wish i didn’t have to, but i do.
Oh the other thing… I had this thought yesterday. I was at Devitt’s house, and we were fucking around on his computer and my the topic of my sickness came up, and i mentioned how I’ve been badly sick three times since the beginning of december, which i thought was a lot for me. I was thinking outloud saying, “what the fuck is up with my immune system? it’s shitting the bed.” and then I said jokingly, “maybe I have the HIV” and then I got thinking…. What if i did have the HIV. then I asked myself, if I knew my time on this earth was super limited like that, what would I be doing differently? what came to mind first was, I would take all my savings and move to somewhere hot. my second thought was, I would not be moping around waiting for life to happen. I would not be living in a one bedroom apartment. Since that thought about my life being limited my whole perception has sort of reflected that dire mode… A part of me that would have held back and go cautiously died. A part of me that presses urgency and importance grew stronger. Life is short. I’ve almost been sober a year, and it’s gone by so fast. Before I know it my twenties will be gone and I’ll be thirty. I feel an urgency to get living and get things done. I think maybe this is a trend for me, a feeling of urgency preceded by a period of dark depression, the urgency resurrecting me from my sedated depression to go out and forge new directions. Or maybe not. I’ll check back later.
I just applied to UBC! So yeah, I have considered it for a while, a few months I guess and I just took the action that will preciptate change. While I don’t need to decide yet, I am considering studying phychology. It was either that or philosophy, and I think psych is more useful and practical. It’s strange, cause I have no career goal or expectation going in to this. My motivation for going back to university is one of personal gain. I have been thinking about growing old lately. I don’t want to be 40 and look back and have not accomplished this. Getting a degree is just an important thing to me that I need to remind myself that I am not a scumbag, that I can achieve great things and that I am an intelligent, thinking being. I need it to validate my existence. I expect that graduating with a BA will not really expand my career opportunities. I think careers are hard to come by no matter what. But what I will have when I graduate is knowing that I put the time and effort in to getting something and learning a great deal about a subject. After that I can still do whatever it is I want.
There is some apprehension as I write this, thinking about the future. 2010 Olympics mean a great deal of work in the trades up until then, the next four years. Right now is such a good time to get in to the trades in BC. Work is abundant and pays relatively well. Carpenter helpers and framers are making $20 under the table. But here’s the thing, while that path would guarantee me money and employment stabilty for the next few years, I would have to live everyday with the fact that I am the same as those dudes I see hammering nails and lifting wood on every constuction site I see, and have to live with the fact that I don’t have a BA and haven’t studied psych. I just want to know that I still have a brain. I don’t want to be my worst nightmare – a 40 year old living in with a mortgage on a shitty home out in the ‘burbs married to some whench, with a bunch of responsibilites aged 8-12, and my life consisting of hammering nails every day and going to AA meetings that remind me that I’m genetically defective and socialy inept. That life sounds like suicide, and it is not my picture of a healthy, comfortable life.
When I was in treatment I met a bunch of people. Some of them were young but many were older, of all ages. This was when I really starting talking to people that were 45+ other than my parents and feeling comfortable about it – seeing them as ordinary people like me. Well, I met this old guy named Sam. He must have been 65. He was in there for heavy drinking that nearly killed him and destroyed his home life. He was president of this company specializing in marine radar systems. He did very well for himself and had a nice home in Sydney (the Victoria one, not the Australia one). I talked with him a lot and we became good friends. We were on our daily walks one day, a few days before he was to be discharged and we were talking like friends do. He said something to me that I still remember.
He said, “Nick, you’re so young. So young. You are so immensely lucky to have the rest of your life ahead of you.”
Curious, I asked him if he could give one piece of wisdom to someone my age on how to have a good life, what would it be.
He said, “Go to university. Get a degree. It doesn’t matter in what. All that matters is that you get a degree. I never did, and I still regret it to this day. It expands you, makes you a fuller person, and a more aware member of the world.”
I really appreciated his response evidently, cause I don’t usually remember anything, and we had that conversation over two years ago.
I have only applied. I may not even get in, but I think it is likely that I will be accepted. My first program choice was the Bachelor of Arts. I had to pick a second choice program, and the only other thing that looked remotely interesting was a Bachelor of Fine Arts in which I selected a Major in Creative Writing. So if I don’t get in to the BA progam, i may still be accepted in the BFA program, which I would not really be so in to, but i had to have a second choice.
Going to go try to eat breakfast at Reno’s. My throat still really hurts. Maybe a 5 out of the 10 that it was. So it’s gotten better, but it’s not better. Anyway. Gonna try to slam it with a whole bunch of solid food. Ha. Stupid fucking throat. trying to starve this human. I don’t think so. Biatch throat. I fucking kill you.
Things progressed from my last post. My throat became completely covered in those white puss ulcers and when they come off they bleed. So my throat became a pus-covered, bleeding pile of shit. I was prescribed a bunch of shit, none of which worked, except the Empracets. The empracets were good. I kept a very routined injestion habit of them for a few days. Two caps every 4 hours. For about 5 days. Sometimes the pain was so great even after leaving the second hour. then i would take a nap so i would not have to feel the pain. I’d wake up at the four hour mark and slam another two caps and feel okay enough to sip some green tea, all the while my mom nagging me that i need to eat something. When your throat has open bleeding sores and you have to struggle through a rigorous pill-taking regiment to even sip water, it is pretty unfathomable to think of trying to eat anything. Nevertheless, i managed to eat something like a bowl of apple sauce and a bowl of yoghurt everyday for the past week. That’s basicaly all i’ve eaten. Yesterday I experimented eating solid food for the first time in 9 days. it was some chicken and some baked potato. I seemed to be able to choke it down if i chewed it really well and chased every bite with green tea. Green tea is really my saviour in all this. Seems to be the only thing aside from sleep and empracets that gives me any relief.
Speaking of empracets – I’m off them now. I took my last one Wednesday night. I stopped taking them on my own behalf. My mom was freaking out about them since I got them prescribed. At first she said, “If they prescribe you codeine, I don’t think you should take them.” To which I thought, “You have no idea how much fucking misery I am in right now.” She kept bringing it up everyday since monday, saying, “You should get off those pain pills, they scare me. They’re very addictive, you know.” I knew it was scaring her and it kind of annoyed me that it scared her. I was never in to those kinds of downers. Not to say that i couldn’t get in to them. I probably would have gladly abused them previously in my life. I probably would have at one point latched on to them, given a solid supply and an environment conducive to taking them. So why didn’t I latch on to them? I had a bottle of 40 and then another bottle of 30. I only took maybe 8 of the second bottle, and the rest are still at my parent’s house. Surely I could have devised a scheme to sneak a few away. Surely I could have manipulated the doctors in to giving me a scrip that only I knew about and then have it filled in secrecy and pop away. I could have. But I didn’t want to. I guess I just saw these pills as a doctor’s order, and to not abuse it. I saw the danger for what it was, a warning of what could happen if i do not heed the warning. Also, the codeine was seriously killing my libido and i really want to have sex with my girlfriend.
Jeff, liking what you’re writing lately. You have a beautiful mind.
I have many fillings. I also have that horrible bacterial infection known as strep throat back there. This is so fucking painful. Fever clocked at 39.5 today.
After a couple days of really bothersome pain, I went to the doctor this morning. He told me I have strep throat. It really hurts to swallow. Being unable to swallow in turn makes it difficult to speak. I have a fever of 39.3. I really don’t feel very stoked on life right now. Infact, heroin sounds like a really nice way to exist right now, except for the obvious shit storm of side effects essentially voiding that option.
I took my stitches out. They were really bothering me so I figured it was time for them to go. There’s still a really gnarly scar which may take some time to completely close up. In other flesh-wound news, I discovered an abscess on a finger on my right hand this morning when i woke up. I suppose the skin had healed over a sliver which turned in to an infection sub-dermally which resulted in the abscess. I was pretty ashamed of it when I discovered it because a large part of me feels that abscesses are preventable and are the sort of thing that Main-Hastings junkies get, not me. Good thing my mom is a nurse, that has really paid off over the years, she always knows what to do to take care of anything.
I have been sick for the past few days. Intense fever, really swollen glands, sore throat and a really intense headache. My body is really sore too, but I think that’s from staying in bed for 36 hours straight. My fever is probably the most concerning. I am sweating constantly, soaking through my clothes regularly and if i’m not bundled up in clothes I am shivering because I am so cold, even though I’m still sweating. My mom is more concerned that I am. She pointed out that this is the third time I have been sick with a high fever since the beginning of december. I don’t know what that means exactly, other that that my immune system is seriously shittin the bed the last two months.
My one definite spiritual experience happened when I had a high fever. The conditions were similar to this. I was 10 years old, hit with a high fever and was bed-ridden for days. My mom had tucked me in her bed so she could look after me and I remember the comfort of her King-size bed and melting away in to the gigantic pillows. My temperature was high, and I was not eating. I was in and out of sleep for days and would only get up to pee. Somewhere between being awake and being asleep I hallucinated a vision that I remember clearly to this day. This vision was so powerful that I would call it a spiritual experience, because it was so powerful not just visually but emotionally as well. In the darkness of this vision I saw a Sphere. The Sphere’s size was indetermined because there was nothing to compare it to. It was just a Sphere, and all around it blackness, like the blackness of space, a vaccuum containing nothing. The Sphere in the center of this void was in fact the exact opposite of the vaccuum of space, it was everything. Nothing was not the Sphere and everything was a part of it. Its mass was infinite, but its size obscure as previously mentioned. The mass of the Sphere was so great and I felt so connected to the mass of the Sphere, as though it were directly affecting me, like a weight upon me, crushing everything in me, or atleast with the capacity to do so effortlessly. The Sphere was spinning at a tremendous rate. It rotated with the precision of an electron as it orbits around its neutron. Radiating off the surface of the Sphere was a very hot heat. A heat as intense as the sun. The mass, the rotation and the heat. I had the feeling that anything that touched the Sphere would be destroyed, completely anhialated instantly. The surface of the Sphere was metallic. That said, The Sphere was not a mechanical object, but i do believe it was an intelligent being.I need to exentuate that the vision I had of the sphere was just as emotional as it was visual, so that I could have seen nothing of the Sphere and still known its presence. I felt a great deal of fear, Holy trembling fear. The sweat dripping from my forehead and neck felt as a direct result of the Sphere altering me. I could hear screaming, but screams that were so suddenly silenced by the magnitude of the Sphere that they were never wearisome. I simply understood that the Sphere was to end the world. I’ve analyzed this dream/vision/hallucination quite a bit since I had it. It could have been a vision of what dying feels like, or maybe what it feels like to be dead. Or maybe I witnessed the end of the world, when we are all so efficiently wiped from existence. I have found another person who has shared my vision. It happened to him in an eerily identical situation. He was young, about 8 or 9. He was experiencing a high-fever and was bed-ridden. He described to me seeing a sphere, which he has named The Egg. WE described back and forth to each other the feelings we felt during that vision and the coincidence of similarity in our experience is truly remarkable. But not a lot can be done about it really. As profound as an experience it was to me at that time and still is today, what can i really do about it now? While I can remember clearly the way I felt during that experience it is hard to really give that experience much weight today. What was the Sphere trying to tell me? I don’t know.
I just spent about an hour writing a really great post. And then in a fury of writing hit some key combo that closed the window and lost the whole fucking thing. Furious. I feel robbed of that moment. Fucking computers.
Just reading my post from yesterday. My english has gotten to be atrocious. Bad grammar. Bad sentence structure. Spelling mistakes. This bothers me greatly.