“I stood alone once again, my fragile heart somehow still beating. I often wondered how that thing kept working after all these years; after all the ache and pain I had put it through. Even it just cutting out for a minute would be understandable, but that beating just went defiantly on, pumping the blood through my veins, fueling my existential flame that flickered as a brief flash of light in this eternal universe. My heart obviously had more hope in me than the rest of me did. I wasn’t doing so great, but I was still here: a crooked smile on my face and dreams wafting around my hungover head. I stood dazed and confused at the age of thirty-two, wondering where the hell I was going to head next. My life path was like that of some vagrant wandering down a dark road on the edge of town, looking at the flickering lights of cheap hotels and wondering in which one he could momentarily rest before drifting on some more. It seemed that the youthful me who had fervently chased his dreams had changed to this sullen drifter of the night – a man simply searching for some shelter, rather than some grand haven. A man no longer trying to climb a mountain, but just summoning the strength to get out of bed. A man no longer trying to write some great novel, but just jotting down a few simple sentences. My god, what was I even becoming? I looked in the mirror and wanted to behold those eyes that stared fiercely back at me in my twenties, but such a life was now something seemingly in the past. The merciless dagger of time had taken its swing, and what was I but yet another man secretly bleeding out before everyone’s eyes.”
It’s a Saturday evening and I’m home alone Trying to write a poem I’m listening to ambient music Looking at pretty pictures of sunsets Hoping that inspiration will strike As the words come flooding onto the page.
It’s a strange process that is hard to explain But doing this, instead of being at the bar, Well it gives me the sort of joy That one only gets when they are in touch With something spiritual and sacred.
For some reason I decided to be a writer I’ve been doing it for over ten years now Nothing has really made much sense to me Except when I’m organising words together.
School didn’t come naturally Jobs didn’t come naturally Social life didn’t come naturally But for some reason this did.
And that’s why I’m here tonight Still giving it all that I’ve got Sailing out on the sea of creative thought Lowering my net into the depths And trying to catch a big juicy 200 pound poem to take home And display on my wall.
For now it appears I’ve only caught this one Which, admittedly, isn’t my best But hey, I’m having fun Typing these words Jamming out alone On a Saturday evening.
I’ll think I’ll even crack open a beer As I keep on sailing on this sea Doing the thing which puts everything in the right place Which makes me feel like I’m on that dancefloor Busting my moves and celebrating life In all its strange joy.
“I don’t know Ryan,” he said. “I really don’t know. I’m just so disappointed with my species. I give up on them. There is just so much potential for humanity, yet here we are wasting our lives in trivial routine, going through the motions, following outdated traditions, chasing materialistic things which don’t really make us happy. The way people treat each other is so bad. And even the way people treat themselves. People are their own worst enemies; they slowly build their own cages bar by bar – out of fear, comfortability, security, and conformity. Anything just to fit in and not think independently. Why Ryan, why? Life is such a glorious opportunity but we throw it away so willfully with these ridiculous lives we live.”
I could see my good friend Bryan had finally reached the point in his life where he had simply given up on the world. Idealism had given way to nihilism and I watched as he downed the rest of his beer before throwing it onto the pile of empty bottles which had been gradually accumulating since my arrival. I was visiting him in his holiday home in The Netherlands. It was a small cabin in a holiday park which he had recently bought for ten thousand euros. You were only supposed to use it for vacations, but Bryan had decided to live there full-time. He was working as an urban planner in Rotterdam, but only had to be in the office two times a week which allowed him to ‘work’ from his cabin the other days. He was supposed to be engaged in his employment activities right this moment, but here he was drinking beers in his garden while putting the world to rights with me. I asked if he wanted another beer to which he reminded me it was time to take some psychedelic drugs.
“Don’t you have any work to do today?” I asked.
“What’s the point, honestly, I don’t care about this bullshit job. It’s so badly managed, I can do what I want. And if I get fired, then so be it. Like you said, the collapse of civilisation is coming anyway.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “Let’s go and get high and enjoy the day then.”
We headed back inside to get the magic mushroom truffles from the fridge and began preparing them. Pretty soon we had taken our doses and then hopped on our bikes to cycle to a nearby nature reserve. We rode in the summer sunshine through rural lands and villages while waiting for the first effects to hit. Bryan was a seasoned veteran when it came to psychedelics, regularly doing mushroom and acid trips on his own; I, however, had only taken them a couple of times before – and not at the dose level I had just consumed. The feeling of excitement was mixed in with some apprehension, and I even began to start feeling a bit sick in the stomach, which was not too unusual for a short while after eating magic mushroom truffles, especially when you were also hungover from the night before.
We carried on cycling towards the nature reserve as the landscape became forested. Lush green trees surrounded us as we ventured closer to our destination. Pretty soon we pulled up in the car park and locked our bikes up. It was then that the first little waves of effects began to make themselves known; in particular, tree branches around me looked wavy and the light through the canopy began to have a heavenly quality.
We then made our way through a pathway in the woods that eventually gave way to a vast open expanse of sand dunes. It was a surreal looking landscape; not the type one would envisage when thinking of The Netherlands. There was an otherworldly vibe to it – small scrubs lay across the sandy ground with networks of cobwebs between them; that same lush green forest circled the wide open area before us; dead tree branches lay like skeletons of carcasses in the hot sun. We walked barefoot across that strange land as Bryan played some ambient music from his speaker and I imagined us as two neanderthals roaming the plains of the outback tens of thousands of years ago.
The effects were soon getting stronger as I looked at the ripple lines of the sand beneath my feet. All of it was swaying and swooning in a playful manner. With each step, my feet were swallowed by this sea of sand, before soaring out of its surface again like two dolphins skipping through the water. The sun still stood above us and its searing heat led us to decide to search for some shade. A small way in the distance was a large dune with a few trees that seemed to be the spot the universe was guiding us towards. It was there that we agreed to seek shelter as the effects of the mushrooms started coming on even stronger.
We threw our stuff down and sat down beside a tree trunk. We stared out at the surrounding area of sand dunes which was now looking like some sort of dreamscape, especially with the dust devils that were blowing around us. We were far away from the city life and we may as well have been marooned on another planet. The forest that circled the desert-like expanse we were in was now dancing, taking on that kaleidoscopic pattern which I had only seen representations of in posters and psychedelic artwork. Now it was happening before my eyes as the whole world looked like some sort of fantastical phantasmagoria. When I focused a little more, each tree began to look like a mushroom itself, almost on fire like the landscapes that featured in some of Van Gogh paintings. The world was more vivid and fascinating than ever – some sort of entrancing work of art that I was happily trapped within.
We both carried on enjoying the captivating visual effects while discussing life. Me and Bryan had been friends for eight years at that point after having met while travelling in New Zealand. My closest friend from the past decade of my travels, we were two people who were incredibly similar at our cores – hell, even our names only had one letter difference. Aside from that, our lives just seemed to mirror each other constantly in the things we were experiencing. We both often felt out of place and misunderstood in this society, and deep down we longed for a life of free-spirited adventure instead of the one which the majority of people our age strived for. We were men with similar stories and struggles and I guess we provided some sort of sanity to each other by just knowing our thoughts weren’t completely alien. I knew Bryan was currently more at odds with the world than me though, having expressed ever-growing dissatisfaction since returning home from his last world trip. He was growing increasingly jaded, drifting towards self-destructive and reckless behaviour. Drink driving, skipping work, an increasing detachment from pretty much everything – he truly was a man who was teetering on the edge of sanity and society.
He shared some more thoughts on this as he expressed how unfulfilling his current job was, how traditional middle-aged life was so uninspiring, and how much he missed working in the Tasmanian outback building hiking trails. This led to our frustrations with the system and popular culture as we discussed the possibility of what the world would be like if people regularly took psychedelic substances. “I mean, just look at what these mushrooms can do for people. There’s a natural substance that opens people’s minds to more perspectives, insights and growth? And what is the response of most governments? BAN AND CRIMINALISE IT!!” There was then a short silence before he proclaimed “honestly, what a complete joke.” At that moment, we both burst out into a fit of laughter. Just the authority with which the sentence was said struck deeply at some profound and fundamental level, like a divine truth being uttered. I mean, it was a big joke when I really thought about it. Society was one big madhouse, especially at the moment – PC culture, covid lockdowns, inflation, social media, consumerism, the climate crisis, and the general state in which late stage capitalism had left full-time workers barely able to heat their homes – it was quickly going down the drain and it was only a matter of time before the system collapsed completely. All the while, people voted for their own demise and busied themselves with the consumption of vapid TikTok videos. It was truly something to despair at, but the next thing to do was to laugh. This seemed the logical response for the sake of one’s sanity: just to laugh at the world and at yourself, to see the ridiculousness and absurdity of it all in plain, comic sight – it was a medicine for the soul and at that moment we dosed ourselves with that medicine as we howled atop that hill like two crazed apes.
Once the laughter had died down, a quiet period began and I started to get more introspective. Reflecting more on the feeling that the end times would soon be upon us in society, I couldn’t escape this feeling that my life was also destined to be some tragedy – that a great disintegration was coming of myself too. I simply seemed to face great hardship in life and at times I wondered how much longer I could get by living the way I had been. Now I was at a time in my life when I was acknowledging that I was probably autistic to some degree, and could probably get diagnosed with a few other things which would explain why I felt like I was constantly living my life on hard mode. My life had been a grand adventure but it had also been an immensely difficult ride, and I knew I was at risk of madness or homelessness with my outright inability to fit into this society. At the moment I had no job, no career, and no real talent or trade. I was in a strange place in my life and I no doubt needed to confront some things if I was to make it through another few decades without some sort of disaster occurring.
Deep realisations were hitting me as I sat tripping in the sand, but I was also seeing how beautiful the whole experience of just being alive was as the mushrooms continued to do their work upon my brain. I closed my eyes and saw the most insanely complex patterns unfolding before my eyes. I found it hard to process that my brain was automatically creating this rich tapestry of colours with an indescribable beauty, as great as any work of art I had ever laid eyes upon. Pretty soon after this Bryan put his hand on a nearby tree branch and we could see the tree breathing in and out as the veins in his arm flowed into the veins on the tree. At that moment I saw how we were all a part of some sort of mysterious, singular organism, and that no matter how absurd or ridiculous we felt the world was becoming, everything was going to be okay in some weird, fundamental way.
Eventually we decided we had spent enough time atop our little hill. We continued roaming the nature reserve for another hour as the sun began to drop lower in the sky. Though five hours had passed since dosing, the effects of the mushrooms did not waver and I wondered when, if ever, I was going to return to my ‘normal’ state of mind. It seemed not any time soon as I passed a group of people entering the park who appeared all to have distorted faces, like that of deformed creatures. I questioned whether they were actually deformed, but then another group of people went past looking the same, at which point I concluded it was some weird, trippy effect from the truffles. I was going through a bad part of the trip, but I soon felt better by focusing again on that sunlight still bursting through the tree canopy in a divine and heavenly way.
We finally jumped on our bikes and cycled back to his cabin in the sunset, the last rays of light illuminating the world with a dreamy, serene glaze as psychedelic rock music played from Bryan’s speaker. I couldn’t even feel my legs working as some higher force made it feel like I was gliding along on some sort of hovercraft. Though blissful, it was all a bit too much at some point, and I was happy when we arrived home and the effects finally started to fade. Some points of the trip had simply been too intense for me and I was eager to grab a few beers from the fridge and take the edge off with the comfort and familiarity of being drunk. I sat there drinking a beer in his garden while still appreciating the beauty of the world with fresh eyes, watching little helicopter seeds float down gracefully from a nearby tree, marvelling at my surroundings like a new-born baby.
The next few days I carried on experiencing that afterglow, but some negative effects made themselves known too. Something had triggered in my mind and left it in a restless place it had been before in recent years. I had struggled with insomnia for a while now and it was one of the reasons I now had lost interest in travelling the world like I once had. Simply put, my body needed a routine in which for me to sleep, and as soon as my circadian rhythm was disturbed, then I quickly spiralled into an insomniac state. Now the new environment – coupled with the drinking and the drugs and the heat – had set my brain off once again. It appeared sleep just wasn’t going to happen to any decent degree for the rest of the trip. There were just a few days left so I just accepted what was and sought to make the most of the rare occasion me and Bryan got to hang out together.
The searing summer heat continued as we cycled around, chilled out by lakes, went to bars, ate pizza, played ping pong, and generally had fun like guys fifteen years younger than we were. We spent a day in Amsterdam enjoying the bars and parks and sights of that famous city. Drinking and debates on life was the general vibe as we sought to make the most of the opportunity of having conversations we simply couldn’t have in our normal day-to-day life. To be with someone so similar to you was a strange and cathartic experience, and naturally there was an electric energy in the air. Every time we met this energy invariably led to us partying and causing mischief, and this time was no different as we sipped back those strong Belgian beers and drifted from bar to bar. At one point we cycled drunk to the nearest town, then cycled back blind drunk, leaving me crashing into some ditch at the side of the road, leaving Bryan once again laughing at the absurdity of it all.
Monday morning soon came around following a final night of drinking in Rotterdam. The fun was over and there I was at the end of my trip, in one of the most sleep-deprived and burnt out states I had ever been in. I had just spent five days in the sun, drinking heavily, eating badly, barely sleeping at all, and having the biggest psychedelic trip I’d ever had in my life. I’d been in some depleted states before, but I deemed this to be the most extreme one yet, and I truly felt close to that great collapse that I had envisaged on top of that hill at the nature reserve. I was bordering on being in a state of psychosis, experiencing some auditory and peripheral vision hallucinations, making me wonder if the dose of mushrooms had permanently messed up my mind.
This state wasn’t helped by a day that seemed set out to test me. This day included a delayed flight, sitting in an aeroplane on the runway for an hour in 30 degree heat next to a screaming baby, a delayed bus from the airport in London, waiting for that bus in a thunderstorm that proceeded to follow me up the motorway to Nottingham, and then finally arriving home thirteen hours later to find my landlady’s son trying to hang himself in the garden. The next morning I awoke after another night of bad sleep to hear that there had been a murder rampage in the city centre. Bad vibes were following me all around and the post-partying anxiety was at an all time high.
I didn’t know what to do with myself and I just sat in my garden staring at the noose the landlady’s son had poorly constructed the evening before. I thought of how mentally ill he was, and how messed up the man who had just went on a murder rampage was. I then thought of Bryan’s growing nihilism, the troubles in society, and my growing sense of impending doom upon myself. Maybe the collapse was coming; it certainly seemed like it at that moment in time as I sat in a hole and reflected on the sad state of the world. A great sorrow filled my soul for moments, but then I looked out at my garden and saw the beauty of nature again that had been so prominent while high on those magic mushroom truffles. I saw the chirping birds bobbing from branch to branch. I saw the sunlight again bursting through the trees. I saw the butterflies and the flowers and the artistry of nature in the peak of summer. Maybe there was death, decay, and destruction in this universe – maybe the collapse of civilisation and myself was coming – but I felt once again ultimately everything was going to be okay in some strange way. This universe would keep on weaving its magic, and I would be forever cocooned in some indescribable cosmic blanket of infinity. The fact that I was a part of this great work of art that had been revealed to me on the truffle trip was enough for me to keep on keeping on for now. That was enough to accept the darkness of the world as well as the light. That was enough to pick myself up out of that hole and keep on marching through the tempestuous plains of life, transfixed by the strange wonder of simply being alive.
Be kind to yourself. I know it’s easy to do the opposite; to constantly compare yourself to others, to think you’re not good enough, and wallow in your own issues. But one day you’re going to see that you’ve been fighting your fight as best you could; and, in the end, a lot of things you worried about didn’t matter anyway. You can’t control many things in this life, but you can control your attitude towards yourself. So why not love yourself unconditionally? Take a bit longer in the shower when you need to. Use as much gels and creams as you like. Savour the taste of a well-made coffee. Allow yourself to smile at the passing dogs, at the lovers walking hand in hand, at the rays of sun bursting through the clouds. Drink in the goodness of the world that is always there, if only you keep your eyes open to that instead of letting a fog of thought make you blind to your surroundings. You’re doing as good as you can, and the harder you are on yourself, the more you forget that just being alive itself is a complete wonder and marvel. And you are those things too. Just look in the mirror and gaze into the depth of your complicated eyes. Tell me there isn’t a magic there – billions of years of universal evolution manifested in a beautiful human-being. Isn’t it about time you saw that? Isn’t it about time you allowed yourself to be happy with the person you are?
It was the start of October and I was sitting in the garden on a sunny morning, trying to soak in some of that last warmth before the winter came. The dying leaves fell around me and I watched one float from side to side, twirling down before finally landing on the grass beneath my feet. I looked at it for a second, admiring its golden flames. Then I saw a wasp. It was crawling beside the leaf and eventually crawled on top of it. I was expecting it to get up and fly away, but it just stayed there on the dying leaf for a while, before eventually carrying on stumbling through the grass. It quickly became obvious to me that the wasp was dying too. Summer was over, and this lawn was a battlefield with the last remaining survivors. I then turned to look at the table beside me. I had my laptop with me and I could see my reflection on the screen. Thirty-years-old, I could see myself ageing rapidly before my eyes. The forehead lines were more prominent than ever, and my eyes looked tired and defeated. This is the way of the seasons, I thought to myself. Death and decay were inevitable and I looked back at the wasp and felt a comradeship with the dying creature. Our fate was the same. We were all staggering through life, falling to the floor, being made weaker and weaker before finally finding a suitable place to die.
I am a wild man There is no kidding myself anymore No pretending that I’m going be straightened out And put on some suit and settle down Into a life of stability and sanity.
I wasn’t made for that And I think that’s okay There are others who do that well And lord knows I once gave it a shot But those periods of routine didn’t last long As the inescapable truth gradually emerged:
That I am a wild man And I am only truly myself When I stand outside of this farm Living a life that many would call chaotic And perhaps even pity.
But one’s man trash is another man’s gold And this wayward life of mine Well, it fulfils my soul As I live by my own rhythm Going from job to job Residing in random rooms Where I sit writing my books And dreaming up my next escapade As my heart laughs in raw freedom.
That freedom is that of the wild man Who cannot be rid of his nature And lives in tune with his inner voice Not tamed by other’s opinions Or a follower of predetermined paths But rather runs dangerously free In a place that is definitely not everyone
Cutting me apart This life drives daggers into me And out pours all the essence To collect in puddles at my feet I walk on, not knowing Where I am going Or if I’ll have enough to make it Through this brute of a world.
I didn’t come here for this But something inside says There is a way through Past the days of pain The periods of emptiness Those few shining moments Sun rays through the rain clouds As everything pauses to remind me There is beauty there Immense light and divinity And that those things exist within me too.
But for now the rain falls hard And I wander onwards Holding onto the feeling that One day the clouds will fully dissolve And this whole world will illuminate As all the grand illusions dissipate And finally I’ll see this life for what it really is And feel it for what it really is As the sunshine drenches me And life is good and complete And I laugh with a ferocious, awaited joy.
And here I am stand on the shore Drying out in the sun I’ve found my way through the storm Back into the gentle light Of peace and tranquillity.
I fought through the violent waves And felt my soul being drowned I contemplated what it was to go Letting myself be consumed And pulled into the abyss.
The monsters encircled The light dwindled And my mind dissipated But something within me knew That I’d find my way back Emerging like the dawn light on the ocean To see this world awakening again As blue skies burst with potential.
This is the story of a survivor Standing on the shores of salvation Laughing at the passing of the storm At the seasick joy in his heart And the footprints in the sand Disappearing in the waves As the transience of the tide Creates a blank canvass To begin beautifully Again.
My second short novel, How To Kill Time While Waiting To Die follows an alcoholic writer meandering through life with little to no direction. It is dark, existential, and sprinkled with humour to add some light to the otherwise bleak story. A short synopsis and sample chapter feature below, and the book is now available to purchase on Amazon in Kindle and paperback now through this link. It is available for free to download on Kindle up until March 31st.
‘Bryan has just turned 30 and is trying to survive in a world to which he feels he doesn’t belong. He still has no career, no path, no purpose, no partner, and no particular interest in anything apart from drinking and writing stories he expects no one to read. Things get worse as the Covid-19 lockdown sees him moving back in with his parents, quickly causing him to plot his escape in no specific direction other than ‘heading south’. Drifting from place to place, job to job, beer to beer, woman to woman, and failure to failure – all the while seeing no meaning to what he or anyone else around him is doing – Bryan’s life spirals increasingly out of control in this existential and dark-humoured novel.’
“No doubt my writings would never be read by anyone – my manuscript gathering dust in some dark, forgotten corner – but it at least gave me something to do while stuck here on this earth. This was it, essentially, the bargain of human existence. Every man or woman had to find something, no matter how trivial, to give their life some fundamental meaning. Kids, careers, travelling, gardening, music, art, football, vinyl collections…. hell, even something as stupid as taking pictures of trains. The important thing was finding something to do to help pass the days and weeks and years. At the end of the day, we were all killing time while waiting to die.”
One line description: ‘An existential black comedy centred around the misadventures of an alcoholic writer.’
Sample chapter:
The next day, after a terrible night’s sleep in a field of noisy sheep, I rode into the town of Newquay. It was a place I had been to before on family holidays as a child. Despite how much I had changed in the intermediate years, the place was more or less how I remembered it: a touristic surf town with a rough underbelly; the sort of place where misfits ended up living alongside working-class people on cheap and tacky getaways to the coast. I cycled into the centre along the main street, looking at all the bars and souvenir shops and hotels. I went past families on their summer getaways, as well as the stag and hen parties drinking in the mid-afternoon. Soon the ocean was in view and I carried my bike down a steep series of steps that led to the beach. I walked over to the shoreline and there I was: finally at the bottom of the country, almost as far as I could be from home now that I was trapped on this island due to international travel being banned. I looked out at the Atlantic Ocean, at the waves crashing before me, at the surfers doing their thing. I watched the seagulls circling in the sky above and distant boats sailing along the horizon. For some reason, in that moment, I felt as alone as a man could be. Even though I was in a busy tourist town, I felt that I may as well have been marooned on some distant island. I had nowhere else to go and no one in the world knew where I was – not my parents, not my sister, not Louise, not Ginevra, not Jake or Jorge. It was a surreal circumstance and I let my feet sink into the sand as I felt myself dissociate from my surroundings. I was some sort of ghost, feeling the wind against my skin while wishing that I would disintegrate into dust and be swept away into the ocean, never to be seen or thought of again. My morbid daydreaming was brought to a sudden halt by some excited children running around me. They started asking why I had a tent and a load of bags on my bike. I told them I was on a great adventure to someplace far away. Their questions continued so I decided to retreat from the beach which was unnervingly busy with new members of the human race.
Hearing the kids talk about my bike, I had to stare back at it and realise that I was actually staring at the total contents of my life. Truly, I had nothing in the world at that moment but that bike and the bags attached to the back of it. I also had nowhere else to really go besides backwards. Well, that wasn’t an option so I figured I’d just stay put for the time being. I thought about pitching my tent on the beach until I spotted a ‘No Camping’ sign that warned of the strong tides that occurred in this part of the country. I was drowning in enough ways already, so I figured I’d go get some dinner before working out where I was gonna shelter myself for the night.
I bought some fish and chips from a nearby chippy and ate them on a bench atop a cliff. After that, I walked aimlessly around the streets, pushing my bike along, looking like a hobo beside everyone else on their summer holidays. I was in desperate need of a shave and little kids stared at me while holding their parents’ hands and eating ice cream. On top of my dishevelled appearance, I also stunk given the fact I hadn’t showered in two days while constantly cycling up and down hills. What I needed was to treat myself to a nice Bed and Breakfast – some sort of luxurious abode in which I could take shelter and try to clean the dirt off my skin and soul. I quickly realised this wasn’t going to be possible; ‘No Vacancies’ signs lay in windows as it seemed everywhere was fully booked on account of foreign travel being banned. One place did actually have a ‘Vacancies’ sign out the front, but the woman at reception looked me over and told me it was full anyway. There was a vivid look of dismissal in her eyes – one that deemed me unsuitable to take abode among the clean and civilised people of the world. I didn’t blame her as I walked off sniffing my armpits and looking at the oil stains on my legs. After all the years of lingering on the edge of destitution, it appeared that I had finally tipped over the edge; I was now one of the homeless people on the streets that people went out of their way to avoid. Accepting my impoverished fate, I began eyeing up alleyways and hidden spots to pitch my tent, searching for some dark corner like a rat being driven underground into the sewers.
I stopped feeling sorry for myself when I remembered that I actually had some savings to my name. The whopping £3500 in my bank account gave me a boost of morale as I continued wandering around town with my bike. The search continued until I finally went by a hostel on some rough-looking backstreet. Like the one in Exeter, it was another rundown old building with a look of depression and defeat. The windows were dirty, overfilled rubbish bins lay outside the front, and rotting surfboards were attached to the front wall. I stood there in front of the building which looked like how I felt. It appeared luxury was not to be an option, but I at least had a place to try that probably had space for someone of my calibre.
I went in and spoke to the manager, a 50-year-old, skinny guy who was erratically going around and vacuuming the hallway. “One moment!” he kept saying as flung the vacuum around in a violent motion. When he was finally done, I asked him if he had any room. He didn’t answer me but instead started talking about how he used to be an alcoholic. “Alcohol is the devil’s blood. I’ve been clean for three years now and I don’t like people drinking in this hostel, so if you’re looking to party here then you want to look somewhere else, do you understand me?” I told him that was fine and I just wanted a bed for at least a couple of days. He then checked me in and took me to my room, which was naturally as terrible as I anticipated. It was a four-bed dormitory that probably should have been accommodating more than two people. Clothes littered the floor and there was a young guy with a sullen look sitting with his back against the wall. He had the saddest eyes I’d ever seen – sadder than sad – with a degree of hopelessness that I hadn’t even seen in my own eyes when looking into the mirror. He got chatting with me, mumbling in a deflated tone about how he had just moved to town and was looking for work here but couldn’t find any. He told me how he didn’t like it here anyway and just wanted to leave the country whenever it was next possible. The poor bastard was barely nineteen but already looked like he had had way too much of this life already. I wondered where he’d be in a few years’ time when the true horror of reality had made itself known to him.
Well, at that moment the last thing I needed was another person as wretched and miserable as myself, so I went to shower and finally get myself looking like someone who wouldn’t scare away children. I then headed to the supermarket to get some beers before going back to the spot where I had eaten my dinner. The sun was now setting and I stared at the red clouds while contemplating my situation. This was it: my summer holiday, drinking beers alone, listening to music and laughing at the ever-worsening plight of my life. I determined I was the only person in that vicinity who had zero clue about what the next day or week would bring me. There was simply nothing else to busy myself with at this point: no job, no writing, no cycling, no friends or girlfriend. Hell, I didn’t even have any privacy to masturbate. Naturally, I knew that I was going to fall into the pit of another bender, after barely having sobered up from the last one. I considered that this was to be my lifelong routine from now on – drifting from reckless bender to reckless bender, with brief periods of sobering up in between. It at least gave me some sort of structure and routine, I guess.
Soon I was tipsy and started to think back to the past family holidays. I looked down at a specific spot on the beach and recalled a memory of building sandcastles there with my sister. The smiling photo of that occasion was still hanging up somewhere in my parents’ house – a visual representation of the happiness I had once felt as a child. It was true that there was a time when some joy for life was there, but inevitably it had been blown away. I looked at the children playing down on the beach and knew that the majority of them awaited the same fate. All our memories eventually end up being sad as we grow old, the world no longer holding the same light that it once did as our sandcastles of joy are destroyed by the winds of change. They slowly disintegrate under the weight of all the disillusion and dissatisfaction, the unfulfilled dreams, the squashed desires, the broken promises, the failed romances, the silent struggles, the hopeless situations, the empty days and empty nights that leave you struggling to put your shoes on in the morning. If such a downfall had occurred in twenty years, I wondered where the hell I’d be after another twenty had drifted by. Surely there was only so much desolation a man could experience before his total demise and destruction. Would I even make it to thirty-one? Thirty-five? Forty? At that point just going forward to anything was hard enough. I was a man frozen in time, not knowing what to even think anymore. My brain stalled and stuttered. I could feel the internal sparks flying. I didn’t know what to do with myself and I could feel a panic attack coming on. For a brief moment, I considered ringing my sister and talking through the problems that plagued my mind. Maybe I could try and get hold of the therapist I had spoken to that time? Hell, maybe my parents were even missing me and just wanted to talk without arguing about every single thing we mentioned? In the end, I knew their lack of understanding would only make me feel more alone than what the solitude and silence was offering me. It would be the same old story of people only exacerbating your problems, whether intentional or not, and compounding your misery that inevitably became more and more a part of who you were as the years went by.
Ahhh, but what is a man to do when even the most basic things in life seem pointless? I asked myself. Even things like getting out of bed and getting dressed and showering and eating required some sort of faith in the future. I was now getting to the point where I didn’t even see enough sense to do anything at all. And yet, this is the core necessity of existence: one must see something of some value out there to keep on keeping on; even if they are fooling themselves, the deception is necessary to put one foot in front of the other and carry-on trudging through the swamp of time. The people working terrible jobs did it for their families; the people serving time in prison did it for their freedom; the people fighting in wars did it for the freedom of others – all of these people had something that made their suffering shakeable. But at that moment, however, I couldn’t even bring myself to move or stand up, let alone keep on trudging through the months and years. Where would I go? What would I do? What was the point of it all? The pressure of this meaningless existence was building and I felt as though I was about to implode, to finally break down and scream out loud so this world finally knew of the incurable insanity that ravaged my manic mind.
In the end, I managed to calm myself down the same old way. I simply poured more beer down my throat to drown all the feelings inside that were trying to get out. After that, I got up and went to find a bar to go and make a fool of myself.
“It would be fair to say that much of my life was a war. ‘Growing pains’ was perhaps putting it too mildly. I spent many years staggering through the battlefields of tempestuous experience. I grappled with my demons, crawled through the swamps of depression, and was shaken by anger and self-hatred. It took many years but one day a ceasefire was finally called. The bloodshed stopped as peace fell over me. Still in the moment, I felt myself let out a cathartic gasp of breath. A clarity filled my mind as I looked back at the past versions of myself. I saw myself teary-eyed at twenty-two, alone and heartbroken in foreign lands. I saw myself collapsing in a field at twenty-five and wanting the ground to swallow me whole. I saw myself consumed with despair and self-pity at the age of twenty-eight. I saw all these wounded versions of myself and wanted to let them know that they would eventually make it through and be okay. Time was going to do its thing and straighten everything out. It was even going to enrich and enlighten. For to stand here now and know that I still have this precious life force still beating within me – like a baby found among the rubble, or a flower growing on a bloody battlefield – tells me there is some divine, everlasting strength within my flesh and bones. And to now wake up each day and feel the light run through my veins and the smiles form on my face – it’s enough to allow me to finally see life for the beautiful thing it is. It is not something you marched or battled through, but rather something to be cherished and enjoyed. There is no great conflict anymore and I’m happy just being myself and living my life while knowing a victory as great as one could possibly know: the victory of myself.”
~ A Voice From The Wild ~ 