I’ve been writing emails to my first and only love for about five years. She almost never responds and never has anything to say, and I mean that literally. And here I am, trying to make her see, and maybe she does. She is at least sympathetic, she at least lets me write and doesn’t misinterpret me, as far as I’m allowed to know. Maybe it’s perfect because all I want is someone who doesn’t have any opinions of their own. That’s what I’m afraid of, because then there’s no hope for me and she’s known it the entire time. It’s a milder form of pity, and nothing more, and there’s nothing more that I can demand, because there’s nothing she can do and I’ve already explained that I’m afraid I might kill myself. There was nothing she could do. But that was years ago.
But that’s always the fear I have with suicide is that it wouldn’t really be my decision. It wouldn’t be me, it wouldn’t be anyone anybody knows, it would just be hands and legs and a body and the tip of my nose. What does Wittgenstein say, the “atmospheric” approach to consciousness, I think, but that’s really what it’s like sometimes, just to float in an atmosphere, where there are hands and legs and a body and the tip of a nose. A whole inaccessible world. Sometimes maybe they do it out of spite, to get a message across, and that’s one thing. Sometimes curiosity, sometimes to end suffering. But this isn’t an option for me because I can’t imagine an end to color or space or time–I no longer believe that there is a spaceless, timeless, colorless. So I can’t kill myself, or I could but death is impossible.
I’ve been away from my home for some time. Everyone is connected, and there are always new ways to connect and communicate. And none of them work. Anonymous letters is the only alternative to an ex-girlfriend. I have plenty of friends but I can’t say what I want to them. I have an ex-girlfriend who in theory lets me say what I want but there are many things I’d never say to her again. It’s infuriating. I can click a button, a like button, and do more for myself than to have a thought. I went to Europe on a student loan, graduated, and now I’m rotting in America waiting for a relative’s wedding. I sleep in her guest room and all they do is watch tv. They live in a suburb of a college town but never leave the house. The television is always on and I’m always drinking. I try to start a band, to play my music, but it’s been too long since anyone has believed in me. I see a double chin forming, I hate the way I look. I lose hope that I can go out and find a person to even talk about the weather with. Everyone catches me off guard. I try to sleep and I can’t even think of a woman I have a crush on, to imagine to lay next to. I have a guitar and a backpack with a few books and some clothes. All of my Charley Patton is on a computer in another state and I don’t have any money to buy new songs. I have to borrow money from my mother. I need a job but I have to wait until the wedding is over to move to a city and find one. I lost my drivers license in Europe so I won’t have the proper two forms of identification until I don’t know when. They’re feeding me food and liquor and I can’t complain. The worst part about all of it is that I have no reason to complain about anything in my life, other than that I have feelings and thoughts and nobody wants to hear them. And here I have family and friends, and still, I have the audacity to say nobody will listen to me. But I will go to their open mic night, on Wednesday, and hit on whoever will have me, and play until my fingers bleed, and sweat and smoke and have all the confidence in the world. Then I’ll wake up fat.