COLUMNS

Chris - Thursday 31st January 2002 - 12:25am

I am not a nice person. Oh, I consider myself to be a good person fundamentally… just not a nice person to be with in day to day life. Maybe in small doses… I am kind often and consider myself to be very generous. I no longer worry about money now that I have it. (Whoever said money can’t buy you happiness.. well, they’re both right and wrong. It can’t buy you true happiness but it can take your worries away) I have hobbies.. I have my music and travelling and my interests in things such as baseball and literature and my life is full. My every waking hour is filled up with something and I am no longer bored…

Or so it seems.

I would die without routine. Every facet of my life is controlled by routine. I set the alarm for 6:20am so I can hit the snooze button twice and still get up in time to get the 7:30 train. I stand in the same place on the platform every day. I go out the same exit at Victoria. I get on the same tube carriage. I go the same damn route into work, say a solitary hello to the security guard who knows my name but I don’t know his and go up to the office, sit down and don’t move for about another four hours. Every day is like the last… completely made out of routine. I need that routine to feel safe.. to feel in control of my life. Stability is the name of the game.

The routine doesn’t work though because I discard them minutes after I’ve thought them up. This week I’ve started using the Weightwatchers points system to try and lose some weight because, to be honest, I’m pretty fat now. Takeaways and beer do not equal the healthy option. And this has started quite well…I will maybe have some soup for lunch and then a salad or a lower fat ready meal for dinner at home. Then I will wait two hours and perhaps browse the internet, or read a book, or write something, and then I get on the exercise bike and do 2 miles, do another half an hours reading, then 2 more miles… and so on and so on until I’ve done 10 miles. Then I will shower and go to bed. That was the idea but already the routine is shot, I find myself snacking on crackerbread regularly (at least it’s not chocolate) and, because there aren’t enough hours in the day to do my pointless reading etc I end up trying to do 10 miles of cycling all in one go. I actually stayed at home today and worked from here because I didn’t shower last night and convinced myself that I would drag myself out of bed earlier in the morning to do it. Needless to say, I didn’t and eventually emerged at 9am. What a fuck-up I can be (and a strange one at that). My main achievement today was doing the washing up. Trust me, that’s an achievement for me.

I hide behind a façade. I appear in control most of the time to other people. My temper has subsided over the years. I no longer show my anger as much about some things to the outside world. Instead it just seethes up inside until I need to hurt myself. I don’t cut myself like an old friend of mine used to do. I hit myself instead, slap myself round the face. Or I will punch a wall as hard as I can.. not pulling back in the slightest. Just so I can get a reaction of pain. The anger dissipated I will curl up in a ball on the floor and cry. Self-pity comes too easy.

I hide behind a façade. I write friendly e-mails to people about how my day is going, what I’m going to do that night, perhaps something about work, what is happening the rest of the week. All of it true. But there’s the things I don’t mention, about the emptiness that is eating me up, about how all I need is to feel that someone cares about me. And sometimes wanting to tell certain people how much I think of them but being scared to. And ohhhhh, I know that people do care about me.. deep down. But when I’m out there at a gig, or in the pub, talking, laughing, drinking… it’s friendly enough but I get the feeling people around me would rather I not be there. When my e-mails aren’t answered or my calls aren’t returned I get the same paranoid feeling. That people are just being nice for the sake of it and hiding behind the same façade that I feel I’m being eaten up by. Does everyone’s life have a secret closet full of unrevealed feelings?

I hide behind my front door. I didn’t step outside today. It didn’t feel safe to. I almost cheered when I found that tin of chilli in the cupboard because it meant I didn’t have to go to the store for food and I didn’t have to even get dressed. I could just sit here in my Homer Simpson shorts and my Husker Du t-shirt and go on the internet, listen to music and watch CNN. So much for making the most of every day.

I hide behind my front door. My neighbours might be nice people but I don’t like to see them. When I’m leaving in the morning I open the door to the hall and if I hear someone coming down the stairs I will go back inside and wait until they are gone. I’ve met my upstairs neighbour once and she was nice. We shook hands and made polite chit-chat of the “pleased to meet you” variety. She invited me up for a drink anytime I felt like it but I’ve never been. Because like I said before, I’m paranoid enough to feel that she’s just being nice for the sake of it. That my neighbour hates me already even though she’s only met me for 20 seconds.. a fleeting few words in a hallway. It is no surprise to me that although I see people almost every day, I feel insanely lonely.

I have not had a drop of alcohol since last Saturday night and for that I am proud of myself.. I am clinging to that at the moment and it’s the reason I think I’m being so fucking honest for a change…. How I can let some of this stuff out and to hell with what people think. It’s certainly not whining because I’m not feeling self-pity right now. I’m telling the 100% truth for a change. Because I NEED to pull myself out of this dull mess that I’ve implanted myself in. Four goddamn days without a drink… that’s the longest it’s been in a long long time. And I have my routine set in place already… modified from before of course… I won’t drink at home any more. Only at gigs… and not so fast as is my habit…. And maybe a diet coke between drinks.. blah blah blah whatever. But there are three Murphys sitting in the fridge and a quarter full bottle of Jack Daniels in the cupboard. When I was sitting in the bath earlier they were calling to me and I thought “oh, I can just have one while I’m writing this. It won’t hurt.” And thankfully, I didn’t have it. Yet I haven’t managed to throw the bottle away.

I hope I can get out of bed tomorrow. This morning I said to myself I would be in bed by 11pm. It’s now after midnight. I’m not surprised.

--- Chris