February 5, 2002 (idea)

I would very much like to commit suicide.

It's not that I have a bad life. Compared to most people, I've had it extraordinarily easy. I am a spoiled child, along with my brother. I actually have a lot of friends. I'm comfortably secure living at home, studying multimedia design, playing music, noding, writing, what have you.

It's just that I live a very pointless life. I have a number of talents - the aforementioned writing and music being the obvious two. The problem with these is that they are creative traits - they are not things that can be measured or weighed or even academically judged. They are not things I can build a solid future on.

I am no good at anything academic. My mind doesn't work that way. The worst subject in school was always math, because it forced you to memorize and repeat, robot-like, treading through logic problems like trekking through well-chartered mud. People had already been down that road; why should I? I like to think logically and rationally. But not about problems that don't actually solve anything.

I am no good at menial work. I lack the organisational skills or even the basic social skills to be able to function adequately as eg. a cashier or a clerk. I lack the motor skills to function as a machine operator or a cook or anything like that. Now, I can type fast - notoriously fast, even - but even office jobs require other skills I do not possess; diplomas I have no hope of getting; vast arrays of mindnumbingly tedious methods and models that, to me, are perfectly obvious and even natural, but to everyone else foreign and hard to grasp. Simple formatting and visual style are abstract and useless concepts to most people, whereas I seem to have spent the better parts of my youth teaching myself how to format writings and developing visual skills. And to what end?

Maybe I should've spent more time with people and less time perfecting myself? Maybe I should've been busy figuring out other things, instead of things that I now realize amount to little more than shit. At least, in the eyes of the world around me. Nobody ever taught me how to fit in. Nobody even bothered telling me how to act appropriately. To this day, common emotional outbursts such as sadness over the loss of a dear one, the worries on behalf of other people's tribulations, or the honest giving-of-a-shit about people's opinions only amount to confusion for me. Why should I? I can fake it, yes, but it's not real. I can pretend to feel sad that a close relative of mine is dying - and he is a close relative that I have many fond memories of - but it's not real. Why not? Why am I so cold? The only real emotions I seem to be able to produce is self-loathing and anger (usually directed at my self-loathing). It makes me feel empty. And my hatred grows even stronger when I take this into account - I can't even get myself together to feel for others. It's an endless, unhealthy cycle and I know it - but I can't stop it. This sort of emotionally stunted development can't be natural. Or maybe it is, and everyone else is just that much better at dealing with it than me?

I can remember I used to be over-emotional in my early school days - but looking back on it, I realize it was just stupid. What was the point of getting angry over that someone bested me in a spelling contest? Jealousy is idiotic and arrogant. What was the point of crying after a couple of idiots from a few grades up pushed me down the stairs every once in a while and called me a fagget? They were projecting their own insecurities on me and I knew damn well at the time. But from looking at everyone else, crying seemed to be the right way to express my disagreement, so I did.

Something went wrong during my upbringing. Or, more than likely, a lot of things went wrong. I have no idea who to blame.

I've always wanted to do things differently. This is not as good as it sounds. It leads to highly unpredictable results. If I don't see the point, especially in the academic sense, my interest wanes to below measurable levels - and my level of enthusiasm drops offensively low. Gym class had that effect on me. Art class had that effect on me. Hell, if it wasn't because the endless theories and models and guidelines on how to do your work like a mindless drone didn't let up every few weeks and we got to do a lengthy group-based project, multimedia design would probably have that effect on me as well.

I am increasingly of the opinion that most of the people close to me do not as much value my friendship as tolerate my company. This is probably the most clichéd, angsty thing I could say up until this point. If I may digress for a while, there is nothing more personally disheartening than learning that you, in fact, feel just like a fucking Staind song - not in the way Aaron Lewis pouts and moans almost mockingly on stage, but well and truly. I don't want to be categorised next to whining maggots like that - and to be honest, I know a fair bit of them. They fill me with disgust. I can't stand angsty teens; I can't stand all the pissing and moaning I see every day from people who are just having problems dealing with puberty. And yet, I am no different.

If I were to disappear, I honestly can't think of anyone who'd still remember me twelve months after the fact.

Ask my friends and of course they'll disagree. But I'm not so sure they're able to think about this objectively. Would I be sad if one of my best friends took his own life? I'm not sure. Not if he had a good reason. In fact, one of my best friends has, with straight-faced seriousness and only a slight slur in his voice, announced that if things don't work out for him in ten years time, he'll off himself. Upon hearing this story, people vehemently urge me to convince him otherwise. They urge me to help him. I can't see why. I've stopped telling people about him. He's not being rash about this. He's thought it through.

So, I believe, have I. I mean, what else have I been doing all this time? Moaning and whining at myself? Yes, that too. But I'm not content with simply accepting the fact "I'm miserable" without figuring out why. And I've come a long way. Unless there's some deep, psychological key that escapes me, I think I've pretty much figured out why I'm this depressed.

The thing that bugs me is that there really isn't anything to do about it. I can do all these things. But not well enough for people to take notice. I can't pick my career. Nothing established appeals to me. I'm not content with withering away in an office or a cubicle somewhere, or even behind the cash register of a supermarket.

So what do I want to do? Actually, if you think about it, my needs are pretty simple. I like my relaxation. I like my creativity. I like branching out, discovering new things about myself and people around me.

In the eyes of society, this makes me a slob.

I like watching people. I like watching their behaviors. I like trying to tune myself into their behaviors and, chameleon-like, adapt to their surroundings. This is why I have so many varied friends. I have geek friends, movie friends, party friends, street thug friends, goth friends, stupid friends. But which one, if anyone, of those is me?

I ponder over things like why are we here, what's the point of existence. It's useless, I know, because the odds of me actually figuring out why are beyond astronomical. And I have pretty much settled into the whole nihilistic, cynical worldview of no god, no afterlife, no real point of existence, and 'mankind is probably a virus' outlook anyway. But for some reason, I keep at it. I look at the grand scheme of things. I look at how far the human race has come in fifty years; a hundred years; five hundred years; a million. A billion. Before time, what were we? Did we crawl out of the oceans? Were we placed here to function as an ant colony for a race of sadistic aliens? Maybe there really is a God? Maybe the planet is alive and we're the germ. Maybe none of us exist. Maybe my mind is just imagining all this.

Maybe I'm not alive to begin with.

And in the grand scheme of things, what does my existence matter? Am I going to make any sort of difference? Probably not. The so-called "great" people throughout history didn't make any lasting difference. They simply altered the flow of time for a while and basked in the reverence of the blind afterwards. I have no intention of following them. Or in their footsteps.

At the moment, I'm safe. A place to stay. A social environment. Money in the bank. Friends, family, healthy interests, beer.

But where am I in five years time? It should be such a relatively simple question to answer. "After this, I'm thinking of studying for my Bachelors" - or "after this, I think I'll be moving abroad and getting a job". Or even "I'm planning on squatting a partly demolished house with three of my most drugged-out friends until I get a fucking record deal".

For me, there's just a blank. I'm not really studying multimedia design. I'm biding my time. Because once this is over - which it will be in one and a half year - I won't have anything to do.

And I do wonder ... once this is all over, does that mean myself as well?

It's all angst. It's all pathetic. But don't tell me you haven't been here to. And if you haven't, you will. I'm not asking for your help.

I should just pull myself together. I can only do the next best thing. I can ignore it. I can ignore it and go about my life - shallow as it may be. The last thing I want to hear is the patronizing of others; the warmth and comfort of someone who, let's face it, shouldn't really care. I mean, what do you care? Why are you even reading this?

I'll ignore it. I ignored it yesterday. I'll ignore it today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow. I'll probably keep on ignoring it until I find an answer or 'till the day I die.

Be it self-inflicted or not.