NewYorker2012 Posted April 9, 2012 Posted April 9, 2012 The daylight doesn't look quite right anymore. Like a world created by a film director who has chosen a lens with a slightly blue tint to convey a sense of longing and despair, accompanied, of course, by a melancholy violin so as to ensure the viewer knows they are meant to be saddened by what they see. My God, I didn't know the world could ever actually feel this way. The nights seem a bit blacker now. Standing on my terrace smoking a cigarette in the cool dark breeze, knowing that when once I could go back inside to a world filled with warmth and light and comfort, there now exists only the facade of familiar normalcy. The TV in the same place. The same lamps. The same art. But no life to any of it now. Just objects surrounding me, mocking what once was. Instead, I see into bright apartments in buildings just across the way, filled with people living, laughing, holding one another, doing all that which it seems I had done not so very long ago. Those city lights which I looked at with her, once seemed so much like the fulfillment of a dream just to be here after having wanted to live in this incredible place for so long, are now painful reminders of what I no longer have. I awake after an evening spent drinking far too much and eating too little. Good times, I'm sure, but I can't remember much, and certainly no lingering hint of having been happy. Cocktail napkins and cards covered with women's names and numbers strewn across my entryway table aren't enough to jog even the faintest idea of who I'd met or conversations I'd had only hours earlier. The sexual conquests of a younger fool, once bringing feelings of contentment at being desired, if even only for physical pleasure, now feel so empty compared to what I'd recently and so unexpectedly pictured as the direction my life would take: wife, children, commitment, love, happiness. Surely, hell must be the inability to create memories. I can think back on happier times...days, weeks, decades earlier, and can see the images and smell the scents as clearly as though I was living them at present. But I can take no pleasure from these thoughts. Remembering happiness is far from experiencing it, and those pictures and smells and sensations feel as though they must certainly belong to someone else, and it is only through some cruel twist of fate that I can view and touch and taste them now. Today, though, there is no creation of memory. The haze of pain shrouds everything, and when the lights finally go out, I know I'm living, awake, breathing, but the events of the day will soon be burnt away like the morning sun on an ethereal mist, never to be recalled again. It's life...but not really. Some version of hell which I can only pray is temporary. And temporary, it is. Consciously, I know that. Everyone knows that. The recognition that once the wallowing ends, eventually the normal light will come back. It always does. My philosophy of believing that one cannot possibly appreciate happiness without having felt despair, that one cannot possibly appreciate what one has if it has been handed to them without struggle, surely must also work in reverse. Pain cannot be felt forever without at least traces of pleasure as a counterbalance. But for now, the world is colder and darker than I ever remember. Past loves surely pale in comparison to the most recent, do they not? Surely this pain is worse than any other? Surely? Or, perhaps the song is wrong, and it isn't the first cut, but the most recent, that is always the deepest? Then again, perhaps that is wishful thinking. Either way, I'm hoping I never have to see the world through this blue tint again.
Itsonlyme66 Posted April 10, 2012 Posted April 10, 2012 what a moving post. I concur. i feel like that too! i'm in the thick of it. thanks for sharing this. it's nice to know I'm not the only living breathing person stuck in this feeling.
BewitchedandBothered Posted April 10, 2012 Posted April 10, 2012 The daylight doesn't look quite right anymore. Like a world created by a film director who has chosen a lens with a slightly blue tint to convey a sense of longing and despair, accompanied, of course, by a melancholy violin so as to ensure the viewer knows they are meant to be saddened by what they see. My God, I didn't know the world could ever actually feel this way. The nights seem a bit blacker now. Standing on my terrace smoking a cigarette in the cool dark breeze, knowing that when once I could go back inside to a world filled with warmth and light and comfort, there now exists only the facade of familiar normalcy. The TV in the same place. The same lamps. The same art. But no life to any of it now. Just objects surrounding me, mocking what once was. Instead, I see into bright apartments in buildings just across the way, filled with people living, laughing, holding one another, doing all that which it seems I had done not so very long ago. Those city lights which I looked at with her, once seemed so much like the fulfillment of a dream just to be here after having wanted to live in this incredible place for so long, are now painful reminders of what I no longer have. I awake after an evening spent drinking far too much and eating too little. Good times, I'm sure, but I can't remember much, and certainly no lingering hint of having been happy. Cocktail napkins and cards covered with women's names and numbers strewn across my entryway table aren't enough to jog even the faintest idea of who I'd met or conversations I'd had only hours earlier. The sexual conquests of a younger fool, once bringing feelings of contentment at being desired, if even only for physical pleasure, now feel so empty compared to what I'd recently and so unexpectedly pictured as the direction my life would take: wife, children, commitment, love, happiness. Surely, hell must be the inability to create memories. I can think back on happier times...days, weeks, decades earlier, and can see the images and smell the scents as clearly as though I was living them at present. But I can take no pleasure from these thoughts. Remembering happiness is far from experiencing it, and those pictures and smells and sensations feel as though they must certainly belong to someone else, and it is only through some cruel twist of fate that I can view and touch and taste them now. Today, though, there is no creation of memory. The haze of pain shrouds everything, and when the lights finally go out, I know I'm living, awake, breathing, but the events of the day will soon be burnt away like the morning sun on an ethereal mist, never to be recalled again. It's life...but not really. Some version of hell which I can only pray is temporary. And temporary, it is. Consciously, I know that. Everyone knows that. The recognition that once the wallowing ends, eventually the normal light will come back. It always does. My philosophy of believing that one cannot possibly appreciate happiness without having felt despair, that one cannot possibly appreciate what one has if it has been handed to them without struggle, surely must also work in reverse. Pain cannot be felt forever without at least traces of pleasure as a counterbalance. But for now, the world is colder and darker than I ever remember. Past loves surely pale in comparison to the most recent, do they not? Surely this pain is worse than any other? Surely? Or, perhaps the song is wrong, and it isn't the first cut, but the most recent, that is always the deepest? Then again, perhaps that is wishful thinking. Either way, I'm hoping I never have to see the world through this blue tint again. And one day you will seriously look back and say "wtf was I thinking???":)
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