L'Abinsthe

Written on March 30th.

Rawr. Here I am again. Another depressing semiautobiographical tale; told through the eyes of a depressed wanderer.

I stood over the ridge; there was a fresh breeze and the yellow blades of grass that came up to my knees swayed as if they were trying to imitate waves. The sky was grey; pockets of pale blue were interspersed like islands amongst an otherwise dreary sky. The ridge itself was on top of an otherwise wild section of landscape that the suburban sprawl had not consumed, and overlooked the city, which in reality was no more than a named section of the county map, created by indifferent men, whose attitude was transplanted towards the residents, who cared little about their so-called city. The city looked even more dismal today than normal; the bland colors of which the offices and houses were forced to be painted with only were accentuated by the vivid grayscale that was the sky.

Depression was a part of my life now; it had become almost a part of me, skewing my personality, the secret voice inside my head to tell me to always expect the worst. If you expect the worst, every single outcome will be equal to or better than what you expected. Of course, the kind of expectations that come from constantly expecting the worst are not that fanciful either. Plus there seems to be some mystical force that pulls your luck towards the grave when you expect the worst, as if pure speculations are powerful enough to change the equilibrium of the events of our lives.

That day was particularly depressing. I was not sad; no, I had expected the worst and, well, the worst happened; what more could you expect? Luck was not on my side, but luck itself is no more than a fanciful concept created by humans in an attempt to qualify the positive side of fate, or luck could be an invisible spirit that goes around and blesses people at random; I’d rather believe in the former.

Anyhow, I was walking down the ridge on a faintly marked trail. I narrowly avoided stepping into a dog’s mess, which made me think about the immorality of the person who forgot to clean the mess up. But, I was just as immoral as the person in question, if not more. Who was I to judge a person simply because of one mistake? I was trying to compare the faults of a person who I had just known for seconds to my own faults. Of course I would have more; but then again, if you were to take the average of the faults committed by the person in question compared to the time I had known him, he would definitely be a worse person…

Where I was I supposed to go again?

I was probably lost by now. All credit to the developers of this terribly-planned planned neighborhood. The houses looked all the same, the streets all winded around, for all I knew, I could be going around in circles.

“Give me back the ball!”

“Catch me first!”

“I hate you I hate you I hate you, you do this every day to me!”

“Cause you can never catch me!”

“You’re in track and cross country and I’m just a ball of fat!”

“That’s what makes it so funny!”

The two kids ran past me, the fatter one obviously trying his hardest to keep up with the well-conditioned runner, who appeared to be running at a light jog. I remember the innocence of my childhood, where dreams of adulthood, a time so far away that to us children, it seemed infinite, could be molded into any shape, and were as fanciful and varied as the stars themselves. I had this illusion that I was something more than I was during this time, and it would contribute to my gradual decline someday. However, as with all carefree conditions of pure bliss, childhood ended, and my life gradually became shadowed by an everlasting specter which would poison me and distort my character to the point where if somehow, a child version of myself were to meet with the current, nearly adult version of myself, the child would look at me with a combination of incredulity and disgust, and dismiss the whole thing, singing to himself as he walked away about how he would never turn out like that.

I felt a drop of something hit my face. Must have been the rain coming on. I wanted it to rain. Looking at the sky’s crying would give me some fake and superficial sense that at least something greater than society sympathized with me. No matter how much I reasoned the rain to be a completely independent event from what I had just discovered mere hours ago, the rain gave me a subconscious calm that quelled my heart, which had long since fallen into my stomach, where it continued to beat.

As soon as the rain had started, it had ceased, or at least had taken a relapse, yet the mist from the vapor in the air hung around and gave my walk a kind of ethereal feel, as if the events that had just transpired were part of another level of reality that had no correlation with the reality I had lived and embraced for nearly eighteen years. The thought of having to face another reality, another world, in which the happy-go-lucky years of my childhood, which transpired an attitude of general calm and the motto: “If it doesn’t come now, it will come later,” would be replaced by the world of the true reality, where no man received more than his work merited was enough to plunge me back into a state of contemplative depression.

“So does this mean no dinner mom?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t see why I’m so wrong. I let him copy my work. It’s not like I didn’t do my work. I was just trying to be a friend.”

“Well if your friend is like that then he doesn’t deserve to be friends with you.”

“I also got an A on my science test today.” (he actually received a 58, a nearly failing grade)

“That’s good.”

“Can I have dinner then?”

“Absolutely not. It serves you right to be caught cheating anyways, you always try to be lazy and take the easy route out…”

What was my life based upon? Lies upon lies upon lies, it seems. As I grew older my life became more divided, between the exterior and the interior self, of which nobody knew about except for me, and only at certain times. It was my fault for not preventing this division of self earlier on. Once it propagated and began to have a mind of its own, its poison contaminated me, and used me to grow itself. Dishonesty and shrouding seemed to be the best way to keep the best of both sides of the spectrum of my life, in order to accentuate my successes while slyly stowing my failures away like money under the mattress.

The mother and son went into their car, the son with a disgusted look on his face, which at once showed his anger at his mother for acting so cruelly, yet at the same time showed some kind of recognition of his mistake. I wondered what kind of Asian they were, but that fact mattered little. I realized the superficiality of the ‘cult of education’ that many of my friends and I were subjected to for the past ten or so years. Our culture seemed to be nothing more than the revering of numbers that meant nothing to the layman, numbers that were generated by computers, numbers that exemplified the superficiality of a society who based initial impressions of people solely on these numbers; the rest was simply a roll of a die.

“Do you drink coffee?”

“No.”

“No wonder you look so tired. You should drink some coffee. I personally don’t like coffee, however. I much prefer energy drinks.”

“I thought coffee stunted growth and energy drinks were just concoctions of sugar and chemicals.”

“But they work. Nothing is worse than a constantly tired person. Just by looking at him most people get the impression he is lazy.”

“I’m not that lazy though…”

The coffee tasted too strong. Perhaps I should have put more sugar in it, but that would almost defeat the purpose of drinking the coffee. If I had added more sugar, I rather would have had an energy drink. At least those things can take you on a wild taste journey. I remember my mother always put a lot of cream in her coffee. I never really liked coffee that much. Perhaps I should have had tea. Tea always made me feel better when I was nauseous, though it made my mouth feel drier afterwards.

“Repeating a teacher’s words right in front of her. Have you no shame? Are you trying to mock me? Your attitude is bad, really bad. You need to fix it right now, otherwise when you grow up nobody will want to be friends with you. You better take this and fill it out, and have your parents look at it and sign it.”

“Is this my punishment?”

“It’s not so much as a punishment as a lesson. Learn it well, because you will thank me later.”

For some reason, I can only learn something once I have done it wrong once, which is why nearly everything I did seemed like a crime to me. Then how come, when I have failed the most, I’m not punished?  Except for an eerie complacence, nothing else has happened beyond the unusual. Complacence usually hides the worst outcome of all. Usually a complacent individual is one who has fallen beyond the point of return; he is a broken man. I felt complacent.

“What period computer science are you taking next year? A or E?”

“Umm… A, I guess?”

“Cool, man!”

“I feel bad that I’m leaving… I really want to stay, but I guess it’s for my future…”

“We’ll miss you!”

“This is the last time I get to see your guys…”

“No! We really need to meet up again.”

“Hey! How’s your summer been?”

“Not bad. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Heh, mine too. Alright, see you next year!”

“Enjoying your summer so far?”

“Yeah, it hasn’t been bad.”

“See you next year!”

I guess it was my fault that I never had the courage to face my fears, or to face things outside my comfort zone. I was a passive receiver; those who were more aggressive were always ahead of me. It serves me right to be in this state. I was always afraid of the repercussions of what I said. I could never face what could be; I was always afraid of what would happen.

So I walk alone, through the light drizzle, passing streetlamps that hazily glow in the mist. I see nobody else; except for the occasional car that passes me. The sun sets and I wonder if it will ever rise the same way again.

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SOML. (the title of this story/narrative/rant/depressed expunging of my thoughts at this instant to which I will look at later in this year and painfully relieve the memories that I am currently having to face right now is L’absinthe… (?!?!))