You don’t have to be in a cage to feel hopeless
Swallowing a tangy cheese and washing it down with a tasteful glass of red, for me is a momentary avoidance of thought. The senses are pleasured and distracted for a brief gulp, allowing an emptiness to be filled, a hole to be closed and a cloud to be dispersed. Vice and depression are forever coupled, married in Vegas but never having got around to filling in that annulment paperwork despite not wanting to be seen in public together.
Choice decisions to fight off the anxiety of existence can include powdering your nostrils for a gratifying boost of serotonin, habitual masturbation to chase that oxytocin addiction you didn’t know you had, or the yellow-toothed, often ignored practice of chain-smoking. Lets not forget the wonderful nano-second-spanning reward system of gaming addiction or glutinously eating until you can’t lift yourself without using a machine. You could choose to simply wallow in self-pity but that’s not nearly as destructive. A personal but less damaging favourite of mine; masochistically punishing your tongue and insides with spices so potent they would kill a Chihuahua if administered in a large enough dosage.
Whichever you choose, the distraction of administering your vice outweighs any logical decision to better yourself or your world around you, the injection of temporary gratification encourages the deflection of anything productive.
Escape from reality is a short term endeavour, you will always have to come crashing face first to bed rock and trying to glue your solar melted feathers back onto your arms for another pathetic ride. The inconsistent lifestyle of being airborne and colliding with a surface is the metaphorical embodiment of life itself. You just have to hope that the next time you crash, you’re further above sea-level than where your furious flapping originally lifted you off the ground.
Depression is a muggy bitch, you can’t really see her or feel her, but she’s there, judging you and wrapping you in her cold blanket, ensuring your limbs aren’t tightly constricted, but are lightly weighted against your body making certain every step is an inconvenience and a chore. Depression is especially haunting and difficult to self diagnose when you have nothing to be down about. If you have your health, a roof, food and a lifestyle others might be envious of, what right do you have to complain?
None. Chin up, things could be worse. You’re flying higher than the rest, why can’t you just sit in your seat and admire the miracle of flight. Why do you have to crinkle your nose that the air hostess skimmed past you when handing out the nuts? You’re soaring through the air like a bird, in a tin tube, compressed with technology you can’t comprehend, navigating with an ease nature can’t compete against, with hot beverages and TV screens with the latest movies.
Sometimes acknowledging the miracle of flight isn’t enough, sometimes your curiosity wants to pull the handle on the emergency door to see what could be in the final moments of existence, what would it feel like to soar, helplessly to the inevitable abyss? To finally free the heavy blanket from your muscles and feel the rapid, freezing winds blow through your extremities. To know that in this moment, it’s the end, no more blankets, no more flapping, just a few moments of excitement before the inevitable.
It’s unlikely I will find out any time soon, and I hope that you don’t either. Just cling on to the sticky feathers and don’t flap harder than you need to, glide until you can gracefully land where you really want to be and try to keep your head above sea-level when you do realise you melted the cheap adhesive providing the lift.
A Nihilist Abroad 