Contrary Magazine: Psychopathology

The Psychopathology of My Everyday Life | Daniel Cecil

I drank myself to sleep last night, which means I slept for four hours and woke up with a surge of undeserved happiness in a haze of relaxation. It's a brief flicker of hope dashed by the onset of reality. I say to myself "Don't grab that remote by the bed. Don't turn on the news. You don't want to know." But of course I do and the television is already on because my traitorous thumb has done its work and the happy well-scrubbed people are telling me how another chamber pot has been emptied on the shitheap that is the world and la-di-da.

So I lurch to the bathroom and turn on the shower and walk back to that chair behind that table with the typewriter on it and there's no page in the typewriter because why kid yourself and I light the first cigarette of the day and I smoke it to the bitter end and then I take my shower.

I should say at this point that I try to fill my head with as much clutter as possible. It's a way of crowding out reality. It's why I memorized all that Shakespeare "Now is the winter of our discontent" but discontent is an emotion for all seasons. I'm trying to memorize The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock right now "like a tedious argument of insidious intent" is one of the greatest phrases ever phrased it's not easy but I'm sure it will be worth it because no "I do not think that they will sing to me" but Eliot always will.

By now, I'm at work. It's all unconscious. I don't remember how I got here. My job is ridiculous given what I claim to believe. My boss will be lucky to survive my employment. My day will be spent tricking him into thinking I'm working when in reality (check one two) I'm typing parts of the clutter in my head into this contraption, the Fuckwit 5000, which turns the thoughts to impulses and the impulses not to actions but to words on a screen and I'm grateful for that screen and the other people on it because we all connect through words and words are all I have.

At some point during the day my boss and I will have an argument and he'll be condescending which is laughable and I'll raise my voice and say something unpleasant and he'll leave me alone for the rest of the day. It almost certainly can't go on like this. Yet it almost certainly will.

So the working day is done and I bid a reluctant farewell to the Fuckwit 5000 and try to remember if I need to buy more whiskey on the way home because there's nothing I hate more than getting halfway to satori and realizing that I have to go to the liquor store but no I don't need more because last night I bought another 1.75 liters (apparently they use the metric system in Kentucky) and now I'm home.

I eat a veggie burger because it's simple and I don't like to think about food which is why I've eaten exactly the same thing every day for the last two years and son-of-a-bitch wouldn't you know it there's Lehrer on tv and la-di-da and I pour my first drink.

The first drink is like an awkward first kiss because although it isn't all it could be you know that practice makes perfect and it can only get better by the second drink I've started talking but there's no one else in the room so it's kind of pointless and it occurs to me that the only difference between me and one of those crazy people spouting gibberish on the street is that I'm indoors and realizing that I pick up a pen and that's where this comes in that's where this came in that's what this is and I'm skating on thin ice but I've been skating on thin ice for so long that I'm beginning to think that I'm really just walking on the water upon which my name is writ.