I often find myself thinking back to something my mother said when I was a kid, not to me, but to my eldest brother, with whom she was arguing.
This was one of those vicious sorts of argument where both parties dig deep and say the nastiest, cruellest things they can come up with to upset the other person and "win" the argument, scorched-earth style. My brother, for almost as long as I've been alive he's been... well, a slacker; living with our mother most of the time and rarely leaving the house except to buy cigarettes, complete whatever employment-related activities the government requires him to do, or (more recently) pick up his kids on the occasions he gets time with them - and according to her, getting him to perform even the simplest of household tasks is like getting blood from a stone, if said stone had vocal chords and the ability to complain bitterly all the while.
Now this was a long time ago, but I'm pretty sure the fight sparked off over something to do with his general idleness.
Anyway, this argument was raging steadily until my mother came up with this gem, the killing blow:
"You're just waiting to die." Whoa. Pretty harsh, no?
From what I remember she sought him out later, once tempers had cooled, and apologised profusely, as she often does after eviscerating someone with words. This was many years before I heard Townes Van Zandt's classic song,
Waiting 'Round To Die, but it was a powerful phrase nonetheless and it has always stuck with me. Nowadays, in my current state of almost-constant apathy and malaise, it springs to mind more and more often. That's basically what I do with myself. It feels like it's more true than I realise, certainly more true than I can express.
How better to describe these days where I lie in bed half the day, dreading to even leave my room lest my housemates see me and sense from my disheveled appearance what an embarrassingly bad place I'm in? The sun rose a little while ago - I was up early, since I woke up hours before my alarm and figured it better to just stay awake rather than going back to sleep and risk sleeping through another whole day - and I thought to myself,"...what am I going to do today?"
Nothing came to mind. Sure, if I think abstractly, there are plenty of things I could or even
should be doing, but it's not as though there's any hope of me actually doing so. So I guess it'll just be another day of sitting around wallowing in self-loathing, or as mi madre so succinctly put it all those years ago, waiting to die.
I'm only 26, just how long will I have to wait?
Will I ever get out of this rut, find something worthwhile to do
to pass the time with my allotted time? I dunno. This post is probably way too angsty, I dread to even scroll up and proof-read it. I blame being half-asleep. #feltexistentialmightdeletelater