Melancholia

 

The world leaves me flat, food taste flat, I’ve lost my desire for sex, travel, reading, and most of the crap people like, except writing. I write for R and R. 

I'm on antidepressants and, they don't do shit. 

I drive a 16-year-old Toyota, its rust free because I live in the tropics and there's no need to salt the roads because it doesn't snow here. 

Somedays, driving to the market, I look at the fancy new cars, telling myself,

you can't buy a new car fool. 

When you're living in reduced circumstances, dumb sayings can keep you afloat for a while, shit like, 

you can't bring the mud on your shoes with you when you die.

As for the next life, the religious believe in Heaven and Hell. How the fuck can they know, have they been there?  

Death is the great equalizer, if there is an afterlife, bums stand in the same queue as billionaires to get in. 

Yesterday I wrote a 500-word bit for Publisuite, it was rejected, of course, 1 mistake, and you're out.  

Publisuite is a platform that advertises and promotes different content for its users.

The Publisuite web page gives me a migraine.

The site is hard-nosed and cold.  

People rarely give away money. You have to go out of your way to make it. 

Homelessness is around the corner for many. 

When I go broke, I’ll go to Nassau, hawk cocaine, beg for bread from the Negras in the market, sleep in the jungle, and wash up in Goose River.

At the moment I'm without much money and depressed.

 

For many life gets worse, not better. 

Those on the top have special talent, I have no idea how it works, if I did I'd do what they do. 

Having money would placate my paranoia, but wouldn't soothe my melancholia.

Sure, this bit is melancholic— can you write happy-like if you’re unhappy without being phony? 

Every day I sit up in bed with the lights off and the curtains closed, listen to Netlfix through headphones, writing on my laptop. I don't know what else to do. 

I don't know what my problem is. I need help and don't know where to get it. 

You can write things off saying, 

I’m jinxed,

or, 

I don’t belong here. 

or, 

death where's thy sorrow?

I live on nothing sandwiches, they’re tasteless. 

I woke up this morning believing I might be on the mend.

Feelings and emotions are created by the chemicals firing in your brain of chemical messengers called hormones and neurotransmitters.

The Harvard Medical Center says early experiences affect the development of brain architecture, which provides the foundation for all future learning, behavior, and health.

In that case, I’m fucked, my childhood was a madhouse— my old man was a traveling salesman, a womanizer who'd come home at night drunk with lipstick on his collar. 

My parents would quarrel at the top of their lungs, throwing pots, pans, plates, and chairs, clobbering one another. 

The turmoil caused me to feel befuddled and beaten down.

At the age of 13, I was full-on lush, looting my old man’s liquor cabinet. I would grab a 1/5 of anything, I didn't know the difference between gin and vodka. 

On the weekends I'd bike a few miles to Lake Michigan, taking mescaline, smoking dope, trancing out while eyeballing the expanse of water, feeling all of Mother Nature as though She was wrapping her arms around me.

Throughout life, I've been a loner, avoiding people because talking to them leaves me flat. 

I'm anything but well-behaved. 

I am not a patriot. 

All the beguiling manifestations in the world will rot away eventually.

I’m a failure who gets by, not much else. 

I'm not afraid of dying, but I will be when I'm on my last legs in the hospital. 

Let's baptize this tale Melancholia, hail melancholia.