I took a picture of my newly dyed hair, looked at it and thought: one day these pictures is all that will be left of me. One day I will have been reduced to flat, two-dimensional replicas and gather dust in some drawer until no one can remember how I laughed or what I wrote or how I used to sing or who my friends were or how tall I was or what I used to wear or how I looked like while sleeping. Some day I will have left this existence and my name will disappear and the only thing left of me will be these photographs. And maybe that is why I strive so much to write, to immortalize my thoughts in words so that at least something can live on after I'm gone; and maybe that is also why I'm so destructive, all at once; maybe that is why sometimes I just feel like saying fuck it, life, and not care if I live or die. And the more I think about it now, the more it actually seems as the wish to never die is equal to the wish to be destructive, the more it seems like they are connected, like they are dependent on each other... as if it indeed is true, that destructiveness is how you learn to accept your own inevitable death, as a friend of mine put it... I've been thinking so much about death lately and I just can't seem to get it out of my head, which is probably the reason the short story I started to write for a contest has become an abstraction over my thoughts about mortality and overall something much bigger than I ever intended, and I'm not even sure anyone who reads it will even understand; there seems to be so few who can read between lines.
I kind of miss my old sarcastic self who knew all these things and would treat them with dark humor. It seems all I can do nowadays is look at them and feel the tears in my eyes. Everything has become impossible, everything's a hopeless case, I've given up all hope about people, about man kind, about this world that isn't going to last, about how it is even possible to LIVE without constantly fearing to die, how is it possible? Is it because everyone is blunt and prefer to ignore it, prefer to worry about bills and getting to work on time... because no one wants to realize how fragile they are, no one wants to realize they will turn into photographs one day and then be fucking forgotten?
How come all these insights tend to disappear and go dormant only to return, greater in force and twice as hard because you realize you've had them before and you realize you drove them away out of the same reasons that everyone else does?
You're no different, I'm no different, we're all just small ones afraid of the dark waiting around to die and turn into flat images
POET IN THE JAR
Will there be even pictures after we die? I don't print any of my pictures. So is my computer with all its files everything that's left? my facebook profile? my blog? well, the latter will surely be forgotten first.
ReplyDeleteI've personally always struggled to think of life after high school. I just can't myself grow old. I can't see myself with a husband, not with kids, not with a job, not with a house, not with grandchildren. So do I have to kill myself after graduating from high school, since there's no future for me? well, I've built plans little by little, but still it feels to be to no avail.
but I'm not as scared of death as much as I'm scared of getting old, if that should ever happen.
It's not death in itself that I'm scared of. It's the thought that I will cease to be, that all my thoughts and feelings will be lost, they'll never be known to people unless I do exactly what I mostly do, put them in print... I'm convinced there isn't an afterlife and how do you prepare yourself for nothingness? Emptiness? For just simply leaving existence.
ReplyDeleteI know the feeling. Although I always try to cheer myself up with the thought of where I could get in the future, what house I might have, what I might have accomplished... it always gives me grief to think of it and deep down I'm simply convinced I won't live to see it. It doesn't mean I'll kill myself, the opposite really, since I'm scared of death... but it is indeed a balance... as everything else in life.
I actually find the thought of no afterlife comforting. eternity... no thank you. too long time to live with all the mistakes and such, don't you think?
ReplyDeleteTrue, you have a point. But isn't it saddening that man will never learn, every new person still has to make the same mistakes for themselves? Isn't it sad how people spend their lives with trivial things and then die? It just seems so pointless. Why don't more people spend their time with things that actually matter?
ReplyDeletebut what are the things then that actually matter? how can we draw a line between useless and meaningul? I don't think we can. And for me personally, I'm happy with my life like this. I don't need a great meaning for my life, not a greater purpose. And most people seem to be agree with me. so why should they start doing something "great" and "meaningful", if that's not what they want?
ReplyDeleteWell I guess what I selfishly mean is what I happen to find meaningful/meaningless. People who go through their lives like this: get up, eat, work, get home, eat, sleep, get up, eat, work... I just don't get, unless maybe they had a really rewarding line of work. Meaning can be found in both small and great things. I don't necessarily need to fulfill all my dreams but I'd like to. But what I'm really talking about, I think, is - why can't people sit down and have conversations with eachother, conversations about things that matter, things like life and death and everything inbetween? Why do people only talk about trivial things? Why are people only interested in leading their daily lives, I'm just saying - isn't there more to life than just riding it out? Isn't there a difference between living your life, and feeling truly alive...?
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