Staring at the darkness got a little bit harder every day. Especially when it became the only thing to see in everything that could be seen. You would have thought that your eyes would get used to not being able to make out anything, but they didn't. They kept on searching for something -anything- that could bring a little bit of light in the shadows. Although they rarely found it.
Everything I laid my eyes on lately seemed dark. Pointless. I felt alone and useless, again. It wasn't surprising, and I couldn't understand how I didn't see it coming, even if it didn't make it less wrong.
I had lost the motivation to do anything. I didn't feel like seeing anybody, going for drinks, for walks or playing music. Even watching a movie felt too hard. I knew some people would have said that this loss of interest was symptomatic of a depression, and perhaps was I depressive, but admitting it to myself felt way out of reach.
I knew I was overreacting. One action, one set of words, couldn't reasonably have that effect on someone. It was just that a lot of things made me reconsider my life, and this one was the final straw.
Life had no meaning, no purpose and nothing was important except for what you convinced yourself was. Unfortunately, I had told myself too many times that the only thing human beings needed was interaction, contact. Therefore I hung on this for as long as I could before it became too much and I became too tired of trying.
When the realisation of the meaninglessness of life came to people, they reacted differently. Some had existential crises and decided they should live every day as if it was the last. Some fell into a depression. And finally, some accepted it and kept on living as if it wasn't revolting. I liked to think I was part of the last category, even if I sometimes broke. It was human, after all.
I hated every single mouthful of alcohol I drank. I knew how weak it made me to turn to that to bear the burden my life had become. Yet, I couldn't stop because -for now-something still whispered to me that I shouldn't give up on life.
Something else that I hated was how badly my mind wanted company; to the point of going out and hooking up with random girls twice a week. I only went to a party for that, and stayed there about one hour before coming home again and feeling empty. Not that I felt filled of anything when I was with a girl.
My friends were past the point of worrying anymore, which was understandable considering the amount of times I had pushed them away. I even came to wonder if I still had any friends because I sure felt more alone than I had ever had. It was eating me alive.
Lately I picked up the habit of becoming obsessed with a notion and seeing it everywhere. The first one was rejection. I saw it in each thing I did, in everything I saw. Then came difference. The last one was attachment. It hurt whenever I saw two people together, reminding me that I was alone and most likely will always be. It didn't make it easier when in movies, they showed the need to have someone with you and what it brought you : happiness, support...comfort. It angered me to the point of trembling and wanting to hit something.
I came to the conclusion that something must have changed me, that I couldn't have been that impulsive and miserable all my life. It almost made me want to cry when I tried to think and remember what it could have been because then, I could see everyone leaving me again while I had no answer. Sometimes it appeared to me that this was deserved, that my life was meant to be a living hell. And usually that was when the drinking and dark thoughts began.
Weakness was all that I could think about when I caught myself begging for comfort. Why would I need that when nothing dangerous happened in my life? Still, it was there, like a black hole sucking up every other aspect of my life.
Wandering in the streets, the dull light of the lamp-posts hurt my eyes which were not used to the brightness. Deep down, I knew I didn't want them to. I had made a home out of the darkness a long time ago.
Walking for a long time without any final destination had always led me to one thing. Self-pity. And hopelessness too. Thing that happened that night, after at least two hours roaming the streets. Which meant that when I passed the railway for the fourth time, I stopped and old habits resurfaced. Images of a few years ago passed before my eyes, ones in which I constantly jumped when I heard a train, when my feet seemed to stop carrying me whenever I was near a level crossing. Those were definitely some of the hardest times of my life.
Yet there I was, replaying everything. Sometimes, getting better was just an illusion.
The truth was that I was way past the point of being scared. If you really thought about everything that existed in this world, you would have no reason not to be scared all the time. Volcanoes, earthquakes, nuclear weapons, tidal waves, airplane crashes, wars... you could even fall down the stairs and break your neck in a second. The irony was that the majority of the human population wasn't afraid of death, they dreaded the suffering. It was only logic since we couldn't fear what we didn't know and honestly, there wasn't a lot we knew about death.
I felt myself shiver, something I didn't do that often. I thought it would wake me up, make me truly aware of the position I was in, yet it did not. I was still numbly standing near a railway, at night with the will to walk up the rails until my body violently collided with a train. Until my mind eventually turned into oblivion. Until I finally felt relieved as well as feeling-less. Until everything became nothing and a person became a body.
I had no idea how it happened but next thing I knew, I was breaking down, tears falling down my cheeks and breathing unevenly. I fell to my knees and begged someone -anyone- to make it stop. To stop the suffering, the thoughts, the torture my life had become.
Part of me remembered when I read that consciousness was at its best when we had to make a choice, one that would determine our future, our life. In that moment, we were the most aware of ourselves. It was also in that moment that we were free; free to decide what to do of ourselves. I remembered that some forms of insanity came with the centralisation of everything around the insane person, in diseases such as paranoia.
I was far from paranoid, that I knew. However, insanity didn't seem so wrong. Although freedom was more appealing. All my life, what I had wanted was to be free. What better opportunity for that is there than choosing whether to keep on living or not?
That one choice -the ultimate one- was the very line which we all walked on, at least tried to, before the emptiness attracted us and made us fall on one side or the other.
I wanted to know so many things. I wished I could learn about a lot of subjects. But at the same time, I didn't see the point of knowing all I wanted to because I was bound to die. All in all, it would be completely useless.
As one of my feet came in contact with the railway, I couldn't help but notice that there wasn't anything useful. There was no purpose of our life here, of the earth, of the galaxies. Because, in order for it all to have a purpose, there should be someone responsible for it. I was not religious. In my mind, there was no god that could be manipulating everything and everyone. We were just there. Alone. Clueless.
My other foot moved. Before I knew it,I was walking down the rails. I was aware that there no train passed by during the night, but deep down, I hoped I would get so carried away in my thoughts that I wouldn't turn around and go back home like I did a lot of times already.
Numbness appealed to me. I didn't want to feel empty anymore, I longed to feel nothing at all. That might have been the reason why I took off my shoes, so that the pain of the rocks would numb my feet. I then would be able to focus on the numbness and -for once- have what I wanted. I couldn't take any more of the weight that I had been carrying around for so long. Sometimes I really thought things were getting better for me, but something always proved me wrong.
Someone once told me human beings couldn't be conditioned. If the fact that everyone kept on blindly staying alive when they thought death would be a better solution wasn't a proof that we were conditioned by society to do everything that was expected from us, then I wouldn't know what to do of myself. It sickened me that we considered ourselves better than everything else. Yes, human had more brain capacities, but it didn't mean they knew how to use them. Or that they wanted to.
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. The coldness of the air gave me the illusion of cleaning my lungs,relaxing every single one of my muscles. At first, the sensation of peace came along with images of green fields, small hills and the smell of nature. It then turned into despair when I realised that when I needed comfort, I still thought of that one place that both destroyed me and made me grow. It was a painful memory but at the same time, it could free me from negative feelings even for a short time. And if I wanted to free myself for a little while longer then I'd have to feel a little bit more pain. I was willing to go through anything if it meant finally being at peace with everything.