I am sat at the table, sleepily blinking at the animated
faces of the people I have known for most of my adult life. These are people I
have laughed with till tears streamed down my eyes, people who I have had
screaming matches with, who I have slept with and who I slept alongside. We knew each other through the scrawny,
acne-ridden years of puberty, we fallen in love together, lost those loves and
cried together. We have shared cars, homes and secrets; gotten degrees, jobs
and bank accounts. We haven't spoken for months, only to return to this very
same table and find that nothing much changes, really.
I am sat at this table. And I am bored.
I still find myself experiencing a smug sort of pity for people who claim they have lost touch with their school friends. "Not me", I smile. "We're closer than we ever were, and I love every minute I spend with them".
But at this very minute, I couldn't care less about their conversation. I force a smile as I dully ask about jobs and how they spent their New Years. I don't care about their love lives, I will forget what they tell me the minute it slips out from their lips. During these heavy, morbid 60 seconds, I re-evaluate the very essence of friendship; of all those wasted intimacies and emotional investments into a hedge fund that has no interest in returning profit.
I glance down at the beer-soaked wooden table and play with the salt shaker. The most frightening through of all occurs: "Only a boring person can be bored". I know this is not quite true, but years of conditioning have taught me otherwise. Boredom is the greatest sin of all, I have been told. To be bored is to lack the intelligence and motivation to NOT be bored, to find yourself work, play, anything...
And this deep rooted fear follows me to this very table, weighing down my shoulders and filling my mouth with heavy soil so that I cannot speak. I know this creature; he has been carving out a home for himself in the deeper corners of my mind for a good many years now and I have learnt to hear his footsteps and recognise his voice.
You're boring. Your friends only invite you out of pity because they feel sorry for you. You add absolutely nothing to their lives. They've all got paying jobs, meaningful relationships and they're doing something with their time. You have nothing to contribute and nothing to say for yourself. You are stagnation personified. You look like a miserable, boring wretch - sitting there, staring from one person to another with the silent idiocy of a mannequin. I can't believe you even chose that shirt tonight, did you HONESTLY think anyone gives a shit about what you wear and how you look? It's pretty pathetic, actually, how you still cling to friendships that have obviously been dead in the water a long while ago...
I still find myself experiencing a smug sort of pity for people who claim they have lost touch with their school friends. "Not me", I smile. "We're closer than we ever were, and I love every minute I spend with them".
But at this very minute, I couldn't care less about their conversation. I force a smile as I dully ask about jobs and how they spent their New Years. I don't care about their love lives, I will forget what they tell me the minute it slips out from their lips. During these heavy, morbid 60 seconds, I re-evaluate the very essence of friendship; of all those wasted intimacies and emotional investments into a hedge fund that has no interest in returning profit.
I glance down at the beer-soaked wooden table and play with the salt shaker. The most frightening through of all occurs: "Only a boring person can be bored". I know this is not quite true, but years of conditioning have taught me otherwise. Boredom is the greatest sin of all, I have been told. To be bored is to lack the intelligence and motivation to NOT be bored, to find yourself work, play, anything...
And this deep rooted fear follows me to this very table, weighing down my shoulders and filling my mouth with heavy soil so that I cannot speak. I know this creature; he has been carving out a home for himself in the deeper corners of my mind for a good many years now and I have learnt to hear his footsteps and recognise his voice.
You're boring. Your friends only invite you out of pity because they feel sorry for you. You add absolutely nothing to their lives. They've all got paying jobs, meaningful relationships and they're doing something with their time. You have nothing to contribute and nothing to say for yourself. You are stagnation personified. You look like a miserable, boring wretch - sitting there, staring from one person to another with the silent idiocy of a mannequin. I can't believe you even chose that shirt tonight, did you HONESTLY think anyone gives a shit about what you wear and how you look? It's pretty pathetic, actually, how you still cling to friendships that have obviously been dead in the water a long while ago...
Other nights, my first choice of weapon against this voice
is alcohol, but tonight I'm driving. So it's just me and him; face to face
inside the arena of my own mind. He points out that I haven't said anything in
a good while, he replays back to me the look my friend just gave me across the
table, it sticks to the back on my skull like ice you have no choice but scrape off the windscreen before you can
start driving again. I blink past it, breathe deeply and put down the
salt shaker. When I speak, I strain my voice to shout louder than him.
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