Too Much Bonch

I have felt unusually empty through this school year. I have nothing really going for me and nothing to give me a sense of well-being. I am nada. This is why I am leaving. I am giving up on trying to tough out this shit and am banking on the hopes that this is caused externally and not internally. Over this week that I have been back, I have continued to prove to myself that this is a good decision. Roommate interactions are as awkward as ever. Social interactions remain relatively stagnant. I hear the good fortune of others and immedietly see it as a reference point for a lack in my life. I am eating less. I am poor. And nothing happens to me. A saddening imprint of my ass on the couch when I get up to go to the bathroom is evidence of a wasted life. I'm too cheap to do drugs; if I weren't there'd at least be a pit stop on the way to depression.

But on Sunday I watched a movie with a group of friends like old times. We drank beer and ate too much crappy candy. Inappropiate sexual comments were flung about. It rained like God was angry and I got soaking wet.

Earlier that evening I stood up to use the bathroom after having sat down for some time. Once in the bathroom, I woke up on the floor with my face directly in front of the bowl and a slight pain in my skull. Apparantly I had passed out for a second and did a faceplant directly into the porcelain of an open toilet bowl. Luckily I was not peeing at the time (I've been down that road before, it is not a pretty site). There is now a cut in between my eyebrows and a lump that feels pain when I look down. I often have trouble with passing out for a quick second after standing up to fast, or something, but this has not happened to me in some time, and never to the point where I smash into a toilet bowl I-Ate-The-Worm style.

Today I had a friendly conversation with my roommate. This does not happen anymore, and I was delighted and surprised that any comments I spoke to him did not elicit a "Mmm" followed by leaving the room or a subtle ignorance of response or emotion, but instead with follow-up statements and rebuttals, even laughs and agreements. We were watching "The Simpsons", a long-time point of comradry between us, revelling in the joy of early episodes and the bane of post-9th-season blasphemy. We had not conversed as such in some time; even earlier in the day he flat-out ignored my comment on how my animation teacher works on The Venture Bros., a current favorite of both of ours and what I assumed would be a sure-fire conversation starter (I was saving it for just the right moment to spring this information on him, perhaps I picked the wrong time). Our light, yet brief, period in which we spoke reminded me that we were once friends and used to talk like this all the time.

I also met a man while walking down Armitage who interested me. I am not sure why he decided I was worthy of talking with, but he struck up a conversation with me on my way to walk around aimlessly about town. He asked if I liked rock and roll. He told me of an old boombox he had which was decrepid and falling apart but still worked. He asked if I got high. The conversation was brief and mostly muffled by the train passing by, but I learned that he had a 22 year old son whom he had never met and that his "Good Book" was written by Alcoholics Anonymous. Perhaps he was trying to tell me not to do drugs. He told me of Hindu spiritualism as the best high there is. He made an analogy about standing in the middle of traffic that I didn't quite understand. Perhaps he thought I was his son. He told me, should I ever need him again, to stick out my right hand and stroke my chin and he will appear. We shook hands and he left. This Lynchian introduction to a man most would've said "I don't have any change" and moved on caught my interest, as nothing else had really happened to me today. Looking into a sea of people in a city of names, you forget sometimes that some of these people are interesting.

None of these events deserve the name "events". If I hadn't just written them all down I'd have forgotten them by the end of the week. Essentially, nothing really happened, as nothing really came of any of these. But maybe that's where I'm wrong about nothing happening in my life. Just because they are of no consequence does not mean they didn't happen. Therein lies their consequence: They were significant enough to me for me to have remembered them after they happened. I am under the impression that a happy life is that in which interesting things happen to you at such a degree that events like these will not even register for me. But perhaps if I reach that level I'll be missing out on these little events, passing over their meaning in favor of something that affects me deeper. So maybe I'm not happy now. But things are happening. I can't forget that.