Broke as usual.
I look like a millionaire, but don't even have loose change in my pocket. Of course I DO have about $3k+ sunk into this workstation. $5k into a business wardrobe and another few k into various items of portable tech.
But if tomorrow wasn't payday, I'd be struggling to fill up the tank.
It all seems like a game, sometimes I just throw my hands up and say "in 80 years we'll all be dead [or wish we were - probably sooner in my case, either way], so what's it matter?" Unfortunately, when I'm not in the deep throes of depression or on a wave of serotonin induced ebullience; it is all too real.
I pay the price for:
a) the years I spent studying while subsisting on government subsidy for students while supporting wife & child
b) the years I spent on a low income after study while attempting to build a career (also with aforementioned dependents)
c) the debts incurred to pay for essentials like food, fuel & insurance.
So now I am on a somewhat elevated income, the majority of my fortnightly salary goes on debt, while the rest barely covers utilities and my wife's medical costs.
Which has me strangely thinking (for it is the only way I think), about the masks and personas we adopt in life. The rebel, the punk, the businessman, the mother hen, the ladies man, the virgin, the whore. While they can seem affected, like playacting, the way blackness can sometimes almost seem a cultural motif (the tattoos, the jewellery etc); as opposed to a series of gestures emphasising solidarity with ones own oppressed people.
For instance, here, now, online, I am in the guise of the DarkChylde; pondering the nature of my life and seeking beauty despite the absence of joy, hoping for light where all is dark. Yet my other persona is that of the man who dons a suit each morning and heads into the office. The two are linked, yet different, a difference most apparent in the physical visibility (something I am extremely uncomfortable with) of my day-to-day being.
In this physical world I project a serene confidence, a certain unflappability and emotional stability. Yet like the proverbial duck paddling, underneath I am running the gamut of human emotion, joking and laughing with my co-workers, all the while thinking about how best to hang myself from an exposed electrical installation. That is probably why I enjoy stories so much; all stories are at heart about the other. In descending into narrative, I find an escape, in the literary donning of anothers garb to walk undetected I am allowed to experience the emotional exposure I forgo each day (for the sake of a salary and an externally untroubled existence; debts aside).
merely a whispered screaming in the darkness I guess...
