I had my headphones in as I was studying a few nights ago. I usually don’t pay attention to the music, it’s just background noise to distract from the odious texts and figures in front of me. However, for some reason when the first few notes to Teitur’s “Poetry and Airplanes came on, I snapped to attention and listened to the lyrics for what seemed like the first time, even though this is my favorite song from the album.
Mid way through the song, just as the bridge is coming, I hear:
Alone in these strange streets
I think that I’ve walked them enough
Poetry and Aeroplanes
I am tired of waiting for love
Another night I lie awake
In woken dreams of faith and fate
Hope my love don’t come too late
Hope my love don’t come too late
And all of a sudden, I just felt tired. Not the type of tired that you can just sleep off after a light coma, but a tiredness in my soul. It’s as if I’d been holding up this pretense of being alright, and because of those eight lines, the strings were cut. Work and school, that’s fine, I know what I got myself into and I see the light at the end of the tunnel, however far it might be, I accept that. But my personal life, I just don’t even know how to put it. Frankly, it’s just a clusterfuck. Putting up with shams, sham people, sham acquaintances, sham friends, sham love. I think the late great Gabriel Garcia Marquez said it best when he stated that “Sex is the consolation you have when you can’t have love.” If that isn’t the definition of sham love, then tell me, what is?
I’m impatient. That’s who I am, that’s who I’ve always been, and experience tells me that I always will be. Deep down, I just want to deck the next person that tells me that “she’s out there”. Prove it. Prove it and I will just stop having it on my goddamned mind. I have passion for things, for people, for causes, for beliefs, but I can’t remember the last time I was actually passionate about someone. You try lying to yourself to conjure up some semblance that it’s real, that some girl of availability actually means something to you. I guess the funny part is afterwards, you kinda just chuckle to yourself, and think, “Fuck, I dodged a bullet there, I would’ve realized that it was all something I made up in my head”. But the real joke is, you’re still in the same place, just done with deluding yourself.
I always tell myself, just keep grinding. Every day, you get that much further ahead, but for the first time in my life, that grind might be eating more out of me than I can admit. The temptation to ingest a large volume of whiskey and chasing it with regret and empty promises looms ever larger, but my status as a lightweight precludes that possibility. And that’s just it too, there’s so much you can do to feel better, but that’s only just a temporary balm, something to make you forget for a while, either a long while or a little while, but still, only a while. To be frank, this is where I rely on my narcissism to get me through the day, because honestly, I like myself, even at my worst. Personality flaw, coping mechanism, call it what you like, but it gets me through the day.
But yeah, spiritual malaise, a funk, or however you want to put it. Or more poetically:
Woken dreams, of faith and fate.
