The house was deathly quiet. It was midday on a Wednesday. Not that the day ever mattered – every day is the same when you’re not doing much. When you’ve had a whole year of doing very little you’ll know what I mean. You begin to over-analyse every tiny detail, thinking about the most minute thing for undetermined stretches of time. Losing oneself in thought. I imagined every breath I exhaled as a purple-blue colour, like clouds or cigarette smoke bellowing out into a cold, rainy night. The angle of the ceiling above your head; the way it slides down from a point. I’ve always loved attic rooms, but even this one gets boring. The view from the window; out into the cul-de-sac of retirees, people carriers, recycling boxes, hedges, garages, satellite dishes, and the dog which is let loose to run on the small patch of grass in the middle of it all. I enjoyed neighbourhood-watching, spying on the residents and the binmen, watching the rain when it came. The thought struck me that my life was similar to that of a retired person. Our days went on and on, regimented by routine. Waiting for the finer points in life; the post. Now that’s as low as it can get at age 25.
Wake. Shower. Shave. Breakfast. Cigarette #1. Attempt to spend an hour or two reading.
I leant back on my chair with my legs up on the desk, thinking in silence. No-one else was home. Here I was, again; in a bedroom of despair, waiting for something interesting to happen, but knowing it wouldn’t. You have to make things happen. Nothing will come of nothing, believe me, I should know. The walls had long since felt that they were closing in and in. It was never the ceiling or the floor coming together though, always the walls. Why was that? Maybe it’s only walls that really bind us and keep us in our place? The atmosphere was thick with a state of constant dread. Even when traipsing up and down the stairs my whole body felt heavy. Like I was carrying some sort of load, but I didn’t know what. My life suddenly felt like a reality TV show gone wrong; one room, one person, one chair.
Cigarette #2. Listen to the Carter Family on my headphones. Think about going shopping for any food scraps I need.
Amateur philosophy stole most of my dead time. I attempted to keep a studious approach to unemployment and keep reading but I had my bad days. The same goes for the writing too; half the time I was writing just to make sense of that muffling fog of boredom. And when I did have a good day there was only so much reading and writing I could handle, even when I caught the flow just right. At least I wasn’t playing video games, I’d remind myself. I’d seen computers literally eat friends alive. Some people I haven’t heard from in years – are untraceable – but I know exactly where they are right now.
Cigarette # 3. Do a little weeding on the vegetable patch. Watch the plants grow, like watching paint dry. Hours pass so slowly. The afternoon goes to waste.
The most common cause of boredom was a lack of understanding, apparently. I understood most of the novels I was reading but didn’t have anyone else with which to bounce my thoughts off. I felt no-one was on the same plane as I was; no-one was occupying their time the way I was; doing nothing. At least that’s what it would have looked like to a fly on the wall. Being bookbound is a real misery when there’s no-one to share it with. Art can be enjoyed in a solitary situation but often is brought to its full potential with other people. Ever been to a gig where there’s no audience? Then you should know what I mean.
Put off cigarette # 4 for as long as possible. The housemates would start to arrive home from work. I may catch them in the kitchen and talk for the first time that day. When you haven’t spoken all day, and did eventually speak, the words seemed to matter even more. Like they were more rare, more precious.
Usually, in the evenings, I’d get out of the house for a bit. Go out and see friends, or a band. The evenings were my afternoons, the period of the day everyone wants to be out and about. There were days when I didn’t leave the house once though. Those were the most depressing; especially if it was a bad day and I’d got no work done. But that is the nature of writing – it’s a solitary gig. There’s no telling whether you’re going to play well or not. You can rehearse all you like, but it doesn’t mean a thing.
I snuck around in the dark when everyone else had long since gone to bed. Treading lightly with my shoes off to avoid any noise, fumbling around with my arms stretched out in the dark, looking for the banister, the door handle or the box of matches. Taking ages to open a door in total silence. Sometimes, I wished I had a daytime job like the rest of my housemates, so I could live by the same clock. So I could earn some money to spend on getting out of the house.
I’d fall asleep late every night – around 2 or 3. The street was silent at that time. Lying down on my bed with the window open slightly, I could just about make out anything passers-by would say. The radio would be on, and my eyes would be open in the dark. If I was still feeling awake I’d get dressed again and ride laps round the neighbourhood on my bike to tire myself out. Or I’d go for a spin over the dirt tracks at the nearby fields, but I needed light for that. Otherwise I was likely to end up in a blackberry bush, pulling out the thorns from my arms and nursing numerous wounds.
I’d fall asleep and wake to another long day, as the exact same person in the exact same place. Nothing had changed and nothing was changing. It was a mid-life reclusive crisis, come fifteen years too early. Life had stopped. It was on pause.
