Lowercase
The Going Away Present

Sunday, September 30, 2012.
6:32 AM.

It's already Sunday. It's just Sunday. Who knows. For many months now, I haven't had a sense of time, what day it is, what month we're in, what time it is, it could even be February 30, 2013 for all I know. And maybe it's 25:68 in the afternoon. Do I really care?

It's already Sunday. It's just Sunday. Who knows. A day like all the others. I don't go to school or work, nor do I have any other commitments that could make me aware of it. "Everyday is like Sunday." I think there was someone singing something like that. His name was Morrisson, maybe, and he used to sing in a band called The Smites or something like that.

Soon I'll go to sleep for the usual 2 or 3 hours I sleep every morning. I'll wake up, take a walk around the house, and won't find any reason to stay. I'll light a cigarette and at the end of it, I'll be back lying in bed in the darkness for hours, staring at something I can't see and maybe isn't even there anymore. Isn't that the charm of the dark?

I spend every day like this. And I think. I remember it wasn't always like this.
Something must have happened. I think about what might have happened. It used to be different. I couldn't say I had any great reason to get out of bed and go through the day, but I remember having friends for whom I would venture out of the house. They're gone, and I don't remember why.
"Feel so sad, so bad today... All our friends have gone away..." I remember, there was someone who sang something like that... Maybe they were called Cocaine? Something like that, for sure.
Now I haven't seen the outside world for more than a week, I don't even open the windows. In my room, there's fog, the 20 cigarettes (more or less) daily can be felt in the atmosphere. It happened in summer too, and the air would become so hot it was unbearable to breathe. I have to say, this winter it will be an advantage at least.

Maybe it's always been this way, but I wasn't aware of it.

I met a girl months ago. It must have been June. We were at the bar table like every Friday night, and a friend of ours introduced her out of nowhere.
I already don't remember her name. Maybe I never knew. Or maybe I never paid attention.
Honestly, at first, I didn't care much, one person more or less, what changed. She was one of many. One like the many. Of course, the other guys didn't miss a chance instead.
And she was there every Friday since that night. I started to consider her around the third week, mostly out of courtesy, I was the only one not speaking to her. I had seen her as one of many, and indeed she was. But what the heck, should I act like an asshole? Say a few words, come on. Idiot.
I soon realize that from the very beginning she was more attracted to me than to anyone else. With me, she opened up more, felt more comfortable, maybe? I think so. She truly had little in common with the others, and without being immodest, I can say I was slightly more interesting than them. Just enough.
After all, she was new to everyone, it's about stupid skin-deep favoritism.
Weeks passed, and every Friday she was there. Every passing Friday, she was more and more inclined. She wanted to talk only to me, to be only with me. But of course, the group was tight-knit, where I was, the others were too. And they were still trying to get her attention. Futile effort; she would say at most two words to each of them, just not to come across as a jerk. If someone asked her a question, why wouldn't she answer? But it was an empty response, just for formality.
Within six weeks, six Fridays, we became one. And by then, we had distanced ourselves from everyone else. Just the two of us in our universe.
The harmony, the affinity. Something I'd never felt before.
I felt something already, but it was too soon to venture a guess. It had been almost two months since I met her, but in fact, it wasn't even a week. SMS didn't count.
Now it was August. She left. She came back when I was about to leave. On my return, I found the others waiting for me. The first to vanish. They were better off without me, better off when I wasn't there. I was too much. I knew it already, in the end.
It was a Friday. September 21. It was a week ago.
That night she would have been there, but I wasn't. I hadn't seen her for three weeks by then.
The day before yesterday I saw her for the last time. I thought she could lift my spirits that evening, the one I could no longer spend with the others.
I indulged in illusions and was disappointed. In those weeks I was away, she had no trouble finding someone else, someone more interesting than me. It didn't take much for me to be relegated to the tenth floor. The one of indifference; the one of non-existence. I wouldn't be needed anymore.
In the end, she was really one of many. One like the many. A reality I would never have accepted before experiencing it for myself.
For once, it seemed like someone really cared. It seemed...

For every disappointment, I turn to an album that reflects my current state of mind.
"The Going Away Present." A title that represents an unchangeable reality.
Despair. Depression. Resignation. That's how life goes, we can't do anything about it. But it remains a crappy life.
Mournful atmospheres and slow(core), dark arpeggios that seem born from the tears of a defeat. A voice that drags tiredly, almost unwillingly. Loser's voice, failure's voice, the failure I could be. The failure I am.
Sudden screams split the world in two, from initial awareness to something new you never wanted to know. Sense of threat. Scream-o.
Crescendos or explosions that end noisily in tragedy. White noise? Pink noise? Gray noise? Black noise. Sad noise.
The album will leave you in the eleven minutes of Thistrainwillnotstop and its desolate piano coda. The piano you'll listen to will make a spontaneous question arise: Why? But it's a non-targeted, existential question. A Why addressed to everything addressed to nothing. A Why addressed to all you can't explain in your life.

"antidotes for the fare-thee-well have not helped
only made me ill.
when I shake I want to hold still
but I can't cause I lost my will.
when you said
'yeah I know what is right for you
yeah I know what is right for you
yeah I know what is right for you'
anecdotes of a long goodbye.
no release
so I cannot cry.
now I'm sick fucked up and denied
how I wish that you would not have lied."

Now it's 7:32 on that Sunday, September 30, which won't end anytime soon. An exact hour has passed.
I'll go lie down on the bed in the darkness for hours, staring at something I can't see and maybe isn't even there anymore.
And I'll think about the past days, the past weeks, the past months. About what happened but would have been better if it hadn't.
With a question in my mind that won't go away. A question that haunts me. A question I can't find an answer to.

"Why?"