Sleep, wake up, wash, eat, go to work, eat, wash, sleep, repeat.
Day in and day out... it's bloody monotonous. Am I alive? Has anything changed? I've talked to thousands this week and I've never felt so bloody distanced from the world.
Occasionally there's standout moments in an otherwise blur of the fucking same old, same old. A good laugh with a buddy, a smile with a friend. More often though, a brief moment of pure rage when finally prodded hard enough, but never enough to release the blackness inside.
For the most part, it's a neverending cycle of bullshit. Bullshit that I bathe in, unable to walk away. Lie upon lie, that I'm forced to utter, and for that I'm rewarded with meaningless numbers that rarely translate into more meaningful ones. I cash my check and it's always a negative balance by the end of the week. But I get my shiny gold stars, and a pat on the head when I've done a good job.
So Friday comes and I lay down my cards. An evening of babysitting her kid for a free Saturday night from any sort of responsibility. I'll smoke cheap cigarettes after I've done my hair and hit the road. I'll make my way downtown and listen to music that will wash right over me, and then slowly get loaded on beer by the pint. I'll laugh and I'll laugh and I'll laugh.
A brief interlude from a song on repeat.
Home to an empty room, to an apartment that has housed so many others like me: taking what I can get from momentary pleasures and momentary pain. Just another bloody person trying to make it day by day. Bank account shrinking, living on nickels and dimes.
A Sunday, bloody Sunday, full of defiant statements of recent enjoyments. A furtive glance at the wallet, a tightening of the belt. And then it begins.
It's all the same.