2004-07-08 - 11:35 p.m.

I've got death on the brain today. After all, as the song currently playing over my earphones says, “Suicide is painless, it brings on many changes, and I can take or leave it if I please.”

Okay, before I get the customary deluge of e-mails, phone calls and interventions, I am not really going to kill myself. Hear that? NOT. If for no other reason than I’ve read far too much Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman and might just end up a goddamn tree in the suburbs of hell. So hold the calls, e-mails, and attempts at intervention. (And really, you all know me. Would I take this, most cheesy, gothy, arrogant, attention seeking way out? If and when I die, it it will be with cigars and whores, if I even have time to die because it seems I have so many FUCKING obligations to fulfill I may be effectively immortal because I've got too much shit to do.)

At any rate, if I may be allowed some self indulgence (and if you don't want to hear this because, I don't know, you're looking for fucking rainbow and gumdrops optimist, johnny-can-do Actionhero then you are part of the problem and fuck off and read the back entries. Other people get to use their journals to bitch. Story time and PotterPorn can wait) I have been depressed today for no real reason other than it’s summer and I hate my life. Or this quiet desperation that passes for it. And I thought what if I died? What if I walked into traffic and died and just ended it all? All the crap I have to do (or feel that I have to do) would be over. I could rest. I could just put the burden down and walk away. Hell, I’ve already been told I’m not getting any older. Which translates to “You’re life is half fucking over.” Which translates to “Loser. You’ve pissed it away and it’s all down hill from here.” As the song says “the game of life is hard to play, I’m gonna lose it anyway, the losing card I’ll someday lay, so this is all I have to say…the sword of time will pierce our skin, it doesn’t hurt when it begins, but as it works its way on in, the pain grows stronger, watch it grin….”

Maybe I could just fake my death. That way I could walk away from all of this, though I would like to go to my own funeral and see which of you bastards show up. I’ve actually been planning my own funeral for some time. It would be a buffet affair (chicken wings, perhaps a carving station), with an open bar. I’m sure Quentin, Padraig, Heph, Achlis, and the rest of the drinkers will hold a wake and tell embarrassing stories. Wheel and Curare and the Married Fantasy Couple (they know who they are) and all the usual suspects. Hell we only see each other during wedding leatley so why not a good funeral where the death is upfront and not hidden? Perhaps the ladies will be crying (if for no other reason then I would probably be buried in Rat Haven and they’d have to stay in this city for a night or two), though I’m sure my mother will find some reason to complain about my posture (assuming I find a way to fake a body, but then even without a body she’d find a reason to complain about my posture). I’m sure my father will complain about me never going to law school or having wasted the fading years of my life by…not going to law school. I wonder who’ll give the eulogy? Padraig and Heph quoting Shakespeare? Maybe Heph could play guitar—some “November Rain” or perhaps something a little less cheesy? I hear the Irish do a mourning rather well so that might be fun. I would like to see some of my classmates from the MTA Trucking school of Higher Learning there, if for no other reason for the liberal NC Alums to beat their Republican asses. The best part is I get to watch all of this and have a good laugh. Actionhero is dead. I win and get out. Finally, I get out. You know, when everyone is gone back to the wake and the grave is clear, I might just take a good long piss on it.

What would I do with my life? I don’t know. I suppose the freedom of constructing a new identity…damn. New name, new history, new everything. I could reinvent myself into someone worth a damn for once, have a LIFE, a real one, not this string of obligation, knee jerk responses to a set piece of duty, guilt, and expectations. I could wander around the planet, get into trouble, get out of it, wear a different personality everywhere I went. A ghost haunting the 21st century. I could drive the Paris to Dakar Rally or spend a year lost in the cities of Europe. Maybe find true love and actually live a satisfied, SIMPLE life where I don’t feel like I’m letting anyone down because all I want is a SIMPLE life. Maybe I can finally shut up the voices and get the weight off my back.

God, all the voices would be dead at last. All of them. Finally, just peace and quiet and no nagging voice telling me I FORGOT or I HAVE TO or I CAN’T. God, I could just live for myself if I could only die.

But I know that I can’t do that can I? Tomorrow, I’m going to LSAT like a bastard because, as the voices remind me, I only have three months to try and get perfect. Fucking gumdrops and rainbows.

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