When I Was 29

When I was 29 I decided that the world was too much with me, and that I needed to purge myself of everything that made me feel that way. So I gave up on watching television, listening to the radio, reading newspapers and clever-sounding books, engaging in chit chat, shopping ‘as leisure’, answering emails, going 'out', taking drugs... I emptied my life of itself.

What I needed was space to think, to breathe, to be able to savour ‘being’, the texture of things, to not let my precious days on earth piss away in trivia, aches and worries. Fuck that. Just to be and to appreciate the moment, that’s all I wanted for myself. To watch the birds flying over my head, to watch the flowers grow, to enjoy the peace and quiet, the simplicity that life should be…

So I gave up all this stuff. No more HBO, no more X Factor, no more Breaking News, no more adverts, no more Taste the Difference, no more ‘coruscating visions of the human condition’, no more drunken dancing, no more comedowns, no more hi, how was your weekends, best regards, all the bests. I gave it all up…

Then I grew lonely and depressed.

The silence that I’d wished for started to drive me mad. I started to hate my own company. I’d look in the mirror and think, oh fuck me, you again. 

Suddenly I hungered for all the stuff I’d abandoned. So I went back to my old way of living. Going to the supermarket became a religious experience. Television started to feel like salvation. Simon Cowell became as an angel. A cartoon-faced, redeeming angel with divinely white teeth.

I’d go out on the piss with all the people who used to bore me so much and I’d love it, love them, even the most boring of them, so grateful was I for the responsiveness of another human being. I’d delight in asking people I hardly knew how they were and whether they’d had a good day and would respond with hysterical enthusiasm when they said they were 'fine thanks'.

Anything to get away from myself...