Crimewave

My life turned upside down around this time last year.

I ended up in a collage studying things that I wasn't interested in at all. Things I sucked at. My motivation was already low enough, and with my classes being more than hour of a travel away from my house, after a couple of weeks I stopped attending lectures.

Voluntarily dropping out wasn't my dumbest decision though: that would be breaking up with my then girlfriend.

You see, we lived in the different ends of the country, and I travelled three hours every week to stay three and a half days at her place. Once the thought that I'll have to keep up with this for five years or more dawned upon me, I panicked. Instead of seeking a compromise, or being open about it, or trying to find a solution, I chickened out. I dumped her.

As that was happening, I already felt that this is a bad, bad idea. Not going into endless paragraphs trying to grasp the feeling of love, suffice to say that she was the most important person in my life, and my grave mistake was thinking that things like this can get replaced. That the heart works like a machine, and all it needs is oiling and fixing to work.

It doesn't.

By winter, I was miserable to no end. Drinking out of spite and rage, seeking thrills to make me feel alive and to drive away thoughts of suicide, it was a very, very weird time. Sort of like one, overly long dream, where you're never sure in the morning if things did actually happen, or are just fragments of your imagination.

I can still recall the winds, the smells, the temperatures. The girls, the cigarettes, the gestures, the places. Those long days of doing nothing besides crawling around the busy city, trying to make a sense of it all. Trying to forget.

Trying to cope with depression. The nights without sleep, those lonely smokes, talking to yourself, the early morning sun and the wasted walks. The music.

Out of space, out of time. That you can be useless. That you are useless.

And you will be replaceable unless you find a purpose that you can cling onto.

(Crimewave is a song originally by noise-rock band Health, but the Crystal Castles cover is more widely known. They've also been featured on Skins, and for me, their sound is attached to the autumn and winter of '08. Next post will feature less emo-dribble.)