White Room

I spent most of the day in my room and only briefly went out for a cup of coffee and a sandwich. It’s a fairly good sized room for a single but it’s bare right now. The high white walls can feel entrapping. I have large windows but can’t open them. I’m not sure if they’re jammed or weren’t meant to be opened. Regardless, the air in my room is stuffy and stagnant. I do enjoy my solitude but spending too much time in this bare white room is beginning to make me into more of a madman. It’s the worse when I wake up and for the first few disoriented moments I can’t tell which way I’m facing. It’s just a white abyss. It’s not awful but it sure as hell isn’t pleasant: it’s purgatory.

It’s now night. I spent my whole hungover day lounging, masturbating, and reading The Sun Also Rises in my maddening white room. It’s strange to go a whole day without having at least a brief conversation. Limited human contact can make you numb. There are a few people I could contact but I don’t want to force interaction. Sometimes it’s best to sit alone and deal with yourself. It’s much harder than you would imagine. With constant accessibility to everyone (at any time) most people never have a moment alone. Even watching television or going on your computer gives the illusion of company. This is why I sometimes turn off my shit non-smart cell phone and put my laptop into a drawer, placing it out of sight. Communicative technology can be a social shackle. The responsibility of being in potential contact with everyone that I know at every moment of my life is too much a burden. I know I’m a lazy misanthropic sort of creature but it’s painful to always wear a social façade. There are days that I would rather spend alone feeling numb and blue than force a social situation that would be nothing more than meaningless chatter: retarded monkeys yammering on about absolutely nothing, only wasting air. At least when alone I can indulge in myself. I can masturbate until my dick is sore, have a few swigs of some moderately priced booze, and read all I want. My own vice filled paradise.

I’m now lying on my bed. The bed stand itself is flimsy and rocks whenever I hop onto it. It’s fairly high up but I don’t particularly mind. I previously tried to lower the mattress, as there are several varying notches that it can be adjusted to, but it wouldn’t budge. I eventually gave up, feeling too damn lazy and stopped caring.

Still lying on my bed, the lights are out. I can only see some glimmers of light from the courtyard outside. There’s about an inch and a half of space of remaining window that my large white blinds didn’t completely devour. I had an impulse to crawl out of bed and completely shut my blinds so that I can have a sense of total isolation but that bare inch and a half of window makes the night a bit more bearable. I’m already stuck with a perpetually racing mind and with such a condition lonesome nights that only follow lonesome days can make you a frightful combination of low and stressed.

I am someone who often prefers the night but there are times I would much rather have it be day. Nights can be fun or relaxing but it is often the nights, typically in the middle of the week, that can be outright cruel torture. After a monotonous uneventful day filled with generic movements, actions, and quickly forgotten conversations your night becomes all you have. But the night can be a worse time. In the day you’re remotely busy, surrounded by others, and trapped in the illusion of momentum and productivity. At night it’s only you. The illusion is gone and you’re only left with slow, quiet stagnation. And if you’re anything like me you’re damned with that anxiety-induced, racing mind that no thought or action can soothe. You can distract yourself with television or music and it often makes everything all right for a while. But it’s usually right when you lay down in your bed that it hits you. It rolls on you like a heavy wave, crushing you and sinking you low. An overwhelming weariness drowns you. You don’t even always need a reason; it’s only all your days and life catching up with you in your few moments of quiet solitude. You try and brush it off with reassuring thoughts but it never works. You’re only left weepy-eyed with your face pressed against a pillow while maybe clutching a second for some imaginary emotional support. The eyes sometimes water but they’re not crying. Rather, it’s a slow build up that after some time gently trickles across the crevice of your nose. It drips down the side of your face past the sloping lines of your lips becoming absorbed into the pillow that your face is currently mashed against.

Some nights are worse than others while some are unnoticed blurs fitting into the spectrum of your life. Eroding to forgotten moments and occurrences that you’ll probably never recollect. They are only the many passing instances that nonetheless equate to the creature that is you. Nights slip from us and pass to the recesses of our minds, at least during our days, until we’re alone again in our little white rooms where everything is silent and there’s only the abyss and you.