If you make the realization that life is meaningless, that your existence here is only a matter of genetic chance, that all that you are is an insignificant dust mote in the magnitude of the cosmos, then why go on? Was it Sartre that asked if he should have a cup of coffee or commit suicide? Or, was it Camus? I forget, but it's a good question, particularly once you start to live in pain. Life offers some pleasures, which can then become distractions. There is beauty in the world, though I increasingly have less time to enjoy much of it. Everything seems so impossibly far away. Drinking seems to help in the temporary sense, but the overall effect does not at all seem positive, or even pleasurable. We are told to live in the moment, and to prepare to die at some undefined moment in the future.
Well, few encourage anyone to prepare for it, but everywhere there is a sense of needing to shut up about it, and to endure. If life is short and meaningless then the argument is to enjoy it as much as you can while you're here.
My hands have started to seize up on me. They are always sore and have lost much strength, particularly certain fingers. I'm not sure if it is arthritis, but it is something. My guitar slipped out of my hands and became cracked on the bottom side when it collided with the corner of the wooden bed frame. So, I bought a new one, a very nice one, though now I can barely play it. Many chords require more strength than my hands can deliver. The result is increased pain. Barre chords are out of the question, or playing them for any length of time is. My left hand will simply give up in a spasm of sharp and sudden pain. Barre chords are what I have mostly relied on all these years without ever really stopping to consider that there might come a day in which I would need to learn to play chords differently. Perhaps it will all be for the best. I may learn to play fewer notes and accomplish a more careful sound than fully strummed chords, which always sound the same. The stiffness, soreness, and weakness is there whenever I play now.
It hurts to hold a camera for any period of time, also, and my eyes are going. I'm only 52 years old. I had thought that this type of bodily decay would not arrive until I was 60 or maybe 70.
Those are my complaints for the day. Sometimes pain just goes away.
Fuck. I did a Google search on my work computer to verify the question. It was Camus. Suicide hotline numbers came up and a lot of resources ready to help prevent people from committing the act. I'll probably get a call from HR before the day is out.
No, I called in sick today instead of having to deal with anything else. I am not feeling well and have not for many years now. I feel sickened.
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