Thursday 25 June 2015

Letters to Life, Death and God: Things We Lost in the Fire

Dear Life, Death and God,


I hope you guys are well. I haven't written in a while. I've been busy living, dying and questioning everything. Here we are now, though, and I want to speak to you about loss. I love Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy as you know and I feel like a loser in the sense of Peter Quill's speech near the end of that movie. I am someone who has lost a lot of things. My friends and family are losers in this sense too.

Loss is a large part of the human experience. We lose things like keys and cellphones and that can be annoying. We lose friends and lovers and that can be heartbreaking. We lose people to you, Death and we succumb to grief for ourselves left behind and for them and whatever mysterious end or new beginning you offer. As humans we cannot avoid loss; it seems to be one of the prices we pay for the gift of Life.

Loss has been on my mind a lot lately. I look at my life up to this point and realise just how much I have lost and when I weigh it all up against everything I have gained I'm not sure how I feel. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for everything I have and my life is rather charmed in its own weird way. It seems that I've had to lose quite a great deal to get to where I am now. Life seems to be very much like a game of chess in which you sacrifice pieces to win the game. I have been thinking about those pieces lately, the things we lost in the fire as Bastille puts in their song. I miss my sacrificed chess pieces because I loved them and I'm a mildly OCD hoarder. Matter matters to me. I miss all my old books, video games and people.




My reference point in life is always stories, especially in the form of books and like any reader worth their salt (I prefer pepper though) I collect books and fill them as much with memories and emotions as they fill me with good stories, bad stories or just outright weird ones. I have lost many books on my journey. I left some of them with good people that I know will love and cherish them and I have left some of them with people I'm sure won't even care what happens to them. I don't know, I'm just feeling nostalgic and sad for my old things and friends.

To tell you the truth, guys, I'm really just scared of what the future holds for me. I'm almost 30 and have not even achieved half the things I dreamt about when I was 18. I live in limbo, I avoid my family as much as possible except now people are dying and I feel guilty about avoiding them and the girl I love lives on another continent. So, yeah, I'm a little scared moving forward. Life, your fire is hot and I don't know whether I will be consumed or refined by your flames.

Lots of people are doing so much better than me and I won't lie, I hate those people. Fuckin' hard working, intelligent, never-give-up-guts assholes! Lots of people are doing worse than me and I'm lucky that I have a job that I like (and seems to like me), my family still tolerates my shit, I have money for food and beer, I have a girl who loves me, I have friends that like me or at least are nice enough to pretend to like me (pretending goes a long way) and though I have moved a million times in the last two years I have a place to sort of call home. Still, fuck you guys a bit for being so demanding! Life with all your shit, Death with you crazy efficiency (you're probably German) and God for all your silence. Fuck me a bit too, though! You guys are not the biggest asshats to me. In fact I'm a huge asshat to myself in many instances.


Anyhoo, that's just what I'm thinking and feeling at the moment. I just feel like a loser right now and just wanted you guys to know and maybe get a hug. I like hugs.

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