Morbid

morbid • /ˈmɔːr.bɪd/
        “Too interested in unpleasant subjects, especially death”

“I’ve always wanted to be a spectator. Like how in games, when you die, you go into spectator mode. You don’t exist, but you still get to watch and move around wherever you want. Its also like reading a book, you’re a spectator to the characters inside. Just tagging along by their side without having to exist and experience the problems. I think that’s what turned into a real bad habit of daydreaming too often. And now I’m too lost in my head. I need something to nail me down to reality.”

A rarely discussed but commonly felt desire is to simply not exist. This should of course be distinguished from it’s far more violent and permanent cousin; an act that admittedly still holds tightly to this longing for nothingness. But the former sensation is far more vague. To not have to experience this anymore. To never have been born. To go to sleep forever. I feel it when I’m embarrassed or ashamed. Social rejection, isolation, parties with strangers. Sometimes, at it’s heaviest, it springs forth from the paranoid pondering of solitary thought: would I want to live on a dying Earth? Am I a burden to others? Am I enough?

Sometimes I simply find myself condomned within a mind of misery and anguish, with no apparent point of origin to these insufferable feelings. Within me emerges a deep longing to not be there and, somtimes, to not be anywhere. In this moments the hypothetical comfort of losing all awareness and sensation can be a little too inviting. Which is quite strange in a sense. In the presence of immense suffering and discomfort, we find this capacity to fetishize oblivion. “Fetish” is an appropriate word here as it denotes the obsessive and frantic pursuit of a fantasy that will likely fail to live up to it’s hype. However the persuit itself, the felishization, is already of such an immense degree that this promise of dissatisfaction is soon forgotten. And the struggle continues. But with this unique pursuit towards nothingness we reach a radical attempt at this fantasy of non-being. If we succeed, we will never experience it fully and that’s kind of a point. We won’t be satisfied. We simply won’t be anything.

“I just want to be a rock at the beach for 400 years, and then try life again.”

But the espace hatch is always there. All that’s needed are few carefull drawn out plans and more often than not some substance of pacification. The idea that one could step out, the fetishized alternative to finally exit lingers at every corner of self-hatred, boredom, despair and fatigue. I suppose it’s this feeling that we have some autonomy, despite it all we have a say in the matter. But I’m always several steps behind from the practical planning process, and the moment of longing rarely lasts. It make so little sense. One moment of freedom for an eternity of nothing permanent silence. Is this a worthy sacrifice?

I think not.

There are enough paths to experience this ‘nothingness’ while still being able to stick around. Sure there are those mini-deaths we engage in when life becomes too much. I scroll instagram and plunge into conscious of nothingness. But rarely do i feel better afterwards. These small retreats from torment do little in the face of this godly ability to self-reflect on my own insignificane.

Fortunately there’s also just enough moments I’ve experienced in my life that have made me feel this prospect of escape and simultaneously feel a preference for being over nothingness, if that makes sense. Moments of the sublime, of pure awe in the face of somthing larger than myself. I’m nothing in the presence of a beautiful song or piece of art or moments of shared connection between friends or making something that others enjoy and perhaps even relate to. Those fleeting seconds that force me to stare into the fragility of it all; to relize that being itself is pure chance. My existense is a brief moments awake. I’m barely anything to being with, and that’s perfectly fine. Because at every moment awaits some beautiful potentiality I am not yet prepared for, and I know this because I have experienced it before. But if I give up now there’s no going back. Non-existense will come to me soon enough. So why not stick it out for just a little bit longer?