If You Think The Price Of Happiness Is High, Wait For The Bill of Regret.
31/01/2025
My dearest companion,
Hours hath turned to days, and the days doth turn to a month. The anticipation for you to engulf and consume my existence with warm, comforting enchantment is offering critical life support to what is I, otherwise a lifeless, limp and dim organism. My consciousness is dominated by anxieties, worries and uncertainties - a dire condition that has left me jaded and impatient. This partition is the most sustained separation we’ve endured since 2010, when our complex companionship covertly commenced behind the 14a bus stop shrouded by the hedgerows and undergrowth.
Thirty-one days my love, thirty-one days I am destitute and deprived in this desert of vanity and self-absorption without reprieve or relief. Cast into these excessive enclosures of narcissism - face to face with wall length mirrors with every orb of imperfection subject to scrutiny. Indoctrinated into the hordes of weight-lifting loons over-compensating for the fact that their white-collar professions are about as physically challenging as long division. These palladiums of narcissism foster doubt, encourage comparison and ultimately use ‘self-love’ as a veil for self-loathing. What’s worse my dear, I’ve abstained from the gluttonous late-night delights in which we indulged in so often. I’ve exchanged quavers for kale, curly-wurleys for cabbage & lollipops for lettuce – living life on the veg, on the veg of irrationality and neurosis. I’ve hit rock bottom, as rock bottom is where you stop digging, and a full matching Gymshark tracksuit while listening to the Diary of CEO was where my metaphorical shovel conceded defeat.
My dear, what began as a figment of my imagination, a thought, an idea, a challenge and really, just a point of conversation to seem slightly relevant in depths of winter has now devoured me. It has submerged my individuality, blunted my personality and numbed my spirit and in exchange given me about as much character as a magnolia paint scheme in a semi-detached house outside the M50 ring road. Many people die of thirst but I was born with one; I have adulterated with sparkling water and green tea but yet an emptiness remains. Pressures of society have tried to crack and fracture my spirit but I’ve remained true - I couldn’t bare the do-gooders and Andrew Huberman brown-nosers lecture me with ‘we told you so, we told you you couldn’t cope’ - I too can be as stale, bland and as antiquated as the best of them.
My dear, this isn’t a community, it is a cult, a new religion, it’s the Gen Z church of Scientology. ‘Dry January’ - brand it, sell it, consume it. A year’s worth of religion in thirty-one days, it even accommodates for their pathetic attention span.
What’s more my beloved, this month of sobriety has lifted the fog of uncertainty and illuminated your intrinsic value and worth. Constantly tinged with the ‘binge culture’ brush, our connection was so much more. You are the relief and support to make frighteningly trivial and mediocre conversations in social environments not of my choosing bearable. You are the fuel to permit nights to go beyond themselves, to allow terrifyingly poor decision making to occur and thus birth comedic brilliance for the greater good. You are the charitable inner presence that provides an income for the gentleman in the pub toilet slinging the finest 2010 ‘Dior Sauvage’ this side of the Shannon. You are the abolition of barriers to allow borderline inappropriate direct messages with accompanying flame emojis be sent. You are the lubricant to facilitate discourse to move and meander into forbidden and prohibited areas. You are the permission to loiter and idle near medium to large bodies of water on a fine day. You are the necessary finish line and ultimate objective for hiking, cycling, walking, kayaking and any other low to medium strain exercise. You are the foot that kicks Sunday morning’s hangover down the road until Tuesday. You are the suppression of Catholic Guilt. You are the ‘ahh we’ve 20 minutes to kill’, the ‘it’s only the one’, the ‘we really shouldn’t’ and the ‘ah go on, its only baileys in your porridge’. You are a muse, an altered state, an elixir.
Thousands have lived without love, not one without water porter.
Everything in moderation, including moderation.
Grá go deo - Sláinte.