wasting all my breath, and the atheists prayer

Tonight's been one of watching science fiction television. That's not entirely a waste, but I do feel like perhaps I could have used the time more wisely. As seems to happen a lot, I have a song in my head.

I keep playing it over, and it doesn't get old. The song is 'wasting all my breath" By All Get Out. I only have four songs by the band. The four songs are the ones that they recorded for a Daytrotter session Their particular session can be found here.

The first verse is the one that's been asserting itself in my consciousness.

'We're all gonna die,
That's just life, in time
The Hallelujah, the by and by
we'll all fly away so high
there's a final chance to breathe
the smoke in my lungs ain't gonna help me
it's a speedy process
of wasting all my breath on cigarettes."


It's the only statement I've ever heard that accurately expresses how I felt when I smoked. I still smoke on occasion, but I'm not a smoker by most standards. What I mean is it sounds like how I felt when I was smoking a pack a day. That wasn't for a very long time. Maybe a few months. I don't even remember what time was like then. But that whole verse is right.

I don't know why it's been pushing forward in my brain so strongly.
That last line, "wasting all my breath on cigarettes" just repeats, and the low tone he hits makes things feel right.

I've often felt hopeless, and when my philosophies are criticised, the primary comment has to do with their negativity. The smoke in my lungs ain't gonna help me. But somehow it did. I take things too literally most of the time, and I tend to espouse ideas that aren't optimistic in the least. I feel like I've earned the right to pessimism, but I don't think everyone gets that.

I don't feel like someone can objectively look at the world and see a great overwealth of good or of freedom. I don't always think those two are connected, though I have my suspicions. I feel like anyone who does, either has a whole lot of explaining to do or is yet another victim of indoctrination and misinformation. Those are generally the attitudes of conspiracy theorists. I don't bother with such things, I've evidence for what I believe, and none of it is hidden from view.

But all that is of less importance right now than the way that this song is coming into my head and why. one of the hardest things I ever tried to write was a description of the act of smoking. The reason it was so hard, and so eluded me was because there's just something about it that made my emotional scars into real ones. I breathed in smoke, and felt the things it did to my lungs, speedily, slowly, and at whatever pace it chose, and then I could feel a little better about the things that didn't have a noticeable physical consequence. Sometimes the feeling of warm paper wrapped tobacco and filter and the touch of the filter to my lips was all I could feel, because I was just tired of feeling anything else.

That description shouldn't have any serious emotive force, but as I write it I'm on the brink of tears, because it was never a matter of erasing the emotional and mental scars, but only of dealing with them.

when my lungs ache a little, and I realise that it's from the bit of smoking I'd done, I think of the emotional scars that tie, and I feel a little better. I feel a little more like things will be alright. If we're lucky we end up coming out even. no one ever wins, we just have that chance to break even.

for a few shitty months that still haunt me, the smoke in my lungs was one of a few things that I was hoping would help me break even. Some shit may always haunt me. Even while I'm well, I just remember my depression, and I shudder. There's enough to be depressed about that even without my chemical imbalance throwing me into a depression, there's cause for one. That it seems the case now, when things are well, when all these avenues are open to me, when my world is blooming, suggests that it always will be. There will always be cause for depression. there will always be something haunting me. If it's not my own chemistry it'll be my brother's death, or my father's mental illness, or the general injustice of the world. If nothing else, I will always have these realisations that I'm a pill away from insanity.

I'm on the brink every day. Every good day, and every bad day. No matter how good my life gets, or how small my sorrows are in comparison to those of most of the rest of the world, I'm going to have these things lurking in the shaddows waiting to pounce.

God I wish it weren't the case. I wish I believed in God so he could take from me these worries. I wish that praying still made anything better. I wish that I didn't have nights were I'm lying awake just because I'm afraid of the nothing that I'm sure is waiting for me after my body fails me. I wish that my brain hadn't already failed me. I wish that there weren't ever times where I couldn't stop crying, and had started for no reason at all. I wish that the homemade rosary hanging on my bookshelf gave me more solace than a couple hundred miligrams of pharmaceutical.

God do I wish for these things.

I feel like writing the atheists prayer and shouting it out to the world so that everyone could hear.

Dear God,
Save me from myself
when I die and fall into that nothingness I'm so sure awaits me
Catch me
pull me out of my own arrogance
either delude me now so I can die happy thinking you're there
or give me some reward for the nights
where I can't sleep because I'm so afraid
where I feel nothing but pain and panic
and where I cannot do anything for fear that you simply arent
My father who aren't in heaven
give me some reward for being sceptical
you know I don't get any reward as it is
No comfort
No solace
Little peace
Tell me I'm wrong in a booming hallucination
tell me I'm wrong so I can wake up free of worry, and guilt
Tell me you love me in rays of light and happiness
so these tears will dry on my cheeks
and the pain I've felt won't matter
Make it so that my death
will be more than just relief from pain
so that I won't be alright with death because it's better than suffering
but because it's not the end
Love me
be infinite
hear this
be
even though you're impossible
just fucking exist.
I've tried to believe
with every piece of me
Forgive me for not succeeding
forgive me for thinking too much.