"Existential Loneliness"💗
🤍CONFESSIONS of A MIDNIGHT THINKER🤍 Somewhere between the present and the past alone in close company! x -[29 MAY 2025]
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29 MAY 2025 - Unpacking Existential Loneliness (the uneducated Mancunian Middle-Aged Way!)
“the night of thought is the light of perception.”
― Evelyn Underhill
Dear Chasers💗
Soulful 2000’s deep house music playing softly on the TV with lighting pink to match the ambiance. I’ve set my stall up for tonight’s writing session with my laptop on a small over the knee table, surrounding by notebooks and pens. I’m on the corner of the sofa next to my desk and alone, not even the dog is in here keeping me company at the moment. I guess that’s what the music is for? Company. I notice that I thrive of good sounds in the background, they pick up my mood and increase my mind’s pace. That is until I start to type (some days are the same) sometimes, I find that any distraction however slight or beneficial has a subconscious negative affect on my productivity.
I often sit and wonder why I would require such company as the background music, the dog or anything else. Why? As a writer aren’t my words supposed to carry me into conversation and do the job of keeping me ‘company’ - or in other words, attending to the task of being a welcome distraction at keeping the loneliness away? It is then that I ask myself this: Are my words increasing my existential loneliness. Am I always saying the wrong things? Why aren’t my words enough (for me?), why do they hurt?, is there a way to make it work better? and, why do I find it difficult to reconnect with the words I have only just written on the page?
I love snuggling up with my dog, reading a cosy book and writing about something that I’ve had running through my mind lately. Sometimes I feel lonely during those times, but I put it down to emotional loneliness… which is not that hard for me to deal with. I also put it down to the fact that, if I can’t give myself what I want or need, then how can I expect anyone else to be able to fulfill those in me either? I am always cross examining myself as if I have no idea who the person is I am dealing with - and truth be told - I don’t.
I heard somewhere that some people give their brains a ‘name’ like Deirdre or Mike and when the brain speaks up and the person doesn’t agree with or appreciate the brain’s chatter they address their brain in a way like; ‘fuck off Mike’ or ‘pipe down Deirdre love’ - I can’t remember where I heard that from but in my opinion ‘what a load of old wank!' sorry Mr or Mrs Woo but I’d rather eat a badger’s raw arsehole than talk to my body parts like its a ‘being’ like a friend, foe or fucking neighbour upstairs. Sorry. That wouldn’t work out for me. I’ve tried that stint with giving my fanny (vagina) a name and just like my sex life, even that attempt fizzled out in the end.
RIP Margaret the Minge!
So how else do I deal with intrusive thoughts? - or why am I always quizzing myself, my brain or whatever, with inquiries about it’s intentions or the reasoning behind its decisions or expectations by its (my) behavioral patterns/problems? I put it down to disconnect from self. That said I still I don’t wish to drive a wedge between my body and my mind. We are still as one. Just two halves of No - One. I feel like I have too many identity crisis’ which makes some sense because I have so many half ID’s.
I remember back in the day, in my first flat - picking out pictures and paintings for the walls. I wasn’t a wallpaper, or upholstery, cushions, nick nacks, ornaments type of girl. Just a few bits of canvas on the plain white walls would do. I was delighted with my selections of Banksy reprints and obscure/ custom quote art piece. I was projecting the personality that I was beginning to create for myself. Add a mint DVD collection!
I had a class set up. All the cult classic and some strange ones too that made me look more cultured and unique. Or just weirder.
Which in my eyes weird was good. People are curious about what they don’t understand right?
I thought I was forging my adult identity. In reality I was absorbed in self discovery, vicariously through the eyes of my beholders. Projecting an image and hoping to see it reflected back at me with validation from the people who I had around me. I wonder where that project may have led to had I believed in myself and kept up the facade. If I carried on ‘inventing myself’ regardless of others. Believed in myself.
Instead, I adopted, stole and borrowed parts of everyone else’s personality. Which would have been fine…. if I had been around decent people. Instead, I met my fella who was never impressed with anything I had, did, was, felt, or tried to project. He saw the real me. He allowed me to love him fiercely and for a short while (no pun intended) he must have had a wee crush on little miss Margaret the Minge! haha… It must have been something good. He told me he loved me and that was all I needed to abandon myself, my DIY Self-Development Plan, I was done. I didn’t need to be me, or find out who I am or what I’m about. I had him! I told you I’m a proper weirdo! This probably stems back to an unconventional (at the time) childhood. I was abandoned by both parents but rather than end up in the care system in the 1980’s my beautiful loving and doting grandparents took me in and raised me.
I’m not here to shit on my parent’s or past. Or even talk about my beloved who is a bit of a dick now too. Currently AWOL - in other words he’s in the bathroom taking one of is regular TikTok Shits. The kind where he sits for over 45 minutes oggling girls on TikTok til his arse stings from ‘shitting’ and he gets a red ring around the back of his thighs. ‘Go on Lad with yer TikTok Arse’. I only mention this because these are the times where I feel like I miss him the most. I guess because most of the time we spend cooped up together in this tiny little shit hole flat, in separate rooms doing our individual interests, still in love, still needing each other, just content in our own spaces and still pissed off for being on top of one another, that I feel my most ‘loneliest’. Its not emotional, its not absolute despair like being physically alone used to be for me. It’s a disconnect from myself because I no longer have the tendency, need or inclination to explore him.
Jumping into his skin… I was in love. I let him devour me from the inside out… I wanted nothing more than to float through his veins and live in his heart (or arse!) I aimed to please and could have it all. The price I paid was ME.*
*seemed like a no brainer to me! a bargain! he is priceless and I was ‘cheap’ LOL
“It is those who have a deep and real inner life who are best able to deal with the irritating details of outer life.”
― Evelyn Underhill
It is another one of those nights where the past comes to mind. It kind of mingles in with the present and laments the near future too. This month marked the passing of my father and step-father as having been eight years. That’s eight years waking up every single morning knowing that today is a new day that I won’t be sharing with my father. He would have loved to listen to my SoundCloud mixtapes. He would have championed my most shitty mix. He might have had his own Substack Newsletter - it would have been epic.
I never got to do a video-call with him. He had refused to move with technology and still had a ‘brick phone’ with a calculator sized screen. Still had to press each number multiple times to ‘type’ a letter… to spell each word for a text message. He enjoyed his privacy. If he wanted to talk to you he would log into his old computer and send messages through Facebook. Most of the time, he did not. Need us that is. Most of the time all he needed to make his day (or night) was a nice new packet of cigarettes ‘Like Fine Wine’ drinking a hot cuppa (tea) and cracking open a new pack on pay day. I sometimes wonder whether that was a good way of making the most of what was available or possible in his life time; or giving up. I say that with a knowledge of Dad’s background.
Would I have had anything left to ‘do’ if I’d have lived a life, as rich and colourful as his? written and published a book, sent all profits to BUILD A LIBRARY in Africa? I guess my memory is a little frayed around the edges because as fresh as Dad’s death is to me, the finer details of his lifetime are beginning to blur.
I hound myself with rhetorical questioning.
Was it Africa? Was it a library or a school he helped build? Did his money help or fund the lot?
See these are stupid questions because he NEVER actually told any of us, friends or family, what his money had funded - or where he sent it. All he ever said is that all proceeds from his self published book; would be and continue to go directly to his church. It was only at his funeral where people learned the extent of his generosity and how his footprint on the planet paved the way for many more. I’m thinking Jesus footprints on the sand; but what I mean by this is that him being alive has touched so many lives globally. For some kid somewhere will now have a safe place to thrive. Whether it be to read a book or write their own first story. If he was here he’d probably tell us it was nothing much and that he wants to do more. As much as he wasn’t keen on being around people (or more accurately for people being around him in his environments and personal spaces - like his living room) he loved people, cared for others who didn’t even know he existed.
Dad was the original Armchair Traveler. He’d been to hell and back in the comfort of his own chair, in the company of his self and all in the boundaries of his own mind.
I think about Dad sitting watching the news on TV and when an Advert came on screen that didn’t please him. He’d scream and take aim with the remote control: “Get Out Of My Living Room” and the power off button would be hit. We'd all be sat there in the orange glow of lamp light, curtains closed to the night outside and awkwardly the conversation would dry out, the silence would engulf us - and that would be our cue to leave.
It feels like yesterday when we were going through the motions of a funeral, like hours ago where for my step-father we were sitting in a side room watching the life force slowly slip away from the man who was loved by many and more infinitely imprinted on my brain is watching the life force behind my mum’s own existence drain from her face each moment and minute that passed us by. Ii saw my hero, my mother, begin to unravel in ways I hadn’t witnessed ever before, all while sitting waiting and wishing for a miracle recovering, pinching out guts with our hearts hoping and praying for an alternative reality to occur; wanting to sleep and wake up in a world where my step-dad was breathing with us in open air. I sometimes still feel stifled in my mind and in the chair I sit in now - like I am back there in that side room. Angry again like this shouldn’t be happening.
Finding questions to berate myself with and reasons right there in that room for me to silently complain:-
Why hasn’t my step-dad been fitted with a drip for water or food? Why is he being left this way? Why wasn’t I there for my Nana the way I am here for my mother who isn’t the person who raised me, who isn’t the person dying? Where was I when Nana was like this? Should I have insisted on being in the room with her and my Granddad, her sons too. Surely I should? Why do they give us only two plastic chairs when there are four of us here? Where is the pain relief we requested an hour ago? Why am I thinking of my Dad right now. Why do I feel so guilty on my own?
The inquisition is still now. I am relaxed and it may have something to do with the dog curled up with me since he disturbed her sleep when he set off on his retreat to the bathroom on his poo-pilgrimage! I’ve left the music playing and it’s been okay. My words ran a bit cold up there for a while, it’s my sad soul shining through. Time for me to take a smoking break. In the meantime I shall leave you with a quick, far from cheery, poem.
Ghosts
When we went there,
the TV with the ghosts
would be on, and the father
talked and called out
every now and then to him,
Isn’t it June? Or Aren’t
you, June? And June
would laugh like only his voice
was doing it and he was somewhere
else, so when the father
turned back to us like
he was enjoying his son’s
company, we could tell
he was on his way out,
too. Until at the end
he just sat saying nothing
all day into the dark.
Walking by there after chores,
we would see the blue light
from their TV, shifting
across the road in the trees,
and inside, those two dark
heads which had forgot
by this time even the cows.
So when the truck came
to take the manure-matted,
bellowing things to the slaughterhouse,
all we could say was, Thank God
for Liz. Who else
would have helped load them up,
then gone right on living
with that brother and father, dead
to the world in bib overalls,
while all around them
the fields had begun
to forget they were fields?
Who else would have taken
that town job, punching
shoelace holes all night
into shoes? So now
when we went, there
would be Junior and his father
in the front room of the farm
they did not remember,
wearing brand-new shoes
they did not even know
they wore, watching the TV
with the ghosts. And there
would be Liz, with her apron on
over her pants, calling out
to them like they were only
deaf, Isn’t it?
or Aren’t you? and telling us
how at last they could have
no worries and be free.
And the thing was
that sometimes when we watched
them, watching those faces
which could no longer concentrate
on being faces, in the light
that shifted from news to ads
to sports, we could almost see
what she meant. But what
we didn’t see was
that she also meant
herself. That the very
newspapers we sat on
each time we brought her milk
or eggs were Liz’s own
slow way of forgetting all
the couches and chairs. Until
that last awful day
we went there,
after her father died,
and after the state car
came to take June,
and we found just flour-
bags and newspapers and Liz,
with her gray pigtail
coming undone, and no idea why
we’d left our rock-strewn fields
to come. Then all
we could think to do
was unplug that damned
TV, which by now didn’t
have ghosts, only voices talking
beyond the continuous snow.
All we could do was
call her to come back
into her face and hands,
and Liz just watched
us, waving our arms,
like we weren’t even there,
like we were the ghosts.
by Wesley McNair Moments of Joy:
Just being here on this borrowed Chromebook, back in the ‘Writer’s Seat’ of my life - brings me joy of the brightest and dullest kind. It’s like I’m constantly sitting on a see-saw waiting for the winds to change and take me up one way or down the other. Like a bird perched on a branch of a tree, light as a feather, strong as its own feathers, just resting until it gives flight. I like to think my mood-pendulum is a joy too. I would hate to always be ‘high flying’ or perpetually ‘down in the doldrums’ either. It’s good to have some form or consistency and balance in life. Even if it’s constant shit and an even level of bad. Joy is a choice. x
I hope you find your cup full of joy today, this evening, now or later. In the meantime I will jump off because I still haven’t had my smoking break. I didn’t want to leave then return in a new frame of mind as the pendulum still swings. Also, the fella has vacated the toilet and left the light on in there so I shall go and turn it off, pop my head in his room, moan about him being inefficient, tell him I love him, make a brew, have my smoke and settle down to read a book.. or something else. Take it easy! x
Yours Sincerely,
from your mate,
…Chasey💗
