Ignorance is bliss. Save yourself.

A fictonal memoir from a trubbled man

The nurse walks through the big mahogany doors to the room where i was spending the last chapter of my life. The room had never been as empty as it was then, the small and fragile steps of the nurse echoed through the room making them sound chillingly loud. In the room was a big bed with no one to share it with, a bedside table with pictures of people pretending to like me, flowers from ungrateful f***s who felt obligated to send them. Basicly a bedside table reminding me of how little my relationships with people actually meant, it's funny how much it used to affect me, going sleepless because i was scared that i had ruined something special, ha isn't it pathetic. My bedroom was surrounded by art that had made me feel something once in my life but the only painting i could relate with was picasso's the old guitarist, everytime i looked at it i heard Lacrimosa playing in my head, it was so cathartic because life is so unpredictable the only thing certain in life is death.

The nurse handed me my orange juice and french toast just like yesterday and the day before that for the last six months. The doctors said that i should have been dead one month ago and frankly i agree with them, i felt weak and powerless, feelings i hadn't felt in a long time. I said thank you to be polite and she left. That nurse giving me my basic necessities to live is the only human interaction i've had for the last four months, now i've resorted to talking to you which by the way i never thought i would after leaving that godforsaken place. And i know you're asking why the hell i'm even talking to you, let me explain. Im laying here with not much time left, everyone in my family have left me, all my friends are either dead, spending time with their loving families or they just don't even f*****g remember me. I'm as irellevant as it f*****g gets and i know you'll hear me out, i mean, you have no choice, you're stuck with me until death my friend so let's make the most of it shall we.

As a kid i was a nobody in what seemed like a sea of somebody's and i think that that environment really motivated me, i mean everywhere i looked there was some rich yuppie f**k with a porsche, ralph lauren polo, rolex watch, and versace loafers. Me on the other hand i looked like a bum compared to them. All i really ever wanted back then was to fit in, who doesn't as a kid, to conform, be just like everybody else. I wanted to embrace the numbing, sedating sameness and natural beauty of everyday life but i just couldnt. Everything looked gray to me at the time.

My mom was a immigrant from a third world country, she came here, learnt the language got a s****y job and became a modern slave whipping s**t off senior citizens asses. I remember being so angry as a kid because of how unfair the world really is, so many people who didn't deserve their fame and fortune were at the top. They had never worked as hard me and my mother and still we were treated like s**t, capitalism at its finest right? My mom was hardworking and loved me very much and raised my to be kind and polite and all that s**t. But everyday i found myself getting stepped on, people took my kindness for weakness made fun of me because they knew i would do nothing about it but who was i to object, my options were be alone or to be a doormat. And for that, for not letting become one of them i am eternally grateful because my hate towards them drove me every day. I spent my time alone a lot back then therefore i red. I remember reading this paragraph from the malcolm x autobiography that really stuck with me. He said said that when he was young malcolm and his family didn't have much food so when i had eaten his dinner and still wasn't full he would throw a fit for more, his mother would ask him why he couldn't act nice like his brothers and malcolm would think to himself that he could act nice but at least he wasn't going to bed hungry. At that point in my life i was malcolm's brother, that paragraph taught me that if you really want something you got to go and get it, be verbal and make yourself clear and that is a philosophy i live by whether it came to the women i was interested in or the goal i wanted to achieve.

At age fifteen came my first formative moment in my life. I interned for this man that had more of an impact on me than any other person in my life, and i only interned for him for two weeks. He owned a handful of franchises that were really successful and had made a lot of money and for those two weeks he took me under his wing. I observed him and how charismatic he would act around his customers, it was like he had them wrapped around his pinky finger and they would buy literally anything from him. I saw how hard he worked and how much he cared about what he was doing and it inspired me to start acting like him and to start acting like malcolm. The last tips he gave me before i stopped interning there was f**k having a lot of friends, keep a small circle that work as hard as you and keep you focused. Be ready for sacrifice things that may be hard to. And the last tip he gave me was always remain hungry, succeed bask in the glory and get a new objective and move towards it, satisfaction is the enemy of success. I remember my mom wanted me to go to school and get a nine to five job, a smart wife, a big family and a house with a white picket fence. And i told her that i would rather die, i would rather die than become a cog in the machine, i wasn't going to be controlled by anything or anyone and i would only do things that i wanted to do and what fulfilled me. And so I did exactly the opposite of what my mom wanted, struggled for about ten years, i was lower than punscum and i accepted that because i knew this is what it took, but with all the lessons i learned i worked my way up and became the biggest a*****e on this planet.

The moment i first realized i was the definition of every man's success  i was thirtytwo. I was hanging out with the one percent of the one percent in my yacht party with my wife and her best friend blowing me, i had seventy three thousand dollars in my pocket cash for no reason and when we docked in monte carlo bay i took some lines of coke from some random girls titts and then threw all that money out the car on my way to dinner. We ate at a six star restaurant which i never knew existed until then whilst having fireworks and a live band playing in the background and i'm not exaggerating when i say this, this is fact. I spent every day of my life like i was going to die by the end of the day. i never stayed in one place and always moved around, maybe to keep me distracted from how depressed i actually was, i constantly had my mind on something else.

In the past four years i had travelled around the world twice with my wife at the time being invited to different high class bougie events that i actually didn't give a f**k about. I had my dream car which was a matte black porsche 911 with blacked out rims that i saw the rich f***s i hated in school driving around in. Obviously i could have gotten a better car but it was the statement that mattered. You underestimated me then, thought that i was going to end up with a s**t life and you treated me s****y because of that but look at me now. it was like a huge middle finger to every girl who ever fuckt me over and there was many, every teacher who said that i was a dumb nobody, every person who ever doubted me. F**K YOU. people finally respected me, everywhere i went people knew who i was. i didn't even have to try to impress anymore, i was established, punscum no more. When you are on that level people talk to you different they act different around you. Every joke you make they laugh at every story you tell they listen to, they appreciate you, make you feel important and i absolutely loved it that because i was a self centered narcissist. Was i happy, f**k no i was miserable but i knew how hard i worked to get there and i knew that this is what i wanted ever since i was a kid.

This was until i met Ophelia. From the first moment i saw her i was instantly curious, i wanted to know everything about her. We we were at one of those high class bougie events and a common friend of ours introduced us, she was there with her husband and i was there with my wife. The whole evening i was thinking about her, she had on this elegant white dress with a flower pin, and when we met she had gave me this mona lisa type smile. I remember how she would come of as like nothing really mattered to her. My goal that night became to get to know this girl as much as possible. After a while i saw her sitting alone at the bar and i spotted the opportunity, i said: - Hi. and she didn't respond she just sat there sipping her drink staring at her phone. I remember being baffled, thinking who the hell does she think she is but it made her even more interesting. I chuckled to myself and ordered a drink turned to her and and said: Hi i'm John we met earlier remember. But all she did was look up straight into my eyes with the same mona lisa smile as before and then stare back at her phone. I was so nervous but something about her face made me calm down and i just began talking. It was like my mouth was controlling itself whilst i was like a third person listening to this conversation i was having. I could hear myself just telling her everything that i just had thought in my mind. That i wanted to know everything about her the first time i saw her, that her smile reminded me of the mona lisa, that she made me really nervous and that she looked absolutely beautiful. At first she hated me, thought i was just another pretentious a*****e which i was but, we got to know each other and how fucked up and different we were and i guess that's what drawed us to each other. i was trailer trash she was royalty, i was chaos she was order, she used to be the wall to my tantrums and the door to my answers, she was my muse, my inspiration i could just go on and on. We fell in love and we later got married, we were "happy”. I think that the people closest to you should only change you for the better.

Ophelia was depressed and she made me realize i was to, the best thing that ever happened to me was embracing that because it meant i didn't have to run anymore. I remember how i used to practice smiling in the mirror, how i used to fall asleep listening to something because if i didn't my mind race for hours and i would end up having a panic attack, and how i used to use drugs as a form of escaping from real life. Now i had Ophelia, it was me and her against this fucked up world. The second formative moment in my life was at our wedding, it was just me and her in a courthouse and we had just gotten married. We took my porsche and sold it, it just reminded me of a lesser place in my life. After that we went home and we started slow dancing to song on the beach on repeat, i remember putting her soft and fragile hands on my shoulders and then placing my hands around her hips, and we slowly danced whilst looking into eachothers eyes smiling, for fifteen minutes straight. I remember feeling like i could just fly up into the sky with her around my arms to a world where problems didn't exist. A world where no one had to suffer and we would live happily ever after. At that moment i could have died a truly happy man. I stopped going after business and money and dedicated my life to art, i used to paint ophelia all the time and especially when she got really sick. When all her hair fell of she would wear this wreath with flowers she had hand picked herself and i would paint her everyday with some kind of flower theme. It was little things like that that made her happy while she was going through kemo. Her depression had gotten worse and she wasn't this optimistic girl living in her fantasy world anymore. She used to sleep twelve hours a day, she had no appetite and everything she had once loved didn't mean anything to her anymore. I was so angry because she was in so much pain and i couldn't do anything about it, it was out of my control. In these moments in people's life they turn to religion or hope or whatever but that just wasn't a good enough scapegoat for me. They found her in the tub dead surrounded by flowers, she couldn't go on anymore and i don't blame her, i never could. The last thing she had written in her suicide note was “now i'll be in the meadows you painted me in forever”. I got into drugs shortly after, she was my world and now she was gone.

I managed to stay alive until now, until the final chapter of my life. but all i got out from this life is that “Nothing really matters”. I'm just a sad man talking to himself because the decisions i made in life. If i ended up like my mom wanted me to would i have been miserable or would it be better? Who knows. I chased this life thinking it was the only way to live, it gave me freedom to be me, but the actions i took whilst i was “free” came to define me. And i became an a*****e who probably deserves all the pain i'm currently going through. All i can hope is that my story and my art will live on and inspire or enlighten someone in the future. What awaits is the unknown.

Last messages to world: Ignorance is bliss.  Save yourself.

Goodbye

Author's Note

This is a work in progress, feel free to leave constructive criticism.

Reviews

[Evil Duncan]

Okay, it needs a bit of proof-reading, but I guess you know that.

Otherwise I like the idea of a man reflecting on his life, but I think the story might benefit from slowing down a bit, taking the time to explore the different stages of your protagonist's life. I think adding a little more detail would help your reader relate to your character; for example you mention painting and art, but don't really explain any further, and I think this might add some depth to your character.

Finally I am curious who he is speaking to?