17th July 2001 - 10:00 p.m.
This diary entry is dedicated to anyone who has ever used the term 'existential dread' whilst trying to get a day off work.
--------------------------------------------------------------------wishing you were a ghost.."
I wonder, sometimes, how the 17 year old Nicholas would react were he to see me here at this moment. This evening, sitting on my bed with my head propped up on a tear-stained pillow, I imagine he would look on and smile, a sinister glint in his eye.
Viktor Frankl speaks of an individual in the midst of a nightmarish slumber. Alowing compassion to overide his immediate inclinations, Mr. Frankl makes the decision not to awaken him, not to bring him back to the world of the living: might not the grim pictures of the unconscious be ultimately preferable?
I find myself shaken awake at odd intervals - 2:45am, 3:19am, 5:32am - by visions of street-walkers and unbearable tragedies and grotesque parodies of everyday life, and I find myself in cold sweats, missing people I never knew.
I think of Mr. Frankl sometimes. I know I shouldn't.
Funny these days, how the routine of adult life can suddenly find itself so fundamentally at odds with the beating but vulnerable heart, the concerns of an over-anxious mind. Funny how the accumulation of crises becomes so suddenly overwhelming. Funny. Ha ha.
In a five minute breather from work, I stumble up the stairs and lock myself in the gents' lavatories. Head pressed against the wall, hands roughly rubbing bloodshot eyes, staring at the flickering fluorescent lamp above, as though it constituted an escape route from the darkness. One hand moves down to my chest and stops over my heart, as though my own tender caresses could satiate the ache, or stop it altogether. Moments later, I take my seat back in the office, and laugh at crude jokes, my eyes following the remote figures who, through the window, clutch their umbrellas and cast dark looks towards the dark sky, with only the rain to worry about."I want to go back", Danel says, quietly, with effort.
"Where?" I ask, unsure.
There's a long pause that kind of freaks me out and Daniel finishes his drink and fingers the sunglasses he's still wearing and says "I don't know. Just back".
