Life, Death, Rebirth: Chapter 1

8:37am, Monday Morning

     I awaken to a day like any other and look up to the ceiling which mockingly returns my stone cold blank stare. Fuck you ceiling. Amidst all the noise in the room, I can feel a pain deep within me, emanating from the heart begin to surface. It is this pain that very slowly has been draining away the vital energy of my life. The fucking ceiling isn't any help either.
     It’s probably several minutes I've been starring up at the ceiling, letting the absolute dread I have for the day to settle in before I can summon some energy to roll onto my side and hit off the switch on the blaring alarm. The alarm is one of those cheap made in Chinese brutal factory conditions by workers getting paid less than what is required to survive digital alarm clocks that make your heart skip a beat as an earthly noise blares out as the clock strikes the hour, or half hour or quarter hour you set it to, out of the third world quality speaker. Except the alarm clock is just out of reach, so I pause to contemplate the act of turning off the alarm.
     The several minutes of this blaring third world alarm speaker, created in deplorable conditions half a world away, which I choose to endure everyday isn't just the eject button out of my pain-free dream world into the painful tedium of reality but the unearthly screech is so fowl that I am temporarily distracted from my own bullshit reality and sometimes focused on someone else’s bullshit reality, usually some Chinese worker slaving away to build electronics destined for the Americas.
     I'm still lying on my side as I enter a sort of meditative state trying to anticipate the changing minute of the alarm clock. I always wondered why people set the alarm so to those very specific times. Over time I eventually became disgusted with the thought that even maintaining my own alarm at one of these times caused me pain so I set it to 8:37am. This set my mind at ease because I was no longer imagining I was some office bastard waking up to a monotonous life and mind-numbing job which has the same existential fulfilment as being stuck in a traffic jam for hours on end. The same people I see on the streets every day, rushing out of the house to grab his daily Starbucks coffee and charge up on caffeine like a crack addict before the work day.
     After about four or five minutes without any success, I curse under my breath and pull myself out from the bed as I finally slam down on the off switch of the alarm. Navigating the battlefield of clothes and brown stained carpets, of who knows what previous tenants had spilled, I pull down on the cord to open the blinds. The blinds are broken from blatant misconduct against the principles that conduct how they operate. In order to raise them, I need to push the blinds up with one hand, while pulling down on the cord with the other. It’s easy to imagine the previous occupant drunkenly banging a one night stand up against the wall as she mangles the blinds trying to claw for traction against his relentless and hilariously mistimed thrusts into the womb. Who knows what sort of pitiful excuse of a human being lived here previous to my occupation. Maybe it was a drug addict who got so paranoid on an overdose of a drug cocktail that he couldn't stop frenetically checking the blinds out for some elusive force that was after him… or her.
     I pull open the window and look down upon the countless individuals scurrying across the streets to wherever it is so important they get to. They each don their suits and ties, skirts and shawls to imbue a false sense of important. This self-importance is supported by their blank yet ever so smug faces; that their life is somehow superior to those around them. On the streets sit cars, trucks and sport utility vehicles each occupied by a single occupant whose eyes impulsively twitch up at the traffic lights every few seconds, waiting ever so impatiently to proceed. I forgot to mention how they sip their oversized Starbucks lattes with great pretentiousness. The traffic lights all the way down the street suddenly turn green and the violent burst of an entire parade of auto-mobile engines fill the streets. Just as quick as the engines start up, the street is imbued with a vibrant red aura as the vehicles slam on the breaks once the empty spaces are filled up. Shouts and car horns now fill the streets as the engines simmer down to a dull rev.
     I’d like to think that amidst all of this ignorance and individualism that I was someone or something more than this flock of sheep. That somehow I transcended the standardized human individual: living within a box within a box within a standardized box full of boxes whose reality is defined by hours of starring into various sized boxes that dictate what sort of boxes to purchase. My disregard for these people slowly extends to myself and I can feel something dark coming within my soul. 9:02am, just on time.
     The thought that I am nobody in a massive world that likely would be better off without me occurs. I tend to dwell on this thought a lot. Maybe my absence will reduce worldly consumption just enough for all these other stinking consumers to have one extra minute of time, enough to come to their senses before the metaphoric elephant in the room takes a massive literal shit on their designer carpets and causes such a mortifying smell and unprecedented shock, that there was in fact a metaphorical elephant in the room the whole time and it took a shit on their designer rug that they spent so many hours working overtime in front of a computer, their head throbbing to the rhythm of their very own Made in the Third World alarm clock, that they have a massive heart attack and crumple to the floor. Briefly they come to their senses to enter a spiral of smelling the shit, having a heart attack and coming to, until they finally die. A pleasant thought, but my death won’t impact anyone, nobody will care. I’ll just be another inconvenience in someone’s self-important life.
     All the self-pity and self-hatred is momentarily pushed aside as I hit the power button on the LG remote to turn on my LG TV, which has a complete picture on the screen for the moment, but with about ten minutes of usage it starts to get an inch of distorted lines running vertically down the right side of the screen. Just another third world piece of shit.
     I enjoy the mockery of reality that the TV imposes on people’s everyday reality, my everyday reality. All the actors and celebrities that take part, appear to be in on the joke with me. I click through a talk show interviewing a famous actor about to release a new CGI film, a product infomercial that’ll improve my vegetable cutting efficiency by 100% and if I call now they’ll offer a second highly situational vegetable cutter for free and countless repeats of TV sitcoms from a different era. I start to feel overwhelmingly disgusted at humanity and as a result, disgusted with myself. Disgusted at friends who never seem to have any-time to do anything worthwhile, disgusted with family who question my every decision like there is something fundamentally wrong with me, disgusted with those nobodies scurrying across the streets, disgusted with all the traffic spewing enormous amounts of waste, disgusted with my disgust, disgusted with my disgust for myself…
      I hurl the remote at the TV hitting a direct bull’s-eye. The audio is unimpeded but the video is heavily distorted by the cracks on the screen and a large crater in the middle. I send a swift kick that sweeps the TV off the counter and without a thought, start to stump it with full exertion. After some time, I feel a wave of exhaustion, the void in my heart sucking away the little energy I had.

     I guess this isn't my one of my worst days, just about average.