Sick

"I never listened to bass line, speed garage, grime, funky house or UK hardcore when I was at school. I listened to terrible, corny gothic rock music, with cheap synthesisers, drum machines and lyrics about vampires. I thought it was mystical and otherworldly, I thought I was different. I was, that's why nobody liked me. That's why I got beat up in physical education, because I was small and wore black nail varnish. I couldn't stand my ground, so I'd tell myself it's because of the fact I'm different. I'm better. I would go home and numb my brain with computer games, Super Nintendo and cartoons on television. Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids bootlegs and pages printed out from websites about paganism scattered around the room. I'd never smoked weed, never fucked anybody, never been in a fight, never been to accident and emergency after ingesting strange research chemicals. I was quiet back then, but I hadn't been fully consumed by my present sense of worthlessness and self loathing yet. That was something that had to be cultivated over time.

I would say how I hated religion, how I hated God. I was a shitty guitarist, I wanted to start a band with a kid in my class who nobody else talked to. There was some kid with big ginger hair, no social skills and a creepily vast knowledge of Pokemon. He was a complete fucking loser. I remember watching him allow people to take it in turns to punch him. We were friends. I wrote lyrics for a song that never got recorded, never got completed. It was some bullshit about God being evil because he kills people, it seemed profound at the time. Everything stopped all of a sudden, all the things that seemed important ceased to matter. My past no longer seemed embarrassing, neither did my future seem worthwhile. All I see is a screen, pixels, lonely attention whores. Facebook status updates. Look at me.

My attention span is beyond recovery, I am dependent on constant reassurance from my Internet friends. I depend on instant access to the sounds and images that distract me from actually living life. Drugs are a welcome change from this. I'd sooner be taking the last bus from my dealers area with an eighth of cocaine than reading peoples bullshit on social networking websites. How you are going out, how you will get photographs, how I will succumb and become a part of it to and start spewing trash out for everybody to read myself. I am paranoid, I believe people are monitoring us and we are making it so fucking easy for them.

Maybe if I hadn't spent my childhood playing computer games, listening to music just because it made it easier to isolate myself from people that wouldn't want to know me in the first place, I might not be here now. I'm struggling to continue writing, my attention is waning, I've forgot what I came to say. Television is fucking poison, chart music is designed to control our minds, I'd sooner develop a cocaine habit than have to hear chart music ever again. It makes me feel sick.

If I could smash this screen, I might just stand a chance."

Rita J Jones