36 YEAH OLD MAN GOES ON RANT ABOUT MELBOURNE

I NEED TO drink to write, but I’m writing this right now without a glass of the good stuff. I wonder if I can tell a story without it. Probably not. Anywho.

There’s these lines from rural towns that lead to Brisbane, then after a few years there’s a line that then extends to Melbourne. Many people in their twenties and thirties romanticise first Brisbane, they move there to study something or other, find a job; hate it, and after some years romanticise a different life free of suffering in Melbourne, where you’ll start that new life with a different approach, move there; and hate it even more. It happens on the reg – I’ve seen it many times. It is me.

Then, for the people who’ve made these several moves (which aren’t really just limited to these places – this is just my experience here yeah) it becomes a badge of honour, in some regards, to stay and get on with it; while ordering uber eats at night, watching awful television, then getting up in the morning to work the fortieth job you’ve had, and equally despise – just to pay the rent and keep ordering food, watching television, and occasionally wondering about ending it all.

Then comes the anti-depressant, you’ll need that to keep forging ahead because you can’t go backwards when you’re in this position for some reason; only forwards (which in this case is stay exactly where you are). The way forward apparently is to take a medication (the effects thereof most likely being further depression) and keep trudging away at it.

I never wanted to become one of these people but that is me. I wanted to be an artist when I was younger, not for any fame, but simply because I liked doing it. Instead I’m an unemployed idiot in some fucked up suburb of Melbourne with a string of friends and lovers lost all because I’m a massive dickhead and a nasty prick with no regard for anyone but himself, and I’m selfish and generally desperate and utterly despisable.

So, sorry to everyone. What I have become I am not proud of at all.

I don’t romanticise the streets here like I did before I arrived. There is no wonderful never ending cobble stone pathway with people wearing quirky clothes all over the place. The rents are expensive and the wages are low. The isolation and cold are real. People here put happy thoughts on social media because documenting what little of them exist here is of the utmost importance when you’re looking back on your life that you didn’t picture turning out this way.

I’m leaving to go back to Queensland and join a church. I don’t want to see a bottle of wine for a while. I’m never taking a prescription pill ever again.

I have an aim though, and that’s the one little thing I’m proud of. It’s admitting to myself that the life I’ve created for myself is agonising pain and I have a lot of terrible deep seeded problems that need addressing. I don’t want to live it this way anymore. I’ve sat down and smoked a bucketload of cigarettes and drank a million cups of coffee tearing my hair out over what the hell it is that I’m trying to achieve in life.

Well, this isn’t a story. I guess I can’t write a yarn when I’m not drunk. Maybe a day not written about is a day spent happy. Who knows, I’m writing something on a page.

Do I share this or don’t I. Does anybody ever even read my terrible stories of made up garbage. I don’t do it to impress anyone, I do it because I’m depressed. Excessive writing is a symptom of mania or some kind of metal disorder. I saw it on a sheet at a doctor’s office once.

Writing is for the insane and the insane alone. Emphasis on the alone part. If you read this, do not move to Melbourne without giving it some good thorough thought first I guess. Or I don’t know, maybe some people make it work but I certainly haven’t. I can’t think of anything I’ve ever made work, except causing misery for everyone. I’m a decent sport at that.

I used to work with these men in their thirties and forties when I was eighteen and I never wanted to become anything like them. It seems I have become exactly like them. I like to complain all day in my head about what I don’t have and will never acquire or achieve. I’m jealous of most people I see or meet. I avoid everyone because they terrify me.

I guess this little piece of junk writing is at least a little honest with some form of accuracy and authenticity from a perspective that is ultimately irrelevant. I’ve just reached eight hundred words which means a website on the internet will even publish it for me. What a world.

This story amounts to nothing. Do not become me. Live! Save yourself! Do everything in life the opposite way I have and I guarantee you success and happiness.

Sorry to everyone for being the piece of shit that I am. Saying sorry doesn’t really make up for it or change anything though does it. How do we all get better? As far as I can tell; nobody is much enjoying anything. Although, those times do exist; the trouble is there’s misery on either side of them. The brain figures something out somehow, strange assholes that they are.

If something isn’t working, the cure is not to keep at it. The cure is to fuck off your pride and do something else that you do like doing, perhaps somewhere else. What will happen if you leave? What will people think? Trust me, they don’t think. They may talk but they don’t think anything of it.

You’re all ya got in life baby – spend it miserable hoping somebody else notices or walk away. I recommend walking away. Leave it all behind. That’s going in some kind of a direction; whether it’s forward or backward who knows. But staying stagnant; that’s the fucking pain man. That’s the killer of souls.

So anyways, yeah, Melbourne – lose yourself in Melbourne, as they say. I have.