Existentialistic Sunday

By Sigge S. Amdal © 2004

I was having an existentialistic Sunday. Most people would just call it a hangover, but I think that's understating the revelations your state of mind and body produces as you're shaking like a leaf, totally drained of energy, and - to your own amazement - carefully considering that scary something optimists like to call 'your future'. What a frightful concept! There's another tomorrow? Shit!

It introduces all kinds of new concepts you feel that you should have sorted out when people around you stated how mature you'd become all of a sudden, concepts like 'responsibility' I never got the hang of that one. The word itself is pretty harmless. Yes, even irresponsible thinking about how much shit that can lurk behind it. Like a troll behind your door. Sooner or later you'll notice it, at least smell it. Following, you realize that more than half of what you've done in your life qualifies as 'mistakes.'

That's one way of introducing yourself to an existentialistic Sunday. Or a hangover on the couch. Slowly things are falling into place before you, like a mental jigsaw puzzle, but you don't like the finished picture. Instead of a beautiful woman, like The Madonna for instance, it turns out to be a picture of a battered newt. With a bracelet.

Women, yes. They're like men without balls, instead they've got brains, which - in most cases - outweighs your balls by a ratio of three to one. And, for some mysterious reasons, you want them. Women, that is. Not to compare balls and brains, no, it's just something you perceive as being part of a state of happiness, having one. And they feed themselves. Heck, if you're really lucky they even feed you (don't count on it, though)!

Still on the couch thinking about this, your what's-it-called - comprehension - draws a line between earlier reasonings and you clearly see that most of your 'mistakes' are somewhat related to women. One way or the other. It can only be glancing at a red-haired lady with enormous breasts across the street, for instance, forgetting to see where you're going. Destiny sees to it that there's an equally attractive, even more so, woman right in front of you enjoying a cup of soft ice cream. And the ice cream is carefully, again by Destiny, smeared all over the victim's unsuspecting breasts. And this, by all means, is just a really innocent example of what can happen when involved with that 48% of the world's population. Against all earthly logic, however, you don't improve. You still have this notion that you want a woman. Tough one.

Ignoring the matter, you move along to your Future. Unfolding in front of you, like an imaginary brochure, are your expectations in black and white, capital letters:

THE PERFECT LIFE. YOUR FUTURE.
Sounds really great. You flip through the first three or four pages looking mostly at the pictures. Most of them contain either women, cars, or briefcases stuffed with money, or combinations of the three. You get the hang of the idea, you even like it, and your wishful thinking works really hard trying to put yourself in that red sportscar, next to that blonde holding your briefcase full of thousand dollar bills. You almost make it, and it gives you a good feeling. Then you flip to the last two pages.

Text only.

Really small letters. Oh, well...

Requirements:
a) Behave
b) Study hard
c) Work nightshifts and save money for later mortgages
d) Behave. When not, use condoms.

...etc. etc. for two entire pages.

You mentally erase the brochure, back to the couch and the white ceiling above you, pretty damn depressed. Why? Because you know yourself. With a student loan on your account, five figures, you wouldn't stand a chance not to waste some of it. Most of it, actually. Probably, even, all of it! Second, you wouldn't behave more than a pig at a royal banquet, let alone work nightshifts. At night you're sleeping off the alcohol, right?

Again, on the existentialistic side of the Sunday or your designated hangover, you ask yourself a question sounding more or less like this: Could I change?

You know you've lost the battle when you're trying to answer the simple yes-or-no question with a percentage of yes. That's called clutching to the last shred of hope you're supposed to have. Still, there's the unfamiliar voice of positivity somewhere deep inside you trying to break down your handcrafted framework of philosophical pessimism. You're still got your health. Sure, not right now I haven't, but there's always good money to make driving garbage. Oh yes.

At the end of your inner travel, your dive into Lake You, you've sorted out the following:

a) You don't have a future.
b) You'll keep making 'mistakes' since you'll keep your eyes on women and not the current (and perhaps random) path of direction.
c) The only way to fulfill the brochure pictures is to "bend the rules" a little, i.e. steal two million dollars, a red sportscar, and persuade some light-headed, hitchikin' gal to get into your car and just ignore the four heavily armed police cars chasing you. Doing this would kind of defeat the purpose. I mean, it's pretty hard to relax at some tropical island somewhere when the local authorities are taking shots at you all the time. It's almost stressful.

So, the perfect life is out.

The idea of a plain, regular life starts to seem both probable and attractive. It’s got to. Or else you'll soon find yourself lying on a couch somewhere going through the exact same procedure all over again.

Hey! I've never said I was mature. Someone made that up. Some stupid someone. And I really don't care what stupid someone thinks about my level of maturity or lack thereof. Honestly. This is my fucking life, after all. Geez!

Sigge S. Amdal is a word wanker from Oslo, Norway.