Dear Diary (2)

(Continued ranting...)

All sorts of things used to make my life better, some for the moment and others for longer: hanging out with people, booze, movies, TV, books, music, chocolate, sex, women, food, blue skies, sunshine and warm air, beaches and noisy waves, and now and again doing stuff that makes the house feel more like home. Holidays are an odd thing which I enjoy more in the memory than the doing - except for the bit where I'm dining someplace like Chez Phillipe - because taking a holiday on your own is just slightly harder work than you might think.

I feel like a man who is slightly hungry all the time because he doesn't have the money or the time to eat well enough. When someone offers him a decent meal, he has to say NO. Why? Because he doesn't want to be reminded of what it's like to eat well and feel satisfied: it would make the hunger he's going to feel after his temporary benefactor has gone feel even worse. Now it's a permenant dull ache he's used to, but having something to contrast it with would bring back the sharpness and the pain and the sense of being deprived.

An addict does everything for two reasons: The High, and Stuff To Do When Waiting For The Next High. It doesn't really matter what that Stuff is: work, hanging out with your mates, watching TV, cleaning the bathroom, walking in the park... it's all just passing time. Some Stuff is better than other Stuff, but it's degrees of Stuff. It's not The High. Sometimes something I think is going to be Just Stuff turns out to give me The High, but that's rare. Stuff has no meaning to an addict: style, cool, yes, but no meaning. Sometimes hanging out with the guys gave me The High, and others it didn't.

I'm not supposed to be aiming for The High anymore. I'm supposed to be finding the purpose of my life in serving others and the Will of God As I Understand Him. I never did get that bit of the Program. Take away The High and it's all just Stuff. As a good Nerd, I can get a High from problem-solving and cool stuff, I don't need drugs or booze. Sunsets will do, or clear air and beautiful distant views. The catch is that my body still wants company. Bodies have lives and needs of their own. Get me a warm female body to be next to, it says. Get me someone to hang out with and get sweaty with. And my head and heart says that it isn't going to work out like that. My head and heart can't see the benefit at all. Neither wants to feel The High from desire that's going to be requited and all the rest of those feelings, only to know that it isn't going to happen again.

What's different this time is that I can't be bothered to do the displacement activity I used to do. Stuff I Thought Would Make My Life Better: decorating the house, visiting the few people left in my life, going for walks (a time-honoured displacement activity which only really works when the weather is good or the scenery is spectacular), going to the RA, Tate Modern, National Gallery or the National Portrait Gallery. I could explain it by the cold weather, ten weeks of viruses and colds and coming back tired from the gym, but I know that's not it.

(And it ain't stopping yet...)