Welcome to another night where I don't sleep. The second one this week. It's Monday.
I think about work constantly. It's like a gear spinning in my head that won't stop, and it's grinding away at my very last raw nerve.
I move the words all around the page in a chaos of scribbles and scratch outs. What's better, what's quicker, what's funnier, what punches harder. The way we talk about jokes is so violent; it's all about punching, killing, destroying somebody.
Who would have ever thought that the people who make you laugh might not be the nicest people. After all, they're only dying. There is a casual cruelty inherent to funny people, a enthusiasm for a specific kind of pain, regardless of whether you're feeling or causing it. It's a very friendly sort of sadism that lurks somewhere in a place you'd probably rather not shine a light, and for some reason I have insatiable desire to blast it with the whole sun.
Writing jokes has all the grace and dignity of tearing your veins open with a dull razor blade. It fucks with you. Once that gear starts grinding, it won't stop until it crushes you. It's a machine inside your own head that's been switched on and you can't reach the off button because you've already been sucked in too far. But you wouldn't dare press that button even if you could. You'd thank the wood chipper as it devours you.
It really does feel like you're dying. Even when you're not.
You know you aren't. You know that, logically, things are just fine. The sun will rise in a few hours, just like it always does, and the rent check will cash, and things will keep moving forward, just like they always do.
But it feels like you're dying.