I’m not French. About six or seven years ago I was hanging out with an extremely intelligent friend. He is a college professor, and was telling me about a paper one of his friends wrote about ennui becoming a way of life in Japan. I never read the paper, but over the course of the conversation, I was drawn in by the word. And now I spot it all over. I like to read old books a lot and I think it was more of a 19th century word. It’s sort of like my shitty mantra for life.
“Ennui”
“No good deed goes unpunished”
“Nice guys finish last”
But here’s the difference between ennui and apathy, to me. I feel like I should be doing more with my life, but I can’t because I spend all of my time stuck. I believe apathy is not caring… I care, but I still cannot act, and I idle too much. A lot of this has been forced onto me, but it has become a bit of a way of life, and I fill the idle time with chemicals and despair. Ennui is like being bedridden in the middle of summer, seeing the sun rise outside and longing to go do something. Perhaps if I give up completely it will progress into apathy. And no one will notice.
I can’t find a job to work because I have my daughter all the time and no jobs are open to me. I am male, so people just look at me dubiously when I tell them I am a single parent and expand on some of the nightmare that has been the past three years. Like I did something to deserve it or something. It’s all worse because I really don’t have to work or do anything because I’m somewhat well-off. Not well-off enough to go kick it at the beach every day, but enough to pay my bills, own a house, all the basics. People seem to really like me, I try very hard to be a kind and generous person. But I can’t maintain relationships anymore, I’ve fallen out of social interaction too much and I don’t know how to have fun.
I would end it all, but I can’t do that to my daughter as I’m the only person in her life who cares. So I live, count the days (sometimes) and feel the crushing weight of ennui. I want to break out of this monotony and do something. I’ve been working on a podcast but I spend 99% of my preperation time reading and haven’t jumped off into it yet.

My daughter is six. When I was about 20, I got my long-time girlfriend pregnant. Well, we both did it, but anyways. So I was never much one for running around with all sorts of girls and I figured: “Hell, I’ve got a good job, we’re in love, let’s keep it. Let’s get married.” And so we did. Up until this point I had been pretty lost in life. I know now I let my ex fill in all the emptiness inside of me, and for a while, I tricked myself into thinking I was happy. I got a good job going on at a factory, which wasn’t really my thing but it paid hella good and I was determined to do everything on my own. And for years we made it, things going really well. Saved up enough cash to buy a house, even. At like 23 yrs old.
So this whole time I work like 65 hours a week, and it’s a terrible early morning shift so my ex and I don’t get to do much outside of be a family. Which is cool with me, but we’re pretty much potheads at this time and she’s been getting into the whole bar scene. And I’m cool with it, I trusted her and said “Go out, have fun. I can’t, I have to work.” And things are still going well until one day they aren’t.
One day my ex says she’s not happy with our life, that she never got to be young. The next day she comes home at 4AM in some other dude’s clothes. The next day the whole world I had built up around myself comes crashing down. So fucking sudden. Blames everything on me, the kid and all, like it was something I demanded, when that’s far from it.
So she leaves, and still all she does is drink and party and shit. She had a good job at a bank but lost it for stealing (mainly from me). Now she’s a bartender and sees our kid one evening a week, and even then she cancels a good amount of the time.
So I’m all devastated. I can’t work my crazy hours anymore and I lose the good job, lose the house (she left 6 months after we bought it, I had saved up 50k from my job for a downpayment, and it was gone). This whole time she’s stealing from me, fucking up the house, doing crazy shit. It just fucks with me bad, and other shit was going on too in life (my dad died).
So I really am thinking about checking out at this point. I was crazy enough to still be in love with her through all this and I remember sitting all day the day my life insurance policy expired trying to work up the courage to kill myself and leave all that money for her so at least I could do something good for her. I still think I probably should have, and life insurance suicides seem like the way everyone should go. I mean, why die when you can die and leave people tons of money, I think people wouldn’t be able to call it a ‘selfish act’ anymore, haha. Granted you have to wait three years to make a solid case for the money, but that’s nothing. But I digress.
Well I’m watching the kid every day, and I am a pretty good parent. Despite everything I am super good to my kid, and I would do anything in the world for anyone who would just ask me. My mom helped a bit too, took the kid a few days when I was real shook up. And my best friend brought over some heroin one night when I was talking all depression and shit.
I bet you can guess what happens next. I filled up the bigger-than-ever hole in my soul with opiates opiates opiates. I never shot up, and I was always straight enough to lead a responsible enough life for my daughter. After a couple months of fucking around with that shit I found a drug called suboxone, which is supposed to be used to help hardcore junkies get off skag. If your not a hardcore junkie, like me, it just gets you super-high all day. So now I go to a doctor and get crazy amounts of suboxone and have my warm opiate glow all day to help me get through. And I know, I know what the deal is. But this shit is harder to kick than skag, and I haven’t managed any real serious amount of clean time since I jumped into this shit.
So how do I get through the day? I made a deal with the devil, and he gives me the ability to forget things I have to forget, not care about things I should care about, read endless amounts of books and devote myself to a six-year-old.
See I know enough to know there’s still going to be this big fucking hole there when I take away the opiates. They barely keep it under wraps now as it is. Waking up screaming and shit. But before that it was full of a false love, before that it was just mad depression, as far back as I can remember.
I am angry, but if I think about things too long it drives me to despair, so I don’t focus on the anger. When I tell this story, I can feel myself getting angry, thinking irrationally, losing control. So I don’t. I don’t care if I dramatically shorten my life span with chemicals, actually the appeal of skaggish things is always the danger. Well, and the amazing amazing amazing feelings. But I don’t think many skagheads are really worried about ODing, because it’s not really like lifes working out for you if your on heroin.
I could understand if it had been an abusive relationship. Or if things had even been seriously fucked up. They were only as fucked up as everything else is, really. To lose it all so fast, it was traumatizing, and I guess I don’t really want things to get better at this point.
If they get better, they will get worse, shit is always falling apart. Another E-word: “Entropy”.
Well, I’m not really so sure why I am telling this all to you, but thanks for listening, and…er… ‘e-caring’
Raskol