This quote says so much in a few words:
“How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so? ”
― Charles Bukowski
His alarm would usually ring at 6 am. Sometimes I got a kiss, sometimes not, sometimes he was still next to me in the bed and would start pulling himself away, sometimes he would hold on closer because he didn’t want to get out of the warm bed. On the rare morning, more snuggling turned into sex, but this was not as common as it should have been.
He would get out of bed and start the shit, wash his face, get dressed to go to work process. A kiss goodbye and he was out the door, sometimes to drive an hour, sometimes to cycle to work 30 mins, sometimes in the snow and usually it was still dark.
I would often lie in bed and wonder, “Why does he do this?”. There were so many other options in life, why would he pick this? And we had an exit plan of sorts, so he could stay in bed longer, have a leisurely breakfast, and enjoy life.
What’s the point of life if all you do is get up early, commute hours every week to sit in an office, go home, and repeat? I mean, he did have me to come home to for a time, now he has nothing. Nothing.
How do you go through that daily loop of nothingness to then come home to nothing?????
I don’t see how people do it. I know this may be what is considered normal in the world, but you need a “why” to justify the unpleasantness of life. What is his why now? To make money? So it sits in an account, and he does the same mundane, boring routine on repeat until he has enough to retire? By then, maybe his knee is shot, and he can’t do anything anyway. He won’t find someone else who loved him like I did, I mean, what is left? What a hard life to live, if you ask me.
He had a whole fun life in front of him, and he fucked it up. That must be a hard thing to live with. My life is hard now too, but I know it isn’t my fault. I didn’t destroy the person who loved me, which is also impossible, as he didn’t love me, now did he? I don’t have the plans I had before, but I also am not stuck in an office all day. No one was trying to make my life better, which in hindsight is wrong; that should have been his goal, as I was trying to improve his.
The other irony is that he really felt the other people stuck in the office all day somehow liked him, which isn’t true. And I’d love to know what they think about the disinfection spray he has to use each time he goes to work. He hates the hot desking but too chickenshit to say anything about it.
Up at 6, in the car for an hour, work all day, more commuting, and he was often home at 6 or 7 pm. I would hate it, but I accepted it, I felt MY life was wasting away waiting for him to come home, imagine having to be him????? There is a whole world out there; there were ways for him to work less and travel more, but it was hard for him to be open to getting out of the box. Sometimes he seemed open to the ideas, other times, no way in hell. Rigid thinking comes with the OCD and other issues, but hey ho I still tried to get him out of the rat race.
But here we are.
I’m free to do anything I want, and he is still stuck in his hamster wheel. No one is excited to see him when he comes home, no dinner with laughs and smiles, and no hot sex.
He was the creator of his own destruction, and for this, for today, I will smile and say I’m happy I’m not him.