The Sun Comes Around

I woke up today in the strangest of ways.
I was woken by light.  A band of light was cutting across my room.  A sliver from between the mini-blinds.  Like the opposite of a censor bar, just a beam of light making a stripe over my eyes.  I heard birds call and people talking.  It's January.
I'm also not hungover.  I don't remember falling asleep, so I must have been drunk, but I feel fine.  It's warm, it's beautiful outside, I'm feeling healthy and clean, and I fucking hate it.

You see, I don't want to be happy, because happiness doesn't last forever.  A beautiful day in January is going to be preceded by a shitty day and followed by another, now comparably shittier day.  I don't want hope, I don't want joy, I want misery that I can depend on.  I've lived my whole life accepting that I wouldn't be happy, and that I'd survive on the vices of alcohol and tobacco, so I don't want this temptation.  Today I could go outside and meet people and laugh.  I could take a walk and be friendly and sober.  And at sundown I could kill myself and end life on a high note.  If I didn't have some belief in an even more miserable hell after this life because of the things I've done, that might be a tempting plan.  Instead I think I'll hole up in the meat freezer, get bloody and drunk, and not come out until the sun is gone.

I'm just gonna walk down to the meat freezer and hope that there aren't any customers at the door.

God damnit.

Some Cain Taygen guy who offered me a drink at the carnival the other day (it's a wonder I remember), walks up to the door right as I walk by and he wants in.  I unlock the door and a blast of warm air hits me.  It's 70 degrees outside, and I'm tempted, but I tell myself no with tomorrow in mind.  I tell the guy I'll throw in a free steak if he runs across the street to grab me some booze and he obliges.  In the mean time I take a smoke break.

He comes back with a bottle of something cheap and tells me that there's a Wells Fargo truck broken down in the middle of the street.  Fully loaded.  Cash.  I politely usher him out the door with a "Thank you, come again," and then I lock the door and retreat to the freezer.

Hah.  Millions of dollars.  What good would that do you in this town?  You could buy a lotta crack, or a lotta booze, or a lotta women, or a lotta all three.  The fun only lasts so long though before you're back to where you started, and it all seems so much worse in comparison.  That's why I don't have dreams or aspirations, so I don't have any way to fail.  If I stick to what I've got, things can't get any worse.

The winters here are bitter cold, it makes people hole up, get antsy, and hate each other.  The summer's even worse.  It gets way too hot and the whole place stinks to high heaven (if there is one).  This might be the one nice day of the year, I'm in my meat freezer, I'm drunk, and I'm fine staying this way.