But I say

I say

It doesn’t matter anymore

It doesn’t matter

It doesn’t matter

Clementine sings emotionally as his fingers dance on the piano’s keyboard. He is singing “Gone” and I am listening to him with my heart clenches tightly. His voice captivates me, but his lyrics damage my soul. People commented in the column below that if he were to play piano and sing by the gate of Hell to welcome your arrival, you wouldn’t even be mad—and I belatedly agree.

The melodies he plays on the piano remind me of piano sonatas I usually listen to, perhaps Schubert, but I think it might be closer to Beethoven’s grandiose and dramatic compositions. He sings and recites, using different tempos and ambiance in one song. He speaks after he sings in high notes, then he returns again building the feelings gradually and suddenly. I am in love with his songs because they feel like classical pieces. His songs drown me in deep and endless thoughts of myself.

Honestly, I have never been feeling alive these days. I keep thinking that I should just die, or simply disappear. I pretend, for too long, that I am okay. I am aware that my life is a mess. I have nothing to lose anyway, why won’t I just vanish? How cruel fate is. Being a passive person is a torture, indeed, and I keep thinking why do I live this way? Why can’t I be like anyone else, who fights and bleeds and achieves? I keep asking, “Why was I born?”

You might not say that it’s a wonderful world

And it’s a wonderful life

And it’s a wonderful life

Just as yesterday

But I won’t complain

No, I won’t complain

Clementine sings as I cry; sorrows and frustration only seen deep in my eyes and tears as my face is a stone mask.

I wish I could stop complaining, at least to myself. I am probably that person you see and wonder about, the person who falls into a trench and refuses to climb back up because it is easier for them to stay as they are. I am a coward who does not even dare to hurt herself. Perhaps it is never appropriate to call such impulse to do such things “bravery”, but it is how it is addressed in my deviant mind. I have thought of various scenarios, prayed that someday one of them would be true.

“It would be nice if someone suddenly drove by and grabbed me off the street, killed me somewhere people didn’t know.

“Perhaps being stabbed in front of campus would end me.

“Falling down the bridge and hitting the rock there, in the river, would be lethal…

“Swallowed by harsh southern waves and drowned in the ocean, losing consciousness as I sank deeper into the abyss…”

Well, the last scenario is my favourite. If I should die, or kill myself, I would want to do that. Drowning in deep water, being suffocated, and ultimately being squeezed by water. Freshwater body would be much better than saltwater. Such bizarre wish I do have, but could I really escape before I create anything valuable for people?

And for those who hate me, the more you hate me, the more you help me

And for those who love me, the more you love me, the more you hurt me

Benjamin Clementine keeps singing. I think of friends who might love me—I never know if their proclaimed love were true—I love them, but the more I love, the more they love me, the pain expands because I don’t believe in people’s love for me. At one point, they always and always will leave. It is so much easier when you know no one loves you, that everyone hates you. I imagine that around my grave, there would be only my family present and no one else, but that is fine. I would be dead, anyway.

I envy those who depart, perpetuated now as memories, since their work here has been complete. Why can’t apocalypse happen now?

There is hope

There is hope

Somewhere there is hope

Clementine sings, but I reject it. I push it away constantly. I hate it. I don’t want to cling to hope. I don’t want to care about my dreams anymore. I am in the void, approaching black vortex eagerly, but fate holds me back. Why?

“Let me end this now.

“Let me disappear.”

Then, I sing:

Oh, all will be gone.

After all

Before we all get to the knowing

All will be gone

Perhaps you would think that this is actually a fiction, a short story with anonymous character, but as much as I wanted to make it so, this is just an entry about my feelings and thoughts. People cannot help me because I don’t want to be helped. People might think that why would I post such writing if I didn’t seek for support. I just thought that maybe, should anything happen, there would be traces of my existence in places people could see easily. I don’t expect anything. I am sorry to ruin your day and dampen your feelings right now, but thank you for reading up this point.

“Where I’m from, you see rain / Before the rain even starts to rain.” - Condolence, Benjamin Clementine