Why I am so Highly Strung - The Confessional: Part 3

As I walk down the stairs with dogs to leave the appartment building we live in, I hear the toddler that belongs to somewhat at the massage parlour downstairs. I double wrap the dog’s leashes around my right hand and stand and wait. They probably wouldn’t do anything, but it one should always take precautions when they are available. A woman, who I am presuming is the mother, rushes through the door and snatches the toddler off the ground and runs around the corner, pressing them both against the elevator door. The mother’s eyes are wide with panic. My dogs are silent, sat waiting for my go ahead to continue down the stairs. 

I feel something like a registered sex offender must feel as parents rush out on to the porch to usher their little ones inside, as they walk down the street to go buy some eggs, and perhaps a newspaper. It is that reminder that you are seen as something you can be, and not as the something you are at that moment. I don’t blame the woman for taking precautions, but the urgency and fear with which she did, made me dislike myself a little, and my dogs. Outside, in the darkness of 7pm, there is little in the way of distractions for the dogs, and we can walk peacefully. They don’t mind the occassional passerby or people meeting together in the distance. Down the dirt track I noticed a man doing something in the bushes. The moonlight reflected the blade of the machete in his right hand. I double wrapped the dog’s leashes around my right hand, freeing up my left, not that it would do much good against a machete. As we got closer he got on his bike and rode off. When we passed where he was I saw the massacred remains of a coconut on the floor. I smiled and remembered what had happened earlier.

I’m not sure how best to describe how I feel at the moment, but something like ‘testy’ will do just fine. You see, there are all these things happening around me, and I don’t like any of them very much. It feels as if the world has taken one great step in a direction that’s counterintuitive to my ability to partake. The evening dog walks are usually a welcomed break from the steady thud of the music outside my appartment that begins at 5pm and finishes at 10:30pm every night. I often find myself laying in bed waiting for it to finish, only to find that I am restless when the quietness finally comes. This evening, outside the supermarket and cinema on the main road between An Thoi and Duong Dong, there was an outdoor speaker rigged up to a young man singing songs. His voice wasn’t noticeable painful, but it took the place of the crickets, the frogs, and the last rounds of birdsong. I felt as if I was being prodded by God. 

If you handed me the final leftovers of a genie, I’d ask for quietness. I don’t need peace on earth, or the end of disease or famine. Just quietness. I don’t care for fairness or the death of hostility. All those things I can survive, what I need is that blank space in which my mind can work through the passing moments, undisturbed. And so, that is perhaps a better way to describe how I feel at the moment… Disturbed. Prodded by God. There are things that shouldn’t disturb me, but they do, and those affect me the most. When I see people taking selfies in the gym, I see it no different as to masturbating in the pews at church. All these reptitive displays of public vanity becoming normalised, until one day someone will walk up to me with a disgusted look on their face and say ‘why don’t you take any pictures, weirdo.’ 

Perhaps I could make myself deaf and then sleep through the day. Wander around only when they are all sleeping. Who knows. The sunlight has significant benefits to both physical and mental health. But what of this thud thud thud. I wonder why it puts me on edge so much. The other night when I heard it through the walls I heard myself call out “that fucking garage,” and I thought I’d solved a piece of the puzzle. In my mid-twenties the appartment I lived in back out on to a courtyard and at the end of the courtyard was a mechanics. The courtyard was forever populated by drug dealers and other undesirable individuals who spent their money making their automobiles louder. I was fairly frail back then, and whenever I raised my voice to the noise I was met with physical threats. So perhaps me calling out “that fucking garage” is testament to amount of PTSD. I associate unwanted noises outside of my control with physical threat. 

There is another side to it though. That repetitive thud. It serves as reminder of what people are entertaining as music. To me it paints the picture that people’s senses are becoming decreasingly interested in creativity and meaning. People just want a noise. The kind of noise that takes away silence, but asks nothing from the soul. Are we becoming meaningless? That is how I feel. The entire entertainment industry has moved away from enrichment and toward distraction. Hearing anyone talk passionately about electronic dance music has always pained me. As I pull the fish bone from between my teeth. Distraction, as supposed to enrichment. 

But, we are all different. We are all free to enjoy different pleasures and pains. I am grateful of this. I am also apprehensive about the idea of how many people are still capable of freely choosing their’s, but for the most part I am grateful for diversity. All I’m trying to say is that I wish I felt more comfortable around all of this. All of you. I accept that this feeling of being constantly prodded by God, is innevitably as much of me as it is of them, if not more so the former. But, help me out here, it is irritating right? What impulse are people under the influence of? What are they hoping to acheive? Numb the senses so that they can exist as a nothing without being overwhelmed. Or trick the dopamine receptors so that they don’t even notice. Take pride in your nothingness. 

And this is how I write about fellow man. I do not take pride in this, but this is how I feel. I don’t claim to be too different. A little, of course, but my pedestal is long disintegrated. My question to you, if you’d be so kind to reply is this: Are there people out there who are entirely bemused by the decadence of society, or is there a mental health condition that convinces some of us that society is becoming increasingly decadent? Am I going mad, or am I watching the world around me succumb to nothingness?