Category: Failure

Stray Cat

Dec 12th, 2021

Street Rats (close up)

I like this painting. When I was inputting the hashtags necessary to get this piece even a tiny number of likes courtesy of the Instagram algorithm, I couldn’t help but feel a surge of resentment. Because I know this piece will largely drift by ignored and unloved. In a fit of petulance, I added the hashtag #myartisshitwhocares.

Who cares indeed. Recently, I thought of another artist – another trustfunder who can sit around scribbling to his hearts content and catch the eye of the right people – and how his debut film was called Wolfboy. There’s some autobiographical aspects to his work, which is why I thought sourly that if he’s some renegade Wolfboy, then I’m the mangy stray cat sociopaths try to run over when they think no one is looking.

It’s childish and unfair to feel so resentful of another’s success, but when you’re busy ignoring yet another harassing phone call from the credit card company over a debt I can’t possibly repay on my pitiful benefits, sometimes my thoughts turn to such childish “it’s not fair” feelings.

Failure, you see, is tiring. Every time you look at a shitty sculpture or read a terrible novel, you are looking at something the artist spent days – years even – on. I might think Stephanie Meyer has the talent of a lobotomised ant, but she still wrote a book, got it published and made millions.

Which begs the question of what exactly failure is. I guess for me, it’s buying art supplies on Clearpay or Zip because I can’t pay for them outright. It’s spending hours on a personal piece and getting five likes. It’s staring at the stacks of unwanted pieces in the spare room that my parents would dearly love to chuck out to make room.

Sometimes, failure is just being alive and having nothing show for it. In fact, a lot of the time that’s what I would point to when I think of failure. A fool consuming resources on an overcrowded planet thinking her art – writing, photography, painting, whatever – might have some relevance one day.

But dying is frightening. Dying is hard. And who knows – someone might toss the mangy cat a treat one day.
Life is Just Something That Happens.

Dec 12th, 2021

This is a rewrite of an older blog post. I think it flows better and truly hammers home the points I wanted to make.

I’ve never understood the phrase “life is a gift”. A child is something wanted, desired and treasured. A child is created without their knowledge or consent, brought squalling into a world of frightening brightness and disorientating noise.

We are forced to grow up in a world of rules that make no sense. If you are lucky, you can fit in. If not, you are ostracised very quickly, the kid hiding under their coat hood at break time, wishing to be invisible. The one people kick, toss chewing gum into their hair, the one who dreaded going to school. Eventually you just stop going altogether. You’ve tried telling teachers what you are going through and they shrug, they don’t care. They deny it is happening at all.

But of course, the teachers care about your sudden absences. They don’t give a fuck about your suffering, but truancy? That’s a big deal. Truants mean lost funding. Truants hit them where they hurt.

Everything you do is wrong. You can’t escape this prison, this torture that is is allegedly a rite of passage, but feels more like a form of the most thuggish hazing. You are smart enough to pass your GCSEs. When you go to collect your Record of Achievement though, your’s isn’t there. The girl with a similar name clearly took it, she being one of my many tormentors. One last kick in the teeth. They probably burned it in a field somewhere. They couldn’t resist taking that last shred of dignity.

And all the school staff could offer were condescending sneers and indifferent shrugs.

That’s school. After 20 years, I’m supposed to have let go of all this. Let go of my distrust, my flinching at loud noises, my shaking whenever around strangers, especially loud strangers.

society believes I should be able to simply find and retrieve my mental stability, sense of self-worth and social skills after years of torture as though they were nothing more than lost soft balls in a field.

Do you think those former kids feel that way? Are they terrified of loud noises, paranoid of others, live alone because their own company is the only one they can feel safe in. Do they take drugs to cope?

Doubt it. Their lives are just fine. Mine isn’t. I am their legacy. Not that they even remember my name, let alone have any concept of the shame they should feel.
Wraiths

Dec 8th, 2021

I spend a lot of time thinking about the life I could’ve had. Where I was pretty, smart, funny, likeable, talented. All that crap we want to be, that we’re told we should be for us to matter in this world.

In that world, the mirror world, I wouldn’t be spending my time in a room, four walls of miserable failure looking down at me wearily, four walls I’ll be looking at until the day I die.

If you ever got to live even a fraction of the life you wanted to, be thankful every night before you sleep. You were blessed. Someone will remember you, someone will love you.

Most of us are grey, invisible wraiths who pass with nothing but a tiny cross to mark our existence. If we’re lucky. We were never lucky.

Category: Failure

Stray Cat

Life is Just Something That Happens.

Wraiths