I'm addicted to quitting things

“You know that’s bad for you?”

Relationships are like coffee and cigarettes and chocolate and alcohol ... actually just anything  advisably quittable.

You quit and then you start again and then you quit and then you start again and then you quit and then start again.

After the initial despair, crippling withdrawal and general misery

You remember it as an experience which you overcame, its history

You forget how good it felt

Just a minor jam on the conveyor belt

Look at me I’m so busy  Law di daw

I am just so together, I could guffaw

Now you’re some proper independent type person

Then for no good reason, you find yourself cursin

You feel pissed off and sad and like something is missin

So you start the wishin

And so you start again

And you go

“Wow I forgot how great this was, I really missed this”

Until the point someone goes

“That’s bad for you”

And you go “But I’m happy”

And they say “You’ve had enough”

Where “Enough” is a metaphor for fostering an unhealthy dependency

And also a metaphor to stop sitting in the student restaurant alone

Sobbing into your lasagne and staring at your mobile phone

So you see yourself outside yourself and go ‘shit’

And so then you quit

So maybe suspect men should wear clothes with warning labels

That would really turn the tables

With photo’s of charred rotting hearts

Right across their private parts

Except maybe this would make me temporarily transfixed with morbid curiosity and a sense of unreality

And not awaken me to the lethality

It could even provoke me to start talking, display my geniality

In fact the only difference overall is that it is easier to find somewhere to buy my coffee quickly and when I need it

Than find a person and that thought makes me so sad I think I will eat some chocolate.

I have met some odd people

Yesterday I got in the lift and there was a lift attendant

But I live in a block of flats so I did not know what this meant

The lift attendant said ‘I am your memory’

I said ‘Whatever floor three please’

The lift attendant pressed basement

I said ‘I want to go home’ but off we went

 The lift attendant said ‘We are going deep into your mind to confront your childhood’

I said ‘I’m making a complaint bud’

I said ‘bud’ sarcastically as I was growing angry quite drastically

The lift attendant said ‘I hate this job, the pay is shit and my union; the union of consciousness is ineffective in defence of my rights’

He said ‘I really don’t want to work anymore nights’

I said ‘Let me go home, I’m tired’

But he ignored me and so it transpired

That my flat mate found me the next morning crying in the basement

And she said ‘What happened to you?’

And I said ‘I’m now a murderer and that’s true’

She said ‘Dear god who’d ya kill?’

‘My memory’ I replied

She said ‘Stop drinking so much’.

Yesterday I went to the supermarket to stock up on the weeks supply of noodles

I was considering stealing as I have no scruples

A shop assistant burst out of nowhere and said ‘Can I help you?’

 I said ‘No leave me alone’

She laughed and said ‘I am your self -monitor and I have just what you need’

Just as I was trying my best to recede

She handed me a bag of carrots whilst saying ‘Have some passing pleasantries’.

Considering I was a murderer I did not want any more enemies

So I ignored her and started gathering noodles

 She said ‘No you can’t have any more blunt honesty’

 I said ‘Fuck off, I don’t like you’.

The other day I was sitting by a stream when a man rowed by on a boat

 He said ‘Would you like to take a trip with me?’

As he was attractive I could not help but agree

So I drifted down the stream listening to his hilarious stories

Of his interesting past and all his former glories

I said ‘I’m not sure what’s happening but I think I’m falling in love with you’

 I thought about it for a moment whilst he was silent, I had déjà vu

So I said ‘Well who are you anyway?’

 He said ‘I am your ego’

I said ‘Shit’.