Writing this from Wellington, a friend’s studio flat. It’s strange how much more lonely I feel, now back in Wellington, rather than when I was “alone” living my new life in Helsinki. I walk home from the bus stop in the quiet of night, putting on Yle Radio Suomi, and listening to the radio hosts talk about the new year – I still don’t understand many parts of what they were saying, but at least, the theme of the arbitrariness of “new year” was discussed: “isn’t this just an arbitrary point of earth’s orbit around the sun?” etc. The song playing on the radio afterwards was “Viimeinen Päivä” by Pyhimys and Ressu Redford (2021) – “if tomorrow were to be my last day, the best I would have had is having been with you for a moment”. Meanwhile, only lame people like me are getting off the bus – all the young and cool boys and girls are still in town, dancing, roaming around town with their friends.

Those people who I ended up spending the new year’s eve with me seemed to be in a totally different mood than me. They initiate a hug, which I return, but completely dispassionately. The next song on the radio was chosen to be “Hei Rakas” by Behm (2020) – a song that talks about how, “without you, a home is but four empty walls”. Summer is nevertheless a different mood than winter. Among all the energetic outdoor celebrations around me, despite the remaining rain drizzle, it’s as if I, in the end, found a better refuge from the radio of a land far away, of a timezone flipped around (11 hours behind).

Is it simply so, that when one is indoors and alone, rather than when one is out and “partying” in big crowds, there is a much more rich, introspective, internal life? Is there really a different culture of internal life, or is it just a more depressed/sad culture? Whatever the reason, I think I respond well to, and I feel cared for by, an environment that can meet me at my lows, instead of trying to lure me into artifacted highs.

My friends aged, just like I did. Before any of us – any of them, at least – realised, life came at them – at us – fast. New living arrangements. New relationships. “Sensible” jobs and less time at the beach. I sense that they are not fully aware of what’s happening, but I feel so painfully aware. Sand flowing through our fingers, we desperately trying to grasp on to some sense of the world. Life isn’t going so well, and parties and temporary highs feel like a distraction – we’re gonna wake up one day, and realise we Fucked Up. Denial changes nothing; tantrums change nothing. The only other real solution is to really “party till you die”. Funny how just yesterday, the film that some friends and I by chance decided to watch was “Jubilee” (Derek Jarman, 1978).

I feel so distanced, so alienated, from those who don’t understand that I am already dead. In those rare moments in which someone seems to really understand my having died, I feel so loved, so alive. Happy new year. Life goes on.