Decadence

The Devil pulls the strings which make us dance;

We find delight in the most loathsome things;

Some furtherance of Hell each new day brings,

And yet we feel no horror in that rank advance.

― Charles Baudelaire

I remember many moons ago, my sister screamed, “Heretic!”, at me one day whilst I was chanting God Hates Us All by Avenged Sevenfold to myself. To this day, I wonder if being an outlier is a fundamental error. I like the unorthodox.

No, I don’t shore up heresy, for I too am a believer. I hold that religion is a very personal thing, and that whatever I do, is between me and my God. Who is anybody to judge me? If I rant at God, I still bow down to Him, as well. Some people call it pretense, for me it’s more a matter of doing what I feel is right and kneeling in submission when I feel the need to. Something inside me just knows who to call upon in the hour of my need. And I don’t do it by design, it is more of a reflex action, whenever my soul seeks it. So it means that I still have a chance at salvation, correct?

However, there is no acceptable excuse for what I have made of myself. I opted to place myself before morality and my own trifling comforts before the revered doctrine.

I am drawn to all the off beam things: intoxicants, godlessness, lust… So I could settle into oblivion, a depraved existence, and I have come to terms with it. What I really want is to be left alone to my own devices. When I get drunk I scream at God, rail at Him, why, why is He so merciless? So indifferent to my plight? I go crazy, get all out of hand, such behavior doesn’t fit in with that of the believers but I don't care.

Where I thought I was going, never existed, and where I am is no good, unless I can get away from it. Is there a place for me? I don’t know.

It is self-deception to imagine that you can escape degeneration by opposing it. It is beyond your will once it takes hold, and grows on you once you fall into it. I have had the dark side of human experience, and it has made clear to me that I cannot alter my own destiny.

I revel in the laxness of the pathway I have chosen to tread. I have my own moral compass to steer by. Misfortune calls for a disguise, which for me was my spiritual demise. On the sacred days when the people of my creed are bowing down to God, I dance my troubles away like there is no tomorrow. When they are praying in hushed tones, I let myself be hypnotized into a trance as the surrealistic music hits me in waves. As men and women count the beads on their rosaries, I down psychedelics and sink into euphoria.

It’s a strange continual twilight, where only the here and now matters. It’s like going down a flight of stairs leading into a dimly lit sanctum, running from the depths of your despair. To blanket yourself from the thorny actuality, a world where everything is wrapped in plush velvet and your reason is repainted in the colors of magic; where I am either ardently raving or absurdly pleased with myself.

The aroma of wine, hookah, and cigarettes wafting in the chilled air, hallucinatory music blaring through the woofers, and the cherry glow puts you under a spell and washes your senses with ecstasy as you gyrate mindlessly into the night, and transports you to just another world, where everything is beautiful.

Deep in the meadow, under the willow,

Lay down your head, and close your sleepy eyes,

And when again they open, the sun will rise.

Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true…

Deep in the forest, hidden far away,

Forget your woes and let your troubles lay,

And when again it's morning, they will wash away.

Here it's safe, here it’s warm,

Here the guises guard you from every harm,

Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow bring them true.

Somehow, my faith depletes, with every goblet gulped, every joint rolled, and every line of coke sniffed, though it is somewhere buried inside me. And I am just so afraid of what I might become as I stray farther and farther into the black hole of decadence with every passing day. I do acknowledge my faults, and sometimes, just sometimes they haunt me, and my conscience screams. Yet I remain anchored my decadent ways, and my soul displays a certain gloomy satisfaction that maddens me.

Waking up from the Eden of oblivion is the worst thing. All I want to do is get lost in the night, forget about everything, lose control and let the intoxicants take over me and be rapt in heaven. There is a moment of groggy delight at the blue sky outside the window followed by a seeping dread that kills the rest of the day. I don’t ever want to be stirred from the shadowy, muted drug land for I can’t face the abject reality.

Ours is a duplicitous society based on hypocritical values and self-righteousness that I so abhor. I have realized how adroit the moralists are at the onerous art of upholding their supposedly puritan and virtuous ethos. I, on the contrary, am a hedonist who has accepted who I am by resorting to mundane distractions to avoid looking at the ugly person in the mirror, choosing to disregard the sickening libertine I am inside, although the cracks have begin to show.

I know something in me has changed, and I know that this meaningless life will ruin me. All that is certain is that there is only darkness ahead. I am guilty, and I love masking the error of my ways and take pleasure in the risk of divine reckoning. For I believe you can't really live your life if you are scared of getting high. And so long as I don't cross the line I still have a shot at redemption, no? I do hope so, I will admit that I like to push things a little, try my luck.

And I have found happiness. What is happiness anyway? A pill, a joint, a bottle? One swig, one puff, one swallow and I can't feel anything, and that does it for me. As the world precariously sways, there’s a spring in my step, and laughter in my head.

That's happiness, not remembering anything, sweet oblivion, the sweetest form of escape.

The horror is this: in the end, my life will but simply be a picture of hollow worthless blackness. Because for every higher high there must be a lower low.