If this is the life why does it feel so good to die today

The leather is 5000 years old. The copper man is Roman. The glove itches my right hand and I want to hit the girl who tosses the glass beads around and asks her friend if the big hunk of slag was ancient shit. I'm reminded of Firefly and the hands of blue as groups of bored girls and curly headed boys prod at stone axes with purple hands. The real Doctor Jones looks, sounds like and is as boring as Tony Hart, the old man who did that art show that you only ever watched to see Morph. There are no girls with Love You scrawled on their eyelids in this class. At least last semester we had a good lecturer who knew when he had to teach the dull stuff and threw in pointless facts to cheer us up. Like the trading town in South America that was permanently stoned.

I nearly missed my stop. I was miles away when I realised I knew the cemetery we were passing. All those lines of grey slabs, most of them slanting if not already on the hard ground. I didn't know anybody lying there. The only people I experienced dying are ashes. The curator of the Hunterian told us that archaeologists would find a pot full of dirt and throw it away. Just like that a man is tossed aside. He's cluttering up the artefact.

Everyday I push past the walking dead. Addled and stumbling, they take up the road and tut at my loud music and short skirts. My Papa was the liveliest man you'd ever meet and I don't know what happened to him when he died. I didn't even want to be at his funeral, I couldn't handle it. Worse I couldn't see him in the hospital. I never got further than the cafe and I think part of me never forgave myself for that. I didn't want to see him weak. I wanted to keep the lively man in my head forever.

There are times when I have problems reacting to the world around me. When I stagger through each day. I smile, I laugh, I eat and drink and sleep but I'm not there. My mind switches off. No sorry it's too difficult. Come back later when I'm awake again. Every so often I'll meet someone new and they'll fascinate me enough that I spend time figuring them out in those quiet moments when the fear tries to creep back in. And it helps observing somebody else for a while, keeps myself distracted so I can stop dissecting every little thing I say and do. But it doesn't stop me thinking. Nothing can stop me thinking. Is that what separates me from the bones in the dirt? Is it the voice in my head that defines me as alive or the traitor in my chest. And when I'm dead and gone will I be forgotten in time or will I have achieved something. I never was concerned with achieving anything when I was younger and I imagined death everywhere but as I get older it becomes ever more pressing. I have few goals and only a couple of them have been consistent throughout my life. I want to write something that moves you. I want to walk past bookshops and know I could look up my name and there I'd be. But my dad is nearing 50 and, aside from the 2 books he was commissioned to write, he still hasn't written the novel he's talked about for years. And the name he's passed on to me is so plain, I feel I must find another man's name to adopt before I'm published. My other goals are flimsy. I want a kitten or two, a library like Belle has in Beauty and the Beast and I want an affair; romantic, foolish and dramatic. I don't have any plans regarding my degree or a job, and I don't want children or a husband, not for a long time. I've never identified myself as anything but a writer.

I lie on my blanket-swaddled couch, glass of Jack within reach next to my printer and a hat on my head. Pens and notebooks litter my floor and elaborate twisting of wires means my music fills my tiny room with ideas. Or if my speaker refuses to cooperate I'll shove a film on. Watch a few of my favourite scenes. Natalie Portman swinging her legs over the landing as she smokes awkwardly, Anita Ekberg stepping through Roman alleys with a kitten on her head, Audrey Tautou skipping stones. Ink smudges over paper and skin and it's never what I wanted it to be.

So I wonder just how alive am I.