Ennui:

"Exquisite boredom."

For some reason, I still remember this definition my high school English teacher gave of "ennui" back when we read Kate Chopin's The Awakening.

More precisely it is defined by Merriam-Webster as

Main Entry: en-nui
Pronunciation: "an-'wE
Function: noun
Etymology: French, from Old French enui annoyance, from enuier to annoy -- more at ANNOY
: a feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction : BOREDOM

This word seems to have become my mantra lately, much to my dismay. Were it truly an "exquisite" boredom, then I might be able to bear it. But it's the kind of boredom that weighs heavy upon me, like a thick-weaved quilt on a sweltering summer day. It itches and it's making me sweat.

It's the kind of boredom that sneers at you and gawks and swoops upon you like some banshee, howling and screaming and not allowing you to disregard it.

It's the kind of boredom that was hiding behind the mask of "normality" and "familiarity" for a really long time. But then someone says two simple words to you and it reframes itself in all its horrific glory.

No matter what I do as of late, I seem unable to rise above this feeling that each and every minute particle of my life at the moment has been wrapped in the web of ennui. Nothing seems purposeful enough to make me happy, so I end up just flopping down in front of the TV and watching mindless crap. Which just makes me feel worse because this is even LESS purposeful activity than wasting my time reading a book or some other nonsense.

I am reading Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, but I can't help but think that this reading choice is not making things much better.

The other day I finished a chapter devoted to the subject of the "I" and what differentiates one individual from another. The narrator points out that, essentially, we are so very similar in so very many ways that, really, only a mere fraction (a mere fraction of a fraction of a fraction) differentiates us from one another:

"Tomas... knew that there was nothing more difficult to capture than the human "I." There are many more resemblances between Hitler and Einstein or Brezhnev and Solzhenitsyn than there are differences. Using numbers, we might say that there is one-millionth part dissimilarity to nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine millionths parts similarity." (199)

This is somehow less than reassuring.

It gets me thinking about how expendable we all are if we're basically one and the same deep down, except that I like pickles and she doesn't, or that I use my tongue a little bit more gratuitously in the sack than she does.

This in turn makes me feel small and useless, in relationships, in life, in pretty much everything. My spot in this chain of the universe could just as well have ended up being filled by a "Lauren-once-removed" and things wouldn't be a whole helluva lot different.

This is the boredom I'm getting caught up in as of late--if I'm not really anything spectacular or unique, if I'm just one-millionth bit different than the next person, than really, what's the point?

Even things that USUALLY would brighten up my day--such as the fact that one of my friends may end up working at my place of employment, providing me with a little bit more of a pleasant distraction from its usual humdrumness--are not filtering through in huge sunbeams like they would have a month or two ago. Instead they seem, well, almost DEPRESSING more than anything. And that in turn makes me disgusted with myself. And this disgust in turn just evolves back again into some lurching, long-knuckled version of ennui.

The reason for this? I have no idea.

I think it may be a million little things that blossom into some huge cancerous lump in my brain when I'm least expecting it.

The monotony of my job has gotten terrifying. Some days it takes all my strength not to start screaming in my cubicle or just leave and never come back. Some days I plot the elaborate ways that I will rid myself of this job, moving to new countries or states, uprooting myself and embracing a huge and new change.

I get inordinately frightened when I find a huge looming silence draping itself for long periods of time between me and the fella I've been seeing when I feel we should want to talk each others' ears off. I fear that this is transforming itself into its own kind of boredom or lack of interest. And his lack of interest IN this lack of interest hanging full and pendulous between us worries me too.

And more than anything, I find the routine of daily living (eating, fucking, sleeping, bathing, watching tv, working, eating, sleeping, bathing watching tv, working, eating, sleeping...), which is even now seeping into my weekend routines, to hang on me like some huge portentous noose around my neck.

I am tired of most everything nowadays.

I am in a funk.

The kind where I wish I could just up and vanish with a *poof* into the night never to be seen again and start all over again somewhere.

The kind where I wish I would be wisked off by the witness protection program or something--become my OWN "Lauren-once-removed."

The kind where I want to say FUCK IT and jump on the next plane to England/Ireland/China/Japan and establish myself there for a year or two until the ennui seeps back in through my pores again.

That kind of funk.

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