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Bexistentialism: HT16 -1st Week

So it appears that I am back. “Return?” I said, virtually, over Facebook messenger. I was flattered at the request to bring back Bexistentialism. But after the brief massage of my ego, my mind became clouded with a question I could not answer. Am I still a Bexistentialist? Was I ever a Bexistentialist? You see, I started to have an existentialist crisis about Bexistentialism. Which I now find myself discussing in my first returned column. An enjoyable level of layered meta-pseudo-bullshit, some would say. Others wouldn’t.

The weight of being a third year has rewarded me with the realisation that I am really rather dull. And as I am asked to return to Bexistentialism, I ponder quite how I am going to conceal this for the whole of next term. However, this question soon fades into the night as I fall asleep with my alarm set for 5am. Tomorrow I go to Cornwall, and with my bag packed, a few days of revelry ahead of me, and my friend signing off that I better be ready to be picked up at 5:30am, I sleep.

The next morning I wake, dozily. My eyes open with relative ease. They should not be opening with relative ease. I grapple for my phone which rests in airplane mode, tangled between my sheets. Shit. The alarm flashes patronisingly. There is no sound. It is making no sound. Shit. It is 7:25am. My heart beats out of its chest and slaps me in the face. I swoop my phone back into life as I simultaneously wrestle into dungarees. Missed calls, Whatsapps, Facebooks and passive aggressions reach me. My friends are sitting outside of my house, waiting for me to wake up. My alarm has been silently sounding for two and a half hours.

A few hours later, as I sit in my friend’s car, I remember Bexistentialism. My morning, which already feels distant and hazy in its misfortune, was exactly the narrative most weeks’ columns would follow. Am I still a Bexistentialist?

Later, as I struggle to breathe after accidentally sitting on a feather-filled sofa for too long (which apparently isn’t wise when you have a feather allergy) and my breath whistles in and out, and my airways constrict, I think – this is probably Bexistentialist. The next day, as I slip and fall on the beach, hitting my head on a rock and have a literally dizzy head to accompany my ditzy charade, I think – this must be Bexistentialist.

Maybe, just maybe, I really am just as dizty and unfortunate as I always was. So do not fear, readers. I will soon be ready to act once more as the ballast in your life, letting you know that there is always a more foolish person out there. Just you wait.

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