Meshuga Month-End

“If there’s an end of the month in heaven, I’m not going.”

I quote these words from a friend of mine who is also a freelance artist. What brought them to mind was the fact that it’s the first of another month tomorrow and I don’t have the bleedin’ rent again on time. Debt dates and remuneration dates are like the north and south poles on a magnet when it comes to bringing them together. Weird physics or something. Fortunately, I have a merciful landlord who’s been phenomenally patient with me, but I can recall some pretty dark months with moist forehead and clammy palms where not even a Xanor could reel my brain in from unhealthy preoccupations and way too much analysis.

Who invented the end of the month, anyway? Probably the same soul who thought up the credit card. Either way, you’re screwed. People get a little crazy month-end, have you noticed? They’re either a pent up elastic band that let’s it all go before the sting happens, except it hits you, not someone else. Or, like me, it’s a reminder that you now owe twice as much as last month at this time. Klaps like a curve ball that caught you off guard. With interest.
Years ago a little switch used to go off in my head about a week before the last day of the month. Housemates kept their distance from my room. Wrestling a Rottweiler appealed more to them. Until I paid my rent, that little switch sent unnerving impulses to my brain that wouldn’t let me relax. Since I moved to Joburg, that same switch never used to turn off at all. Ever. Lately, it’s not even on. It’s more like a faint sms in the room called my head. It beeped, but I don’t have to reply to it just yet.

Month-end has a lot to answer for, really. It’s probably responsible for incalculable consumption of anti-anxiety pills and alcohol globally, the burned out overworked who can’t keep up, and gallons of bad blood between the desperate who borrowed money and the “rulers” who lent it to them (personally, I’ve never believed in lending money to people – if I have it, I’ll give it to them; if I don’t, I simply can’t – I know the pain of owing people money and the Bible will back me up on this one). Granted, there are people who are just hopeless with cash control, but whoever you are, the end of the month bites big time.

Sadly, it’s not going to go away. It’s here to haunt you like the breath you have the day after you packed back a pizza with more crushed garlic than a snow capped hill in a blizzard. Sigh...so back to work we go. Have a nice Monday, everyone. With the added bonus of it being the first of the month on the same day.