Feeling Like A Piece Of Crap
By Paul Barker
Everyone is looking at you. When you walk into the room, every single person (politely) averts their eyes and whispers into straws about you. Judgment makes ripples in every drink in the bar, pulsing over you. Screw them. You wish. As you speak, everyone is thinking something negative about you. You are too much of this. You are not enough of that. Long lists that everyone in the room has been keeping since the moment they first saw you and have filed away – permanently engraving a part of themselves with these thoughts – continue to grow with new reasons you are out of place. These lists are stunning in their accuracy. Each bullet point connects with a thread to something you already knew. Each person’s list is unique, individual points of pressure which ascribe your faults to the other list of things they did not neglect to accomplish. Unlike you, some people are capable of self control. In fact, a lot of these people simply live easier lives – they don’t have your kind of issues.
Which is why they’re all looking at you. It’s daunting to be under such scrutiny. The simple fact that you are being observed and judged for X means you not only have to deal with that issue, but you also have to worry about constantly being observed. It’s enough to make a person jaded. Resentful even. So you can just hate them secretly, justifiably. Go home and remember what they thought about you, remember what you know about them. Then use this as ammunition. X certainly doesn’t have any reason to be depressed, X has the perfect body. Disassociate humanity with what you know about X. X is everyone. Everyone is an asshole. It is truly unfortunate that all anyone can see when they look at you is your acne. People are so vain. If you had perfect skin, you would be happy. No one with perfect skin has any right to complain. Wouldn’t it be nice if people would just accept how hard this is for you? How much it hurts to look in the mirror? How all of this deserves you peace, allowance. It wasn’t easy growing up. You adapted but you still feel like a spider. Misunderstood. It should be fairly obvious that your intellectual advancement isn’t helpful in attaining happiness. The most satisfying way to build yourself a happy life is to remember that you are owed something; that your hand was dealt unforgivably. You must walk with this into the bar, work, CVS, Mom and Dad’s, and drag it home.
It hurts that people only ask you to join them in a social event out of pity. Even if you say yes, inside you will remember that you’re vulnerable; a disadvantaged bottom-feeder taking charity. You almost enjoy yourself, until your ‘friend’ hooks arms with their partner and leaves you (they are going somewhere else, to be intimate together – without you. They don’t think about you, or care). You can’t enjoy yourself when it is clear that no one cares about you, and that you are completely alone and likely to be so for the rest of your life. Hate your ‘friend’, as you crawl back into your web. Your web where you wait for the fly to drop. It’s true: you have the belief that something good will come to you. You will get your just desserts. For some reason, that hasn’t happened yet. And you can’t understand why you seem to be whirling at full speed, and not effecting any change. Why do you have to try this hard anyway? Waking up is a challenge. Tolerating the silent harassment of everyone in the room is sufferable only in knowing you can reward yourself. Choose your vice. You have earned this. Even as it swallows you up to your neck, and there is no space left to move. When this happens, you must acknowledge that you are faced with another challenge from life : the universe won’t even allow you to indulge in your vices, your earned getaways from the grit. You can’t stop now. Why would you? You don’t have anything else going for you.
The lists are falling like streamers in the ceiling unravelling and rolling across the floor of your bedroom criss-crossing and spelling out the history of your ugliness. You hate it when your ‘friend’ gets something you want. You hate it when your friend gets something you don’t want. It is just intolerable for someone who already has 1,000 times more than you to receive anything that seems positive. You love them, you want the best for them. But nothing they get short of job loss / injury / breakup / breakout / weight-gain / nothing will give you the sensation of anything other than resentful rage. But you really just want the best for them. And you know they want the same for you too. Unfortunately, they mostly just pity you. They feel so bad for you. Because of all those lists. Because of everything you know they think about you. That everyone does.
You are the piece of shit at the center of the universe. You drink poison and wait for someone else to die. As you lay suffering, your friend wishes you would see the light. Your false love for them is illuminated at every major crossroad in development. You weren’t looking. The layers of denial and self entitled anger have dug your hole so deep that these friends are miracles who you don’t deserve. Not in this state. Where will you be when you get what you want? When your friend loses something you wanted? Will you say sorry but smile inside, a warm feeling flooding your system? Will you wish this ‘win’ empirical and enjoy the wasted space in your heart? Everyone is looking at you. When you raise your hand to strike yourself down. When you emanate darkness from a pedestal shrouded in your own filth. You had it hard. And then you stabbed hope in the back and took the reins. Becoming the disappointing life you feared. Responsibility fell out of the hands of Mom and Dad, of the state of the social faction, it didn’t land on the ground. You hold it like a secret weapon, distorting it with every draw. Your denial doesn’t see this phantom hand, swiftly drawing plans. The idea of being thankful has never occurred to you. And you don’t even know why that makes you the asshole. You’re going to lose it all, whatever you have. If you don’t forgive the shit that fucked you up. If you don’t remove yourself from the top of the world where you are melting over everyone, you very well may end up in one of those scenarios of isolation you secretly love to worry about. You have the chance to be beautiful. Everything about you that is ugly can be washed away. When that happens, you may realize something. Everyone is not seeing what you see. In fact, most of them do not care. They may be you inside, a kindred spirit in destruction. They may simply have lives which do not involve you. This somehow can be true and also not an unforgivable reason to hate them. Consider that maybe, just maybe – you can’t know what someone thinks about you. And if we’re willing to go there, then perhaps its possible that someone else deserves an ounce of the respect your grandiosity demands of them. Humility is your new best friend. So wipe your hands, stop whirling in circles, and let the world be out of your control today.