You’re Not Allowed To Have Feelings
You’re not, because this is America and you have things. You have more things than other people have. In some cases, a bunch more things. And because there are people out there who have fewer things than you, this clearly means that you should stop having feelings about things totally unrelated to the things you have. Seriously. The fact that you have things automatically renders all your negative feelings about anything ever null and void, so just stop with the feelings. Stop publishing the feelings. Stop writing about the feelings. Stop having them. You having these feelings is obviously not helping anyone, it’s just getting ridiculous. Seriously, stop before something actually goes wrong.
If you have a car, a job, a house, some combination of the two or all three, your life is a dream made of spun sugar and unicorn farts and you have no right to ever be sad. Even if you just found out your fiancée is cheating on you with your best friend and rumor has it there are mutual feelings involved, you have no right to want to leap off a roof and flatten your cranium against the concrete. What the hell, asshole? Think of your job. Your car. Think about all the ex-engineering majors who work at McDonald’s and live with their parents and all the liberal arts graduates who routinely sell off their eggs and sperm to make rent. You want to be like them? No, you don’t, because you drive to your comfortable salaried desk in a Prius, you smug bastard. Those engineering majors don’t know a damn thing about your life but lord knows they would kill to have it, so quit crying. Feelings are for people who take the bus, not people who hail cabs — you know which one you are.
If you have a car, a job, a house, some combination of the two or all three and you are 22 years old, you automatically lose the right to have an opinion about unfulfilled hopes, dreams, aspirations, and all of that other sensitive bullshit. Double if that opinion is about your own unfulfilled hopes or dreams. What’s more, should you ever dare to publish an essay about them on the internet, expect to be skinned alive accordingly. No one cares about your dreams because as far as they’re concerned, you’re already living the dream even though you’re still basically a fetus. Never mind that it’s someone else’s dream. Never mind that you feel uneasy and out of touch and restless; it’s pretty unacceptable that you feel that way to begin with but it’s way more unacceptable to come out of the closet with it. You, drama queen, have 90% more things than 90% of people your age; therefore, your feelings of isolation, personal failure, and ennui are baseless and unmerited. Go glaze a cake or something in your post-grad stainless steel kitchen.
Also, if you have a boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, or some other person who is in a meaningful relationship with you of their own free will, who texts you during the day to see how you’re doing; who regularly gives you orgasms and doesn’t mind doing it, who you can ugly-cry in front of, eat takeout on a couch with, who will stroke your hair at night and apply your hemorrhoid cream; seriously, if you have a person like that in your life, shut the f-ck up and go sit in a corner. Everyone knows you’re no one until someone loves you and um, hello, you have another human being there who not only loves you, but also holds you at night and thinks you’re an okay person. What else, bitch? It’s all right there in front of you. You are not allowed to ever feel like something’s missing, or feel doubtful, or feel like you’re “not getting enough space,” or question your feelings, because there is a multitude of single sadsacks out there this very instant, shoveling raw cookie dough into their mouths while watching Dear John and crying. Just calm down and leave your trapped-single-girl pseudo-soul searching to the people who do it for a living.
And seriously, if you have a checking account, or a house plant, or two parents, or one; a best friend, healthy cuticles, the correct number of limbs; if you have a liquor cabinet, secure WiFi connection, a decent white blood cell count or a MacBook Pro; semi-manageable credit card debt, two nipples, and a roommate who doesn’t try to steal your underwear, you are living the high life and you better start to appreciate it. Just look at all these things you have! Look at the things. Do you have any idea how many people would give up their firstborn for a MacBook Pro? Do you know how many have to freeze their asses off in a Starbucks parking lot stealing the WiFi, because they can’t afford to buy a drink so they can sit inside where it’s warm without looking like a freeloading douche canoe? Do you know how many are forced to drink Four Loko on park benches while you drown your lofty privileged sorrows in champagne with diamonds in the glass? How many left-handed calligraphers are made to forever sit in right-handed desks?
No, of course not, you moldy first-world beet, because you only think about your own whiny emotional concerns.