Marc
Another Rambling Post About Nothing***1***
I actually had a huge self-debasement post written and ready to go at about 11:46pm last night, but decided to trash it in my own self-interests. I don't want to come off sounding like a pussy, is basically what it boiled down to, and that damn thing would've made me sound like not just a pussy, but THE pussy. Like The Ultimate pussy, because I kind of am. I'm not joking when I say that I sat around the apartment from pretty much Friday afternoon until about nearly one in the morning on Saturday night feeling sorry for myself, feeling like I was never going to be anything but alone, and so on and so on. It didn't help that there were people around, and that they knew they were pushing my buttons, but I can't blame them.***2*** They were just being themselves, and for that, at least, I'm thankful. At least I know I didn't drag them down with me.
But I digress.
In my long, stressful, and ultimately pointless struggle with doubt and angst and suffering, I came to the conclusion that society, on the whole, puts too much of an emphasis on togetherness and love and all the other feelings and engagements and entanglements that go along with those ideas.***3*** I struggle on the other side of the fence, basically, I guess is the best way to put it. Even what seem to be sure fire matches, for me, always end up turning to shit. But, for some reason, I can't seem to stop the long, pointless, and certainly self-damning cycle that I've found myself in. For awhile, especially during my year and a half of travel around the country, it was easy to disassociate myself from the struggle. I wasn't here four to five days a week, and the two or three days I was weren't necessarily spent searching for that special someone. Quite to the contrary, they were spent trying to forget the four or five days of hellish labor that I had performed.***4*** In my mind, I had no time to (a) start a relationship; (b) maintain a relationship; and (c) put anything into a relationship. So I didn't, and those were quite possibly some of the happiest days I've had in recent memory. The weekends were fun, exciting, thrilling. I stayed up late, partied hard, and took off early Sunday afternoons, thus never having to deal with any of the damage that I might have done to people during the weekends. By the time I returned on late Thursday nights, or early Friday afternoons, people were excited to see me again.
Now, though, it's a different story. Most of the people that I'd come to know and love in this town have either graduated and moved away, or simply just vanished without a trace. I understand this, and I've come to terms with it for the most part, but what I'm stuck with is a never ending cycle of people who are attached to other people. And I, much to my own chagrin, have become somewhat of a third, fifth, seventh, ninth, or whatev-th wheel in a lot of situations. And I'm not talking strictly romantic, either. In most cases, the romantic way is just the way it works out. I have spent hardly twenty minutes in recent weeks with my female roommate without her boyfriend present, which is fine because he's an all-around nice guy. I stay up late with Room. Luke, and we are constantly interrupted by phone calls from his girlfriend who lives on the East Coast. Again, this is fine. I'm not bothered by it on the personal level. I'm bothered by it on the societal level.
Let me explain. College, at least to me, seems to be all about the boredom that one is experiencing at any given moment. Most of us don't have jobs, and even if we do they are not the high-stress, doubly-intense-demanding-type jobs that people in the Real World deal with. We go to classes, we do our homework, and we go out.***5*** Those are, essentially, the three basic functions of a majority of the college students that I have come into contact with. A lot of that boredom time seems to be spent looking for that someone, that person that society is telling you to find, and I have found myself more and more almost completely against the idea. Why? Because this isn't the real world. This is a false front. This is ten to fifteen thousand people of relative age crammed into a few square miles of a mid-sized, white, middle-to-upper-middle class town. This is an imaginary place where there are no consequences for socially unacceptable actions. Men and women alike are whores here. People can fuck almost anyone they want to without their social status suffering as a consequence.***6*** I'm sure people find love here, but I'm not sure how to explain it. What happens when they return to places where binge drinking, on the epic scales that college kids are known to perform, is frowned upon? What happens to the happy couple that returns home, gets pregnant, and realizes that sleeping together in a twin-sized bed, getting wasted together every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights was not exactly the training that they needed to survive together? What happens then?
Maybe I'm not making sense. Check footnote #1. I already predicted this. I don't see why, as the course of the weekend wore on, I kept beating myself up over something that ultimately ends up being so trivial. Why am I even paying attention to what's expected of me by society? Why do I even care? To be honest, I can't quite answer those questions, and I'm not even sure I'd like to. I sacrificed two whole days of my life to sit in my room and read and feel sorry for myself, and for that I feel like an idiot. I guess, finally, that's my motivation. Maybe I just don't want to feel like an idiot again, and if finding some way to cope outside of this togetherness/find-someone-type mentality is what I'm going to have to do, then so be it.
This, then, is your idiot, regretfully signing off.
***1*** which, in my mind at least, was originally meant to be about something, but I know, even from the outset, that I'll probably just get frustrated about halfway through the damn thing and concentrate on the footnotes more than the paragraphs themselves, and it won't make any sense by the time I'm done. So what? So f'in what?
***2*** though I can certainly try to beat them up the next time I see them.
***3*** and ideals, cause let's face it, love ain't easy. I'm a shining example. I'm sure my parents both have hated me at one point or another.
***4*** and even if I had wanted to start something with someone at that point, I would've never been able to pull it off. One look at my calloused, and cut hands would've been enough to turn anyone off. I've still never known quite how I got through all the little knicks, scrapes, and saw-induced finger injuries I had back in those days. At one point only my left pinky was unscathed.
***5*** and I should stress, at this point, that "going out" does not necassarily mean drinking, partying, etc. I've spent some quality time with a few people in one of my history classes lately as we've been watching Asian films for extra class credit. I consider this going out, cause we're not completely paying attention. Half the time, or even more, seems to be spent joking and making fun of things, which, in turn, is socializing. "Going out", at least in those terms, can be any number of activities: athletic events, walks on the trail, practical jokes, etc.
***6*** though I'm sure the rising rates of STD's around here are putting a damper on that activity. Or, now the naive side of me is coming out, maybe no one's even thinking about that at all.
Another Rambling Post About Nothing***1***
I actually had a huge self-debasement post written and ready to go at about 11:46pm last night, but decided to trash it in my own self-interests. I don't want to come off sounding like a pussy, is basically what it boiled down to, and that damn thing would've made me sound like not just a pussy, but THE pussy. Like The Ultimate pussy, because I kind of am. I'm not joking when I say that I sat around the apartment from pretty much Friday afternoon until about nearly one in the morning on Saturday night feeling sorry for myself, feeling like I was never going to be anything but alone, and so on and so on. It didn't help that there were people around, and that they knew they were pushing my buttons, but I can't blame them.***2*** They were just being themselves, and for that, at least, I'm thankful. At least I know I didn't drag them down with me.
But I digress.
In my long, stressful, and ultimately pointless struggle with doubt and angst and suffering, I came to the conclusion that society, on the whole, puts too much of an emphasis on togetherness and love and all the other feelings and engagements and entanglements that go along with those ideas.***3*** I struggle on the other side of the fence, basically, I guess is the best way to put it. Even what seem to be sure fire matches, for me, always end up turning to shit. But, for some reason, I can't seem to stop the long, pointless, and certainly self-damning cycle that I've found myself in. For awhile, especially during my year and a half of travel around the country, it was easy to disassociate myself from the struggle. I wasn't here four to five days a week, and the two or three days I was weren't necessarily spent searching for that special someone. Quite to the contrary, they were spent trying to forget the four or five days of hellish labor that I had performed.***4*** In my mind, I had no time to (a) start a relationship; (b) maintain a relationship; and (c) put anything into a relationship. So I didn't, and those were quite possibly some of the happiest days I've had in recent memory. The weekends were fun, exciting, thrilling. I stayed up late, partied hard, and took off early Sunday afternoons, thus never having to deal with any of the damage that I might have done to people during the weekends. By the time I returned on late Thursday nights, or early Friday afternoons, people were excited to see me again.
Now, though, it's a different story. Most of the people that I'd come to know and love in this town have either graduated and moved away, or simply just vanished without a trace. I understand this, and I've come to terms with it for the most part, but what I'm stuck with is a never ending cycle of people who are attached to other people. And I, much to my own chagrin, have become somewhat of a third, fifth, seventh, ninth, or whatev-th wheel in a lot of situations. And I'm not talking strictly romantic, either. In most cases, the romantic way is just the way it works out. I have spent hardly twenty minutes in recent weeks with my female roommate without her boyfriend present, which is fine because he's an all-around nice guy. I stay up late with Room. Luke, and we are constantly interrupted by phone calls from his girlfriend who lives on the East Coast. Again, this is fine. I'm not bothered by it on the personal level. I'm bothered by it on the societal level.
Let me explain. College, at least to me, seems to be all about the boredom that one is experiencing at any given moment. Most of us don't have jobs, and even if we do they are not the high-stress, doubly-intense-demanding-type jobs that people in the Real World deal with. We go to classes, we do our homework, and we go out.***5*** Those are, essentially, the three basic functions of a majority of the college students that I have come into contact with. A lot of that boredom time seems to be spent looking for that someone, that person that society is telling you to find, and I have found myself more and more almost completely against the idea. Why? Because this isn't the real world. This is a false front. This is ten to fifteen thousand people of relative age crammed into a few square miles of a mid-sized, white, middle-to-upper-middle class town. This is an imaginary place where there are no consequences for socially unacceptable actions. Men and women alike are whores here. People can fuck almost anyone they want to without their social status suffering as a consequence.***6*** I'm sure people find love here, but I'm not sure how to explain it. What happens when they return to places where binge drinking, on the epic scales that college kids are known to perform, is frowned upon? What happens to the happy couple that returns home, gets pregnant, and realizes that sleeping together in a twin-sized bed, getting wasted together every Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights was not exactly the training that they needed to survive together? What happens then?
Maybe I'm not making sense. Check footnote #1. I already predicted this. I don't see why, as the course of the weekend wore on, I kept beating myself up over something that ultimately ends up being so trivial. Why am I even paying attention to what's expected of me by society? Why do I even care? To be honest, I can't quite answer those questions, and I'm not even sure I'd like to. I sacrificed two whole days of my life to sit in my room and read and feel sorry for myself, and for that I feel like an idiot. I guess, finally, that's my motivation. Maybe I just don't want to feel like an idiot again, and if finding some way to cope outside of this togetherness/find-someone-type mentality is what I'm going to have to do, then so be it.
This, then, is your idiot, regretfully signing off.
***1*** which, in my mind at least, was originally meant to be about something, but I know, even from the outset, that I'll probably just get frustrated about halfway through the damn thing and concentrate on the footnotes more than the paragraphs themselves, and it won't make any sense by the time I'm done. So what? So f'in what?
***2*** though I can certainly try to beat them up the next time I see them.
***3*** and ideals, cause let's face it, love ain't easy. I'm a shining example. I'm sure my parents both have hated me at one point or another.
***4*** and even if I had wanted to start something with someone at that point, I would've never been able to pull it off. One look at my calloused, and cut hands would've been enough to turn anyone off. I've still never known quite how I got through all the little knicks, scrapes, and saw-induced finger injuries I had back in those days. At one point only my left pinky was unscathed.
***5*** and I should stress, at this point, that "going out" does not necassarily mean drinking, partying, etc. I've spent some quality time with a few people in one of my history classes lately as we've been watching Asian films for extra class credit. I consider this going out, cause we're not completely paying attention. Half the time, or even more, seems to be spent joking and making fun of things, which, in turn, is socializing. "Going out", at least in those terms, can be any number of activities: athletic events, walks on the trail, practical jokes, etc.
***6*** though I'm sure the rising rates of STD's around here are putting a damper on that activity. Or, now the naive side of me is coming out, maybe no one's even thinking about that at all.
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