Simple Minds

Sometimes when I sit and think about my own unhappiness, it doesn’t feel like a darkness creeping up behind me like it used to. It’s begun to feel more like an anchor of hatred and disappointment lowering onto my chest at an excruciating pace. 

I’ve been happier recently than I used to be, and the people in my life help me the best that they can. I can’t say that other people don’t feel the same way. To think that I’m alone in the world is such a naive and selfish view, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling as if I’m trapped in a dark room with nothing but a dying flashlight.

Lastnight I was up until about 1am, drunk off of several shots of whipped cream vodka, lying face-up on the futon in our living room. Robyn and Drew had somehow ended up on the floor, I can’t remember the intricacies. But for about 2 hours I talked incessantly about the things I think about. 

For example, something I had never told anyone but thought that the conversation was appropriate to reveal: I once almost stepped into the middle of moving traffic. On purpose. 

I’ve never been the suicidal kind of depressed, because I like to think that I have enough self-awareness and strength to not let these thoughts creep into my head like they do. There are some that don’t agree with me, but I believe suicide to be the most selfish thing you can do. It’s selfish in the most baseline of ways. 

Sometimes when I used to sit there in my dark, dank little bedroom and think about how it wouldn’t matter if I died, my first thought would be my mother. Always my mother. Her sweet, rounded cheeks that she passed to me. Her often-disheveled blonde hair and melancholy blue eyes (which I wish she had passed to me). 

It would take hours upon hours to explain the kind of relationship my mother and I share, but all I can say is that I wouldn’t have it any other way. The things we’ve been through together, it was me and her against the world, and I would never want to hurt her in that way, let alone all of the friends I’ve made. 

Love is a powerful thing, and in the end it always seems to beat everything. All of the hopelessness, all of the despair and the eternal emptiness that is my head, I can always stop myself with thoughts of the ones I love. It makes me sad to know that some people don’t have that ability. The self-awareness that it takes to stop yourself from doing the unthinkable needs to be a palpable force in your head. 

When I say that most of the time nowadays it feels as if there are two people in my head, constantly at war, then there’s no other similes that work better. There’s the person I was before. The childish, mildly sociopathic, selfish little shithead that I grew up with, and then there’s the grown, strong, selfless person that I’m trying to be. 

So the first conversation I had tonight, upon taking what I assume will be the first of many hits for the night, involved something very basic, a staple of conversation starters since the dawn of time: 

Fuck, Marry, Kill. My esteemed roommate, in her stupor, decided to pose this question to all of us as we went about our usual high hobbies. Among the tirades of “dicks out for Harambe” and, “I love playing Duck Game” and “is the oven on?” the question flew into my ears and my first reaction was not to question it. It was to answer it. 

Fuck, Marry, Kill: Fried Chicken, Shrimp, Steak. 

Now I had to think about it for about thirty seconds, much longer than I should have probably. I grew upset as I thought about the idea of killing one of those three things, but eventually I came upon shrimp being the victim. Or maybe the real victim was the steak, as I chose to marry it. Or worse, even, the fried chicken. The image of which is hovering in my brain as I realize the only option left for it is “Fuck”. 

Now, when it comes to drug use and doing classic party activities, I am fairly ambivalent towards them. I do enjoy smoking weed, being high gives me a lot of time and freedom to think about things and discover stuff about myself. Of course, I sometimes let it get to me and then all I think about is bad and scary and brings me to a place I don’t like to go. 

I’m okay with drinking. I don’t quite care for the taste of alcohol, or the way it feels going down. I’ve only ever been drunk once, and it wasn’t very powerful. It was more like a slightly advanced buzz.

I guess I definitely wouldn’t describe myself as the life of the party. I tend to take to the sidelines, not out of fear or anxiety. But simply because I like to watch people. I like to listen to conversations and watch people speak. Mostly because I know that there’s a whole person underneath those eyes. If I find myself wanting to know more about you, then odds are I’ll talk to you more often. I like to surround myself by interesting people because I believe that I, myself, am not very interesting. 

Nobody wants to hear about how I once thought that I could be a sociopath because of my ability to lie to others without feeling guilt. Or maybe that I’m great an manipulation when I need to be. Or possibly even that I love the drama of interpersonal conflict. 

I have a tendency to think of myself as being above everyone else in some way. I describe issues that I have in great detail and explain them as if nobody else has the same problems, but I know that people do. I just like to feel needed, wanted, special. 

This is probably due to the fact that I grew up as an only child, my family surrounding me and telling me constantly how I was a special snowflake, and that everything I did was perfect. I grew to expect that I was better than everyone else even though I’m not. I’m just a simple person with a simple mind just like everyone else. 

That’s why I’m calling this blog Simple Minds. It’s about my life. It’s about the people around me and how I interact with them. Each person in this life is unique in what makes them different from the common rabble. But I don’t like to think that “the common rabble” even exists. We are all existing with each other, but never knowing one another, at least not on a deeper level. 

I’m an animal person. I love animals of all kinds, but specifically I enjoy cats. I have two cats. Well, technically only one of them is mine. He’s about eight years old, tuxedo fur and big green-yellow eyes. He’s an adorable idiot that attacks the floor at random times and likes to stare at the wall from his post on the kitchen counter for literally periods of ten minutes or more, and his tail is crooked. He likes to be held and will trip you to make sure you notice him and give him affection. I love him and he’s my favorite creature.

I love horror movies, and I love to be scared by things I know are fake. I watched my first horror movie at the age of three, an old gem called Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight. My mom had it on VHS and I got into it one day from the big box of tapes we had in the corner of our little apartment. 

Obviously I don’t remember the first time I watched it, but I remember watching it several times after, fitting into my movie schedule somewhere in between Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and The Black Cauldron. I remember that I liked the way it felt to be scared of something that I also knew was totally fake.

I didn’t realize until recently how fucked up watching horror movies at a young age made me. I went my whole life thinking I was pretty much fine, and that my head and imagination weren’t wrecked. I somehow managed to take my fear of the fake and turned it into fear of the real and the unknown. 

When I was a child I had terrible nightmares, ones that would wake me up in the middle of the night and I would be too terrified to go back to sleep. But I was also deathly afraid of being in the dark and what I imagined to be in it with me. 

But getting away from that particular part of my past, I also enjoy comedy as much as horror. I love dry, abrupt sort of humor that doesn’t really require any kind of higher reasoning. I don’t care for slapstick or stoner humor, or college party humor. I’m totally fine with vulgarity, but sometimes I find comedy to be funnier with minimal swearing. I also love cutaway humor, but most of the shows on with cutaway humor aren’t very good. 

Some of my favorite comedy shows are “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”, “The Office”, “Parks and Recreation”, and “BoJack Horseman”. I’ve also recently been getting into “Trailer Park Boys” as well. My boyfriend and I basically share the same sense of humor, though we obviously have our differences. 

I love drama as well. I watch so many shows on Netflix I don’t even name them all, but my favorite show of all time, one that I’ve watched since I was a kid: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

I guess in this sense my type of humor is very obvious to link to my particular political leanings and the way I see the world. I have something of a progressive way of looking at the universe, and I carry quite a live-and-let-live sort of attitude to everyone around me and the things I believe in. 

I guess if you wanted to put my personality into a box based around high school biases and stereotypes, I would be the charismatic nerd. The nerd that even popular kids liked to talk to sometimes. I didn’t really fit into any particular niche when I was going through high school. I had my friends, they had theirs. And I knew most of the people in my school, sometimes to a fault, as I’m great with memorization but only in moderation. Names are something that usually takes me no time at all, but not in great quantities. 

I spend a lot of my days off getting comfortable at home. I’m alright with that, I think. I like to spend time at home, enjoying my hobbies when I don’t have to go to work. I’ll sit in my bed or in the living room with the others and write or watch Netflix, listen to music, or play video games. It’s a nice time. I don’t like the mentality that you have to be doing something productive in order to feel happy with your life. I spend all day and night at work being productive, so why be super productive at home, too? 

I suppose I don’t really have a lot of friends if I think about it. My current living situation involves a moderately sized two-bedroom apartment with my boyfriend, my best friend of eight years, and her boyfriend. Oh and, of course as of recently, my best friend’s mother.

Our rent is $1,075 a month, but only three of us are splitting that rent. If I was living as ideally as I wanted to be right now I would be paying only the $360 that was originally agreed upon when our living situation changed and fluxed like it constantly is. You know, living in an apartment with four people is difficult, though we’ve found a way to make it work in a weird, sort of twisted sense.

Anyway, right now I’m currently the one making the most money in the apartment, and I like to think of myself as being extremely frugal. I save my money more often than I spend it, and all of my friends know me as the person they can come to if they need a loan for something small like food or a gift of some kind. I’m alright with that role in people’s lives. It satisfies my desperate, yet buried necessity to be needed.

Being the one making the most money in my household is both a gift and a curse. Because if one of my roommates doesn’t have enough money this month to pay their full share of rent, it’s usually up to me to take care of it until they can pay me back, which is fine, because I know they will. However, recently I’ve also had to take care of the bills, which would be the responsibility of my boyfriend. The water, electric, and internet have also fallen to my care in the last few months, and that’s taken a toll on my bank account.

I’m hoping that will change soon, though.

I suppose if I were to start talking about myself and my interests, I would first have to talk about my music, which is rather hard to define, especially recently. When I was growing up it was all about alt-rock, if you have any idea what that is. My mother had a large influence on my music taste when I was younger, and I’ve sort of branched away from that as I slowly transcend what I was as a child. How arrogant of me to use that word. Ugh.

I listen to lots of pop and electronic music. Not dubstep or anything like that. I listen to more melodic, ambient sort of music. I prefer substance and quality over quantity. A few artists I’ve really fallen into lately are Troye Sivan and Bastille. I love Sia as well. Heavy percussion backed by what I could only call a controlled madness of background sounds and instruments led by powerful, clean vocals. I’ve always preferred female vocalists to male, but of course that doesn’t stop me from enjoying male vocalists.

I’ve begun writing this blog at a very strange point in my life. A point that I think I could only call being birthed into adulthood. I’ve always thought of myself as independent. My mother and I have always had something of an understanding that I can take care of myself, as long as I let her know what I’m doing.

This job I have at Buffalo Wild Wings is my first, ever. I started there as a host, moved up to cashier, and then they started having me train new hires for a while before they finally made me a server, and now here I am. I believe that I’m a hard worker on occasion. I feel like I’m more diligent than anything, and my managers took notice of that, I think. 

Well, I finally gave in and made a blog like my boyfriend said I should. I’m not quite sure of what I should write down on here other than just things that I happen to think about, and in that sense it seems perfectly appropriate. 

I’m 20 years old. White, male, and I’m gay. But those things don’t really matter, do they? In the grand scheme of things (the most cliche thing I’ve ever typed), those identifiers don’t mean shit when it comes to living my life. 

For starters I’m an aspiring author, which is something I’ve wanted to do for mostly my entire life, though recently I’m not sure if I’ll ever realize that dream. 

I find myself thinking every day that I’ll just spend the rest of my life in the work force, waiting tables every night for eternity until I die. Don’t get me wrong, serving is a fairly lucrative job to have. On a good night I can make over $100, and usually I work four days a week. Since I live in Washington (but not SeaTac) I make $9.47 an hour. So on average I make about $400 a week, and then a paycheck of around $250-300 every other week. 

I take the bus to work every day, mostly. And I spend an average of $50 every three weeks on bus transit to get to work, and my commute is usually just under an hour every day. When I write it down it feels like I have such a nice, normal life. But does anybody really want that completely and totally? A life without excitement, only constant and crushing routine, yet a routine that wraps you in a sense of calm and safety. 

I work at a Buffalo Wild Wings, a restaurant that, if you know me, is not indicative of my personality in the slightest. I don’t like sports, I don’t really eat or drink the traditional “manly” foods like wings and beer and shit like that, and I’m not particularly fond of loud and obnoxious crowds that make booming screams of victory every thirty seconds. Yet, that’s where I work. Football season at a sports bar is probably the worst place you can ever be, at least for a person like me.