These are a few of my favorite things...

I'm ready for a little sunshine.

Time seems to be slowing down around me. Everyone is moving forward, falling in love, embracing the future. It’s absolutely miraculous.

I think what’s most difficult about watching others succeed in life and love is accepting the path you chose. We spend our entire lives imagining alternate existences. What if I would have married my first love? What if I could have been happy with so-and-so? What if I had two children instead of three?

I happen to be a pathological relationship sabotager. I implode, self-destruct, and create imperfections that don’t exist to avoid commitment. I don’t really want to belong to anything.

I could have lived so many different lives. I like this one. But my goal for this year is to resolve my ghosts, past, debt, destruction, fear and insecurity and step into myself. I hope you like it.

Ben, Jerry, Life.

I'm sitting in the ER with a copy of the New York Times on my lap and a pint of Ben and Jerry's in my left hand. This place has a certain negative energy. I itch my skin again. Instead of feeling sorry for myself tonight, I think of my ex-boyfriend.

When I look at where I am, how I got here, and why, I am instantaneously humbled. On the way to the hospital, I scrounged for dimes and pennies to buy this pint while simultaneously praying to make it there. The gas in my tank is next to nonexistent. When I arrived, I found this disheveled magazine in the parking garage outside. I wiped the smudge off the front with my ragged old hoodie. It was the new edition. How thrilling.

That was before I made my way in here.... alone. I knew this would take a while.

I don't feel sorry for myself. I don't even cry. Instead, I realize how much of a bitch I was in my previous life for not recognizing the helplessness of someone who could identify a need and have no means to take care of it. A modern view of hell in terms of a love story. This is just another form of my penance.

I could not understand why he never had health insurance or full coverage on his ratty old truck. Why wouldn't he drive an hour to visit me? I complained constantly about being kept inside, hidden from the outside world. No dinner. No dates. Why wouldn't he take me anywhere?

Now, the only traces of my extravagant old life are found in the closet and behind the steering wheel. We are teammates fighting poverty and recovering addicts with different vices. We have become slaves to the corporate world... somehow united again in the midst of this hatred and division. My pride is melting like the ice cream in my left hand. I hope karma forgives me now. I don't want to learn these lessons again.

I'm sorry, Alex.

A little insight into my next big project...

Chapter 15

What was I thinking when I signed up for Earth Science this semester? I’ll tell you what I wasn’t—the nebular theory. I mean, how much vital information can my professor seriously pull out of these eight planets that he expects me to remember after the first exam. I understand that the Sun will eventually eat the Earth and convert everyone into well-done shish kabobs, but that’s not for another five billion years. All I can do to get myself through this information is tell myself this speculative, controversial bullshit will all be over soon so I can continue to avoid forming an opinion about religion and politics.

All I can think about while studying is the book by John Grady called Men Are From Mars, Women are from Venus. If you’ve been on this earth for a while or know anything about Venus, you can probably recall a time when science-fiction writers referred to this planet as a lush, tropical oasis, much more beautiful than planet Earth and much more like paradise. However, what scientists found instead was a traditional view of hell.

I find this analogy to be a bit offensive while understanding that it may or may not be more accurate than I’m presently willing to admit. If men are from Mars, then why is Mars such a world of wonders? Why does Mars look more normal than Venus in comparison to Earth? Why is it more interesting? And why does every fucking astronaut want to go there?

One thing’s for certain—I’m no astronaut.

After realizing how grateful I am to have responded “garbage lady” to the proverbial childhood question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, I received a phone call from a friend of mine, Michael. A much needed distraction.

He's currently in love with Jen and she’s not interested anymore. For over a year, she developed and cultivated a strong interest in him while he was recovering from a gut-wrenching breakup. He was basically a zombie, taking prescription drugs for every ache and pain, and she tried to make him happy. Although it wasn’t love, I’ve never seen her like someone so much or try so hard to make someone okay. When she realized she couldn’t, she moved on and he suddenly became aware of how badly he wanted to be with her.

All I could do to help him was tell him my story about how ironic and idiotic it was that I spent four years of my life not actually loving the man I loved, and then realized how much I needed him when it was far too late.

I wished I could tell him that each story has a happy ending and that we all get exactly what we want. But instead, I told him truth—that we usually get what we need. Even though it doesn’t feel good and it often makes absolutely no sense, we evolve into beings that are capable of adaptation for survival and learn the vital lessons that most other people ignore in the process. Then, we survive after all the others die, and we get to see the most beautiful things in the world. We meet other survivors, make friends, share stories, and sometimes fall in love again. When we don’t fight the process, it eventually all makes sense. That’s when we derive the wisdom to decide what we really want and gain the freedom to choose it.

We just have to let go when time gives our teachers a big promotion or when it simply reassigns us.

Goodluck, Mike.

Unedited

Human nature is betrayal in some form. It’s ugly, but it’s also the very reason why people essentially choose a compatible, lifelong partner. This coveted union of “oh-so-holy” matrimony meets two basic human needs in one: sex and emotional stability. When combined, these emotions synthesize love. Someone can finally trust someone else. I get it.

However, the idea of killing two birds with one stone forces the independent thinker to become stoic toward love.

Society holds us to these standards. If you seek sex and emotional stability from one monogamous partner, you’re justified. But if you seek them separately, you aren’t. Simultaneously, you can be called a whore and a tease regardless of your gender. It’s like the mathematical formula for probability and statistics.

In relationships, people try to minimize costs, maximize rewards, and ensure equity. Essentially, economic principles apply to relationships: it’s a cost-benefit analysis. Furthermore, socially constructed and learned rules guide communication between partners. Uncertainty motivates communication and certainty reduces the motivation to communicate.

Therefore, love is more often cockamamie bullshit than unending bliss. Typically, a woman confuses affection with neediness or the desire to transform her partner while a man is on an emotional rollercoaster of giving love and then seeking independence. He retracts, she pursues, he comes back, she punishes him.

In addition to these games, romantic partners communicate how they see us and we filter their impressions into our own self-image. Because of this, their significance is imprinted on our personal experiences and the phenomena of self-esteem is constructed. Can we every truly get rid of an ex?

The point of view that humans are natural storytellers offers more proof that love is merely perception. Reality is simply material, external to the human mind and the same for everyone, when presented by a skilled storyteller.

Religion, family opinions, political justifications and societal implications cloud our perspectives and disable us from making the choices we need to pursue our own independence. Therefore, we mustn’t gain ideas from the world around us. Instead, we should pay special attention to the theories that revive our consciousness and shape our own visions of reality.

Maybe then will we realize that love and lust really aren’t so important.

-Swanky

The Human Condition

We are messy.

We always have some conflict between science and the supernatural, love and passion, and right and wrong.

As a society, we have formed the negative, but our ability to name it constitutes the basis of all our moral judgments. Because we measure ourselves by the negatives we have created, we allow guilt into our lives with a rule we made ourselves believe in.

For example, we think, “We should work out to be attractive,” but we simultaneously think, “It’s wrong to derive ourselves of pleasure.” Which “should” should we follow? Which “should not” should we give authority to?

We chronically suffer from the human condition.

We divide ourselves into social classes. Social hierarchy creates division. Division creates guilt. Guilt creates the need for identification. And the need for identification creates drama.

Guilt is the central motive for human action and communication. We continuously feel it and attempt to purge ourselves from the discomfort it causes. Think about the simple act of buying flowers for your significant other. Do you do it because you love her or because you haven’t been paying the relationship enough attention lately? If it’s because you love her, then why do you feel the need to perform such an action?

Compassion, esteem and love reflect awareness of division and a desire to transcend it. These motives are all driven by guilt. For synthesized comfort, we create rules and standards of perfection by which we measure our legitimacy. Then, we hate ourselves when we cannot obtain such unobtainable measures. How twisted is that?

Don’t fall prey to guilt. It isn't good for your complexion.

-Swanky

Morning Snack

We have the Modern Dilemma. This subject forms the major thematic focus for virtually all of the Modern Society. What is it? It’s the fear on the part of many that each of us, as individuals, are condemned to a life of alienation and isolation wherein we can never come to know another fellow human being fully and completely. That’s the problem: how to escape such a fate.

Nineteenth century German philosophers like Kant and Nietzsche held forth the idea that each person has a unique perception of reality—that we each see things in subtly different manners. The next part of the puzzle involves depth of self knowledge. Exactly how well do we know ourselves? Pretty well, I think most of us would say, but not completely, for we don’t know how we would react in any given unexpected situation until it’s over. That speaks volumes about the lack of depth that we have regarding self knowledge. So, this fact begs another question: if we don’t know ourselves completely, which we don’t, how can we ever know another person completely who, admittedly, doesn’t know him or herself completely? Voila—the Modern Dilemma!

Maybe we’re each a prisoner of our own unique and limited consciousnesses, so we should never expect to break out of our isolation and come to know another person fully. Most likely, it’s not going to happen. At least, for me it isn't.