This isn't a Book

 I woke up around 12:35 today because I was so drunk last night that I forget to set my alarm.  I was so hungover that I didn’t make it to class because I had to pull over at least three times to throw up on the side of route 18.  I turned around and decided to treat my hangover with a natural remedy.  So I hit up Randy and we met at quick chek. I was only going to buy one bag because I barely had any money in my checking account and I only had a quarter tank of gas left.  However, when he offered to give me two bags for only thirty dollars I couldn’t resist; pay day was only two days away anyway-I didn’t really need to eat thursday.  I then rolled up about thirty dollars worth of bud into a fat a*s Bob Marley J and cruised down the Parkway.  I was so stoned I didn’t realize that I missed the exit a half hour ago, and that I would need to turn around to get home.  After I made an illegal sped 90 miles an hour home, I came to the sudden, anxiety ridden realization that I had a paper due in class today that was worth twenty percent of my grade.  I was so upset that I could be so stupid so I went home and packed the rest of my bud into my bong and ripped it.  I then realized that the Professor didn’t accept late submissions.  I was totally fucked.  It made me feel really terrible about myself. I reacted. 

I was born a fighter.  When I was born they thought I was going to die.  My esophagus was not fully developed thus I couldn’t breathe on my own.  I was underweight and had Bradycardia.  For a year I was on a monitoring device that tracked my breathing.  After that I was okay.  I survived.  I was born a fighter.  As an infant I beat the odds and made something into myself.  I gave myself the opportunity to live. I gave myself the opportunity to be happy, to learn, to make friends, to love my family, to fall in love, to make the world a better place, to grow, to die happy.  But I also gave myself the ability to become a f*****g nut job.

Middle child syndrome is  a real thing.  Take it from a disgruntled middle child.  It’s really s****y when you are studious and hilarious, but your older brother is incredibly studious, and your little sister is gut wrenchingly hilarious.  It means that you are stuck in the middle of two people who are more impressive than you.  It means that you need to find other ways to get attention.  it instills in you an innate desire to be noticed, to be appreciated, but most of all, to be loved.  As a middle child you need love.  So when you reach a certain age your typical attention seeking ways stop being cute and start being annoying.  However, you already have this constant voice in the back of your mind saying “notice me”, “accept me”, “show me that I matter-that I’m worth something”.  When people don’t respond to that, you start believing that you don’t matter.  After that things only get worse.

The first time I discovered music my soul was set free.  I swear I remember the first time I heard the Mama’s and the Papa’s.  I felt like my body was a part of the song.  When they hurt I hurt. When they loved I loved.  It made me feel real for the first time.  I felt like music was something that wrapped around my battered soul and put some life into it.  But when the song was over you arrive at the bitter truth that you are still devastatingly, irrationally sad.  I don’t even want to use a thesaurus on that one.  Just sad.

Everyday I live a lie. I act like I am constantly elated.  I act like everything in the world is wonderful, including myself.  Sometimes I fool myself, but usually I know that I am a fraud.  Fact of the matter is that people don’t respond to negative people.  Acting positive is the only way to get the attention that I desire so.  It is the only way to get people to react to me.  I need people to respond to me.  I need their approval.

I could give you the typical sob story, but it is against my lying nature to tell the truth about how I am feeling.  Given this, I will just give a brief synopsis: An over sensitive child born into a family of achievers.  The child needed constant approval as she felt overshadowed by her siblings.  To gain the attention she so desired she acted out.  People were annoyed by her.  But they don’t understand because I “been through things”, I’ve been hurt in ways no child should hurt.  I’ve cried at things no child should ever cry about.  An overbearing mother who wants to be there for her kids EVERY SECOND OF EVERYDAY BECAUSE SHE BASICALLY HAD TO RAISE HERSELF. A father who makes it clear that he loves his children BUT CANNOT BE ANYTHING MORE THAN THEIR FRIENDS BECAUSE DADDY NEVER SAID “I LOVE YOU SON”. The child feels left out because her overbearing mother never lets her do anything fun and her father is too timid to tell the overbearing mother to cut the bullshit.  So the child, now a teenager decides to rebel and starts smoking pot and hitting the bottles.  She than proceeds to do more drugs, until her brain is completely f*****g fried, or as her stupid stoner friends would say, “enlightened”.  She got caught smoking pot, once by her a*****e older brother who than proceeded to tell the overbearing mother.  The overbearing mother than proceeded to ground the stoner child and not let her do anything fun for the rest of her senior year of high school.  The stoner child gets angry, curses out faculty members, and continues to smoke pot on the daily.  Her “mild depression” catches up to her and she freaks and pulls her hair out.  She than burns her wrists with pieces of hot metal until she hears a sizzling noise.  She smokes more pot, gets into a good college anyway, smokes more pot, smokes more cigarettes, trips on more shrooms, drops some more acid, pops pills, and parties and bullshits.  She then has a mental breakdown and is committed to a hospital.  The entire time she feels like a crazy maniac and isn’t allowed to have shoelaces or necklaces.  She steals a paperclip from the nurses office and uses it to cut herself while she is there.  The doctors never notice.  She gets out of the hospital and feels about twenty percent more optimistic than she did when she was committed.  She leaves the hospital, gets high everyday for a month straight, and than gets arrested for possession.  She becomes a left wing hippie socialist, whose main concern in to “legalize it”.  She calls people “dude”, “bro”, “homie” and “brotha”, because that is what hippies do.  But it is okay.  She doesn’t CONFORM to society.  Not her man.  She doesn’t trust the government.  Why? Because radicals aren’t supposed to trust the government. But wait....she is a Socialist...but wait...most things don’t make much sense anyway.  She has a boyfriend who is an a*****e is disguise, but she refuses to accept it because her father who, “CANNOT BE ANYTHING MORE THAN THEIR FRIENDS BECAUSE DADDY NEVER SAID “I LOVE YOU SON” instilled in her a desire to need male attention.  She needs to feel loved. Most people fill that void with sex, but she fills in with relationships.  She needs the sole attention of a man.  

She relates her life to songs because that is what artsy people are supposed to do. She wants to be artsy more than anything else because it kind of goes with the whole hippie thing, but she can’t sing or play an instrument, or paint a picture, so instead she writes s****y poetry and short stories in the hopes that people consider her deep.  She starts to really think that her poetry isn’t half bad so she finally becomes brave enough to show her work to her a*****e boyfriend in disguise and he laughs at it and considers it stupid.  He is a great musician you see-actually artsy-so it crushes the girl but she pretends that she never really liked that poem anyway-even though she always considered it her Magnus opus.  She wrote that is latin to show how cultured she is.

Hey, you know who is racist? Not this girl! Equality for all man.  Everyone is equal, and the white man has created a country off of the enslavement of one race and the murder of another.  Go America! You know who is homophobic? Not this girl! Hey, if two people are in love, let them be in love.  Guess who was so accepting and progressive that they, as a straight person went the the Gay Pride Parade?! This girl right here! 

But you know what I don’t accept? Religion.  But I’m not typical! Hey, hear me out.  There is no God *Scoffs at the idea*. A man in the sky? Who knows everything? What a joke.  God isn’t real. Religion is a way for people who are afraid of dying to comfort themselves about their imminent end.  No me though! That is why I do drugs all the time and don’t wear a seatbelt! A)Because I am a rebel. and B) because we all have to die sometime.  I’m not afraid man.  You shouldn’t be either. If you are I bet you voted for Mitt Romney.  If you are old you probably voted for Ronald Reagan.  Trickle down economics don’t work. I’m getting sidetracked. NOTICE ME.  Anyway, God isn’t real.

Author's Note

It's cold outside today.

Reviews

[quinfinn]

wow, this was crazy. and wonderful. mamas and papas, dysfunctional family, religion, republicans. if i had voted for ronald reagan i would have cut my throat for being a moron and if i ever met mitt romney i would kick him so hard in the pants he would sing soprano the rest of his life...i am pagan so this brought me joy. i love this write!!!!! faves....

[Lizzy B]

That means so much thank you

[E. M. DuBois]

It seems the middle child did exactly what she said she wouldn’t: She conformed. Through her need for attention and her rebellion into drugs, she nestled right into a whole part of society: the hippies. Doing what they do, believing what they believe, talking their talks and walking their walk. She did exactly that. She conformed. It’s a little sad to read that. Equality for everyman and the despise held for America’s past is the trending view of every PC-hippie in this day and age. The girl, without realizing it, cut her edges into the perfect piece to fit right into that whole puzzle. And here I was hoping this girl who fought so hard to live, to advanced past her less-than average place in her family just to end up in someone else’s, the other change being that it’s what cool and hip right now. The “left wing hippie socialist” is what every college brat wants to be, thinking their opinion and those that agree are the only ones that matter. Sounds like this fighter now belongs in a safe-space. An unfortunate turn to what could have been a bright, shining star. Such potential waisted on rebelling right into the mundane. Outstanding eccentricities that burned themselves out into the modern-day college kid. Oh, well.

At least, that’s how this story made me feel. Also, there were a few typos.

[TLK]

Enhance the insanity, truncate with brevity. Get in those sly internal rhyme; curse God for his/her crimes -- typography? meaningless, indicates what you want -- tilt at windmills of meaning with a lance held all aslant.

We're all fighters trying to breathe. That's you and me, that's everyone, we're all prepared to kill over the last scraps of air.

[Rachel]

i enjoyed this write.

[Lizzy B]

Thanks!