| hey xanga, you still existI am so fucking jaded and apathetic towards everything at this point in my life, it's awful. I don't feel any sort of ambition to do anything with my life. I wasted 5 years and $30,000 on a college degree that I'm probably never going to use. Political science was fun, but never really had a career that I was actually interested in. I couldn't see myself becoming a cop, a lawyer, or a politician. Then I decided to give teaching a spin, because, after all, "those who 'can,' 'do,' and those who 'can't', 'teach'!" Please note that I've never actually believed that and I actually have a lot of respect for the young teachers who actually give a shit and try their hardest, because I did it during student teaching and it is fucking HARD. It seemed inevitable to me, though, that unless you're a special kind of person, whose heart is truly filled with nothing but goodness and compassion, that at some point those young teachers turn into shitty old folks just looking to protect their "spot," all the while coasting unhappily towards retirement. The truth is, even though by all accounts I was at least passable as a social studies teacher (even though I can't say that I have any sort of passion for history, sociology, anthropology, geography, and the other disciplines aside from political science that encompass the social studies), I never felt comfortable. I am socially awkward, I have always been. Also, I couldn't be like many of my contemporaries, who enjoy going out and partying and getting a huge kick out of making fun of the goofier students in the teacher's lounge, and can go home and sleep at night thinking "I am doing my sincere best to help these kids become functioning, intelligent adults." Say what you want, but at least I have enough of a conscience to know that I am in no place to be telling these kids what they should be doing, and then going out and doing the opposite. It's one thing to be a somewhat reckless twenty-something. It's another to be that, but all the while having this huge responsibility on your shoulders. I took affecting kids' lives very seriously, and I always felt like I was hiding something about myself. I always hated the teachers in high school who tried to be "cool" (e.g. Mrs. Walker allowing the bro douchebags in my Senior English class to chew their gross fucking tobacco in class because... well, I never quite understood why. Get the fuck out of here, Bubby!). I am also getting quite sick of having to explain this (a short-hand version, at least) to well-meaning people, like members of my extended family. They all tell me that my answer to "so, what are you doing these days?" feels well-rehearsed. That's because it is. Moving on, amongst the many other reasons why I'm unhappy: I feel like it's all my fault that I'm not as happy as I was in 2003 or 2004 (although, when I think back, I wonder how happy I actually was then). At the very least, I still had a close-knit group of friends who as of now have mostly gone our separate ways into relatively unhappy adulthood existences. A lot of us don't even really have anything in common anymore. I distanced and alienated myself from many of them for reasons that I can't even remember at this point. With many of them, I think it was partially that I got sick of always feeling like I was being judged, in many instances hypocritically. Thanks, but no thanks. Who fucking cares what other people do, does that make them any less of a person than anybody else? I was a bad dude in 2003 for dating high school girls when I was NINETEEN, but it's okay now that we're all in our mid-20's? What the fuck ever. At the same time, I really, really fucking miss a lot of them, but I don't think they feel the same about me. With that said, I am so thankful for the few real friends that I have, and for the fact that I am sure that they know who they are. Also, switching gears (somewhat), every "relationship" I've had with a girl in the last 4 years or so has lasted less than a fucking month, and more times than not, it's because I've not had the energy to deal with the bullshit involved. "It's never worth it," and so on... Granted, I've made some questionable choices in terms of the girls I've dated, but by and large, there wasn't anything really wrong with any of them, I just didn't really give a shit. The two times that I actually did allow myself to give a shit (albeit, knowing in the back of my mind in both instances that it wasn't really logical and didn't really make any sense, and almost certainly wouldn't work out), I got burnt. The burned hand teaches best, they say. Funny, I always used to kind of make fun of Lore because of his views on the fairer sex, but I think I actually kind of get where he's coming from now. Anywho, I've never been the type of person to just hook up with girls purely for the physical satisfaction (sadly, most of those encounters, of which there really hasn't been many at least compared to lots of other people I know, encompassed some sort of misguided hope on my part that there would actually be some sort of "morning after." How gay of me.). Whereas, at one point, it would've meant that there was something "wrong" with me that I did pursue meaningless drunken encounters, now it means that there's something wrong with me that I don't. Another case of can't win, don't try. It's okay, most of those girls were interested in me up until the point when they got to know me... can't say I blame them, I'm, by all accounts, a pretty boring fella. The one girl in my life who I've ever really felt some sort of actual, special connection with is, unfortunately, fucking crazy, and seems to be perfectly content to just occasionally pop up in my life, presumably to remind me that it will never work out and I will never even be given a chance to be happy, because she, apparently, does not want to be happy. Or doesn't even know what happiness is, I don't know. All I know is that it makes me feel fucking pathetic. that the one girl who I've ever really felt truly loves me for who I actually am, not just who they want me to be, doesn't love me enough to put me before herself, at least once in a while. Maybe it's just me, but I sort of think that if anybody ever actually "loves" somebody else, they shouldn't knowingly continue to allow the person to feel like shit. It's been a 9-month-long purgatory, with no end in sight. This is at least part of what keeps me from pursuing girls that I know and like, to some degree. I have always had a really crippling fear of rejection, so much so that the only times I ever really pursued anything with girls have always been "slam dunks," so to speak, i.e. a girl tells one of my friends that she thinks I'm cute and is single, so I know it's just up to me to not come off as a total weirdo. Which, by the way, is very difficult for me to do, because I have been constantly reminded throughout my life that I am "frantic and emotional," "cute, but mad lame (or, during my fat childhood, just mad lame)," "not normal," etc... I also am not typically wearing most of this straight out on my sleeve, which kind of takes away the possibility of pity affection, because somehow, throughout all of this, I also manage to come off as somewhat arrogant and aloof (which I guess I do, but I've never understood it). So here I am, still living at home, driving the same old shitty car, doing the same old shitty things, with no reason, in my own head at least, to make any sort of positive changes in my life, aside from the fact that I feel like a burden to my parents, although my dad (who has been unemployed for most of the year because of this shitty economy and the fact that when you're 50 and have done the same thing for most of your adult life, it's incredibly difficult to just start all over) continues to assure me that this is not the case, although I kind of think he's just trying to be nice. Sometimes, I think that if I had been born 15-20 years later than I was, I would have been diagnosed with a very mild case of Autism or Asperger's Syndrome, as I continue, even into adulthood, to have few interests, most of which are childish, which I am fairly obsessive about (music, professional wrestling, and whatever other goofy shit I'm into at the moment). The things that I don't care about, I really really don't give a SHIT about. Of course, I would also be the first to tell you that I think that children these days are over-medicated and over-diagnosed with mental/emotional disorders (as an aside, seriously, if more people have disorders than don't, can they even be regarded as the ones with the particular "disorders" anymore?). Okay, I think with all of that said, I am done, as I've been writing and working on this little miserable piece of prose for far longer than I should have allowed myself to. Let's see if by the next time I even bother to check xanga (probably somewhere upwards of 6 months from now, possibly even a year), anything has changed. I suspect that while some of the players might change, the story will be largely the same. Perhaps, that's the biggest bummer of all. |
