Excuse Me, Sir! There's a Corpse in My Lunch

Yesterday afternoon, I was invited to go to lunch with a few of my coworkers.  We met at a restaurant and all ordered like normal.  Looking over the menu, I realized there weren’t very many choices for me that didn’t include meat.  My eye caught a delicious sounding Gourmet Mac N’ Five Cheese.  The only problem was it came with a chicken breast and topped with bacon.  When the server got to me, I told him I just wanted the mac n’ cheese without the bacon or chicken.  Seemed simple enough, right?  Well, not so much.

Several minutes later, he came up to me and said, “Hey man, about your mac n’ cheese.  They put the chicken with it and I told them to take it off.  They also put the bacon on there but I took that off as well but there’s still a little bit left in the dish.  Is that cool?”

Um, no. That's not how I ordered it, rendering that not cool at all.

I made a face of hesitation and said, “Well, um, I’m sorry but no.”

The server responded by sucking in his teeth and looking up at the ceiling, saying, “Aw, man,” as if making the dish again was going to be this huge ordeal.

“You know what,” I said.  “It’s okay.  Don’t worry about it.  I’ll take it like that.  It’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I don’t want to cause a problem.  It’s fine, it’s fine.”  I mean, he did say there was only a little bit of bacon, after all.  I suppose I could just pick around it.

“Okay, cool.”

“Alright.”

Several minutes more later, he brings me this dinky dish with a handful of penne pasta covered in a watery white sauce.  And it was filled with bacon.  Not the little bit he had described earlier.  There was more bacon than there was pasta.  There was more bacon than there are days in the year.  There was an entire chopped up pig mingling in my freagin' mac n’ cheese.  Ugggh.

Instead of saying anything, I just tried to scrape off what bacon I could from each noodle and then ate it.  It wasn’t even that warm.  It wasn’t even that cheesy.  I mean, the description was gourmet and five cheese, fancy and delicious sounding cheeses, cheeses that I have never even heard of, and yet it tasted like a canned alfredo sauce.  Needless to say, the entire thing was a huge disappointment.  When the server first plopped the plate down in front of me, a coworker sitting across from me asked, “Is that your appetizer?”

“No,” I said flatly.  “This is the main dish.”

He then stuck his nose up in the air and said, “Oh.  Man, I’d be pissed.”

Yeah.  I would be as well, if I weren't such a nice fella.

The lady sitting next to me said, "Why don't you tell them to take it back?"

"Cause I don't want to be difficult," I responded as I attempted to choke down the pig and penne.

And it's true.  I really don't.  And I know that I wouldn't have been difficult but that dude's teeth sucking suggested to me that I would be difficult if I had requested that I just get my food the way I ordered it in the first place.  I know that I'm a picky eater but frankly, I've always felt my picky nature benefited everyone that ever served me food.  I know that when I would go to Subway and ask for a chicken sub (before I became a vegeterian), I always wanted chicken and cheese and that was all.  The sub maker would always drop their jaw and look at me in disbelief.

"That's all?!" they'd ask.

Yes.  That is all.  And heck, I'm making your job easier.  I'm not asking you to put every ingredient available on the sub like some customers do.  I'm not asking you to put mayo on one side of the sandwich and two quarters of a squirt of mustard on the left side of the turkey right between the tomato and soggy lettuce, like some customers do.  Chicken and cheese and that's it!

Same with this order.  I was saving the cook from preparing any chicken or bacon.  It's not like the chicken is mixed in with the cheese sauce or anything.  I wasn't asking anyone to extract every little piece of meat from the dish.  I basically just wanted a big plate of macaroni and five cheeses.  Seemed simple enough to me but apparently it wasn't and apparently created another dish of just macaroni and five cheeses was also too difficult so screw it.  I'll take the dish.  I won't complain.  I also won't be satisfied.  Oh yeah, and the dish that was only slightly larger than my fist was seven bucks.

It just sucks being a vegetarian living in a carnivorous world.  Meat is everywhere and it's hard to avoid.  I feel like an outsider looking in.  And I feel very much like a leper when I tell people I don't eat meat.  The first question is always a resounding "WHY?"  as people's faces seize up in shock and horror.  Explaining it doesn't help matters because they always respond with, "Well, I love steak too much" or "meat is too delicious."  Why yes, yes it is.  I, too, had a fondness for chicken so don't think I don't understand where you are coming from.  I just wish you'd understand where I was coming from.  I know a lot of people don't mean to but sometimes they make me feel silly for my beliefs.  And that's why I didn't make a fuss over my bacon-laden lunch.  I could just imagine that server going in the back and saying to the cook, "It's just bacon.  What's the big deal?"  I hear that question a lot.  And I also get a lot of "Well, just take the meat off and it'll be fine."  That especially bothers me.   No, it's not fine.  When I hear that or get the impression that people are thinking that, I always say, "Well, what if I put a dead baby's arm on your pizza.  You know, just let those dead baby juices sink into the cheese and the sauce.  Now, peel that arm off and eat the pizza.  It's fine!"  Just as you probably wouldn't eat a pizza that had a dead baby arm on it, I won't eat a pizza, and except for this instance, won't eat pasta that has any meat in it because I feel the same way about the pig or cow or chicken as you do about the dead baby.  It's really just a matter of preference and no matter how common or uncommon those preferences might be, they should be respected.

Some parts of me feel like I should have been more assertive.  I wouldn't have been out of line by asking them to redo my food because, well, it was their mistake for getting it wrong in the first place.  And mistakes happen!  It's no big deal.  I should have just said that I would prefer not to have any meat in my dish and if it wasn't any trouble, I would like a meat-free plate.  I wouldn't have been rude or peturbed.  I wouldn't have gone on a tirade like some customers do.  I know how it is to deal with a-hole customers so I always tell myself that I won't be like that.  Plus, it's just common decency not to be rude to people, even if they did make a mistake.  Still, I felt like I would have been a problem if I had spoken up so I didn't.

Just another example of the hardships of being a herbivore.  Yet, I endure.  I just hope my efforts are paying off in some way.  Although I stopped losing weight, feel like crap, can't eat anything healthy and face the awkward judgments of others, I'm still going....strong?  Well, I'm still going, anyway.  That's gotta count for something.

The Liberation of Being Ugly

"Never could see past the skin
They make you believe
Beauty's from within
Don't know why
'Cause it's just not true..."

-Idiot Pilot, A Day in the Life of a Poolshark

I used to feel so much pressure to be handsome.

I have struggled with my image for as long as I can recall.  My first memory of feeling bad about myself occurred during the first week of third or fourth grade.  A boy in my class came up to me and said, “You got fat over the summer.”  Ah, don’t you just love children and their unabashed (and mostly unnecessary) honesty? 

Although that was many years ago and my memory is overall rubbish, I can recall that moment like it was ten minutes ago.  I remember being outside in the halls between classrooms.  I remember the day was bright and sunny and I remember the boy coming right up to me and not even saying hello before calling me fat.  I remember the surprise in his brown eyes as he scanned me up and down, almost as if I had turned into a different person in those few months since he last saw me.  That is when I first became aware of my body. 

I suppose I had gotten pudgy, as I did nothing that summer but eat and watch television.  That particular time was when my definition of fun shifted from outdoor play to indoor laziness.  Yet, I wasn’t aware of what my time on the couch had done to my once slender frame.  At least, not until my corpulence was called out by that boy.  His comment created the concrete that would eventually lead me down a path of inadequacy and depression.  From those first few words on, things got worse.

Puberty sucked.  Well, we all say that but my body really took a beating during my maturation phase.  It seems like something went wrong with me both physically and emotionally from the point the boy called me fat to the point of puberty.  Instead of not caring what that boy said, I took it to heart.  And instead of doing something about it, like cutting back on sweets and exercising, I was sad and found comfort in food and wallowed in my laziness.  I realize now that I wasn’t truly fat but I did have a bit of a belly.  I remember telling myself that I was capable of losing the weight.  I didn’t even have that much to lose.  A little more physical activity, a little less candy, and I’d be fine.  But, I only kept eating more and played less and instead of taking care of the problem at the onset, I only made it worse. 

I remember shopping for jeans before every new school year and my mother going straight to the husky sizes.  I hate that word.  Husky.  It was embarrassing having to wear a fat label on my fat butt all year round.  And every year I had to go up one more pant size.  It’s not that I didn’t diet.  I did.  And exercised.  I just never stuck with anything.  As soon as I’d lose ten pounds or so, I’d stop, gain the weight back plus five or ten more pounds.  Although I never beat the bloat, I did start to become preoccupied with food, exercise and my weight. 

This was around the time when all the kids in my class started getting braces.  This made me aware of how bad my teeth were, something I had never thought much about before.  Even though I didn’t get braces, I became obsessed with whitening my teeth.  If I couldn't straighten them, I thought I'd try to at least make them presentable in some way. 

And not to be outdone, my skin decided to turn against me as well and broke out something terrible.  This wasn’t just a case of regular teenage breakouts.  This was serious crater creating acne.  While the other kids got over their acne after a while, if some of them even broke out at all, mine only got worse.  I was made painfully aware of this one day when I was joking around with a girl in my class.  We were playfully poking each other when she gently bumped my forehead with her palm.  She pulled her hand back with a look of minor disgust on her face.

“Your face is so greasy,” she said as she wiped her palm on her jeans.  The joking was over at that point.  I felt my face get hot and I’m sure it would have reddened if the acne hadn’t already done a good job of that.  That’s when I became aware of how bad my skin was and from then on, I became obsessed with keeping my face clean and oil-free.

More examples of my flaws being called out includes me minding my own business in my computer applications class, typing away and working on building my very first website when a girl to my left said to a girl to my right, "Look at Brannon's arms."  The girl to my right looked over and said, "Mm hm, they're hairy."  I never thought much of it until they spoke up and pointed out yet something else wrong with me.  Ever since then, I've been dragging a trimmer over them to keep the hairiness at a minimum. 

And while at lunch one day, I was telling a story to a group of people.  A good friend at the time turned to me and said loudly, "Ugh, here's some gum.  You're breath is kicking like Jackie Chan!"  I accepted the gum, embarrassed.  I didn't speak for the rest of lunch.  Now, I always carry gum or mints with me because I don't want to have to experience that kind of shame again.  Sure, it could have just been a one time deal, especially considering I had just ate because we were at lunch, after all.  Of course my breath wasn't going to be minty fresh by then but she planted a bad breath complex in my head and now I believe I have habitual halitosis.     

Everything came together during those years of physical transition.  Not only was I becoming more aware of myself, thanks to the unintentionally hurtful remarks of others, but I was also becoming aware of the other guys and girls surrounding me.  Girls became more than platonic playmates.  I was noticing these girls turning into women.  I was developing interests.  And I noticed the guys developing into men and I became jealous of their short-lived awkward phases.  For everyone else, they came into their own.  Braces came off, boobs and Adam’s apples popped out, skin cleared up, muscles and curves were shaped as well as a sense of independence and confidence.  Style.  Maturity.  Progression.  And I felt like I was falling faster and faster behind everyone. 

For me, everything was getting worse.  My skin, my hair, my ever expanding waistline all took turns tearing away at the confidence that should have been building within me, the confidence that everyone else was experiencing.  I saw how everyone else was becoming beautiful and I was deteriorating.  The destruction of my self-esteem led the way for inadequacy and jealousy.  Why couldn’t I be thin like him?  Why couldn’t I have good hair like that guy?  Sure, that chap is chubby but at least he has a good personality.  And even that was lacking for me.  I was fat on the outside and on the inside, so many things were going on.  I think the typical teenage hormone surge took a toll on my mental health, coupled with my declining self-esteem.

And I hate to say this because I think a lot of people say this but I think I might have been depressed as well.  Obviously, we all go through a storm of emotions during puberty as everything is changing and I think some sort of mild depression comes with that.  So, maybe it was just being a teenager or maybe I honestly had a real form of depression but whatever the case was, it added to my awkwardness and silence in social situations.

I think my early years were devastating in ways I’m only starting to comprehend.  And just as I’ve always said, nothing traumatic ever happened to me.  It was mostly an internal conflict that only escalated over time, that depression/typical teenage-itis that gnawed away at every part of me mentally, emotionally and as a response to the swirling hurt inside, physically as well.  It was a snowball effect.  As things became worse physically for me, getting fatter and breaking out more and more, I withdrew from people and became more introverted.  That isolation caused me to form bad habits like seeking comfort in food instead of friends.  I just felt like friends wouldn’t understand.  They were either ending their ugly duckling stage or were long past it. 

My descent into a sickening pool of negativity didn’t help matters.  It wasn’t until years later when I realized that I turned every conversation I ever had with anyone into a giant pity party for myself.  I see now how off putting that was but at the time I guess I was just drowning in something dark and epic and I was crying out for help.  Not only did I withdraw from society but unintentionally managed to push people away with my destructive attitude.  I missed out on something vital, something necessary.  I missed out on those years when young people communicate in more adult ways, with flirting and seriousness.  People were coming together and starting to spread themselves into previously unknown territory.  Romantic relationships.  Deep friendships.  All the while, I pulled myself inward.  And I ate.

My physical appearance crippled me.  I allowed society’s idea of physical beauty cripple me.  And because I was weak, I allowed my own mind to cripple me.

It’s funny how none of my flaws really bothered me until someone else pointed them out.  The skin, the teeth, the hair, the body.  None of these were any thing I gave much thought to until someone told me these qualities were bad or ugly.  That is what caused me to become so insecure and preoccupied with what was wrong with me.  I suppose I felt I had to beat people to the punch, to point out my flaws before anyone else could.  And a part of that process was trying to correct my flaws before anyone noticed them. 

I became incredibly self-conscious about every little thing.  When I was younger, I never gave much thought to my appearance and all of these years later, I was making up for that lack of acknowledgment to my looks with an unhealthy obsession with my image.  And it’s sad how I couldn’t just be okay with myself, despite those people who pointed out all the things wrong with me.  There are times when I think it couldn’t have been helped.  I was too young, too impressionable to shrug off such criticisms.  And then there are times when I beat myself up because I think I shouldn’t have cared what other people thought.  If I could have went through life okay with how I looked, things would have been so much easier for me. 

And now my definition of physical beauty is skewed because I’ve allowed other people’s opinions to be drilled so far into my head that I cannot form my own.  For example,  I say that I want to be thin for myself, not for anyone else.  I am the one who doesn’t like being fat.  Yet, if I delve deeper into that thought, I wonder why I don’t like being fat, why I personally find it to be unattractive.  Is it truly a matter of personal taste or is it because other people  impressed upon me their own standards of beauty?

Despite my decline in appearance and lack of social skills, I managed to pull together enough willpower to try to make a change.  The most perplexing part of my personality is the gamut in which it operates.  There are days when I feel I'm an irrevocable mess and other times I believe I have the capacity to take over the world.  And the most frustrating part is that I can't control it.  Something inside my head clicks on and off and I am a slave to the resulting mood shifts and changes in perspective.  And one day, like a baseball bat to the brain, my whole perspective on everything shifted. 

I was determined to lose weight and get myself together.  And that's what I did.  I started taking a prescription for my face and started dieting and exercising for my body.  It was hard.  I was hungry and tired.  It was mentally exhausting resisting those urges to eat poorly.  It was mentally exhausting forcing myself to exercise.  And at times, I decided it wasn’t worth it and I’d just stay fat forever.  Yet, I kept going.  That on switch in my head pushed me to continue.  And I started seeing progress.  My face began to clear up after a frustrating few months with no results.  Same with my body.  And I started dressing better.  And I let my hair grow out.  And things were changing.  And people were noticing.  And I started to feel good and the positive attention felt good.  It was motivating.  And I think that’s what pushed me to go as far as I did.  When it got tough, I just remembered how good it felt to be thinner, how nice it was when people would compliment me.  Things were looking up.

For a while.

As that mechanism inside my head tends to do, something clicked off and all the willpower and positive energy I was feeling slowly depleted.  Eventually, I was taken off the medication and my face worsened again.  I was at my thinnest when I went to college and the stress of leaving friends and family behind, along with having a roommate from hell caused me to gain a lot of weight.  Then my hair started falling out.  I also suffered a severe culture shock.  Dealing with people outside of my hillbilly bubble opened my eyes, battered my brain and hollowed out this old heart of mine. 

I also had to come to terms with my limited talents.  Being surrounded by such creative minds only highlighted my shortcomings.  I went from being the most artistic in my high school to being the embarrassingly bad kid in my college classes.  You know how no matter how badly you do on a test or book report or oral presentation, there's always that one kid who you know will do worse than you and so it makes you feel better?  Well, I was that kid. 

The lack of confidence in my looks, social skills and talent caused me to withdraw just like I did when I was younger.  It was sad because I felt like college was my opportunity to start fresh, to experience everything again for the first time through a new body and mind.  I was ready to bloom.  Yet, everything fell apart faster than I could salvage and I wilted instead.  It was like I was reverting back to that middle school outcast, fat and shiny and shunned.  It didn’t help matters that I believed college to be my salvation.  I don't think people understand the high hopes I had for that place.  It wasn't just my education I was excited about.  It wasn't just the people, the place.  It was the experience.  It was the whole package, a total renewal of myself.  Instead, it was more like my undoing. 

The fact that everything went so wrong so fast coupled with the unfathomable disappointment spiraled me into a depression that I hadn’t felt since I was that pubescent and pockmarked kid.  Oh, how the hope for happiness was so within my grasp, only to be pulled away at the last possible moment.  And if that wasn’t bad enough, I developed that throat lump around this time.  The little bit of confidence I had worked so hard on building up over the years had fallen fast.

I went into college a relatively attractive young man, full of hope for a better life for myself.  I left overweight and sullen.  It’s funny because I was bigger than I had been in years yet I was empty at the same time.  Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to recover.  I still can’t get my weight under control and the lump is there and I feel ugly.  I feel alone.  I feel defeated by my own mind and body.  It’s not easy to walk around feeling like you’ve betrayed yourself.  The weird part is those moments of complete low, the times when I feel I’m at my worst, often make way for short-lived periods of indifference, even fragments of acceptance. 

I just think to myself that I’ve worked so hard all of my life and the results have never been more than average at best.  I put a lot of time, money and effort into my appearance but you can’t tell it.  And that realization makes me want to give up, to embrace who I am and what I look like.  It’s obvious to me that no matter what I do, no matter what pill I take or lotion I use, I’ll never be good-looking, at least not in my eyes, at least not the way I feel good-looking people should look.  So, why try anymore? 

I often think I should just make peace with my face, my body and my mind because it most likely won’t change any time soon, if it changes at all.  And look what happens when things do change!  The changes don’t last because I am not strong enough to maintain the upkeep.  I’m too tempted by indulgences and I’m too weak to resist bad habits and negative thoughts.  And the weakness and the negativity is insurmountable.  I have days when I look in the mirror and realize that this is all I have, all I’ve been given and I’d better make the best of it.  I walk out of the door knowing I’m clean and clothed and isn’t that all that should be expected of me?  I can’t control the way I look physically but I can at least take care of what I've been given. 

There are certain parts about myself that can be fixed.  I can get braces.  I can get a nose job.  I can get a hair transplant.  But these corrections are extreme in nature and unlikely to happen.  There are certain parts about myself that I can temporarily correct.  As long as I keep using these products, I can keep the acne at bay.  As long as I diet and exercise, I can maintain a decent weight.  And then there are parts of myself that will never change.  I’ll always have these stretch marks.  I’ll never have a strong jaw line.  My eyes will always be uneven.  And I suppose it’s all about fixing what I can and accepting what I cannot.  Naturally, that is easier said than done because what I want to see will never happen, what I’ve pictured as the physical standard of attractiveness for myself will never be achieved and it’s difficult to discard a long-held desire so quickly.  Sometimes, I think I come close.  Yet, that negativity and that weakness, those insurmountable demons, always find a way to infiltrate that flicker of peace and manage to put it out pronto. 

This all came about with an epiphany I had while I was still in college.  I was at the mall and this gorgeous girl walked past me.  The old me would have stumbled.  My face would have gone scarlet and the wicked thoughts would rush into my head like a blast of cold air to the brain:  she’d never be with me, she’s way too good for me, she didn’t even give me a second glance, I’ll never be good enough for someone like her, she probably thought I was fat and disgusting.  But this time around, I didn’t think those things.  I took her for what she was, which was a pretty girl.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.  I didn’t wonder if I was handsome enough for her or if she thought about me the way I thought about her.  I simply carried on. 

It felt good.  It felt good to realize that no, she probably didn’t find me attractive but I didn’t beat myself up over it because in that moment, I knew exactly who I was and what I was.  In that moment, I accepted that I simply wasn’t good-looking, at least not by her high standards, assuming I knew what her high standards were.  I felt ugly.  But instead of feeling bound by such a thought, it was actually quite liberating.  It was nice to realize I didn’t have to put up a pretense.  I felt like I had let go of all that pressure, all those struggles to cover up a pimple or whiten my crooked teeth.  I was there and I was me, fat, pale and balding and I was fine with that.

For a while.

While I left the mall confident in my new found awareness, it didn’t take long for that euphoric feeling to fade into a mild depression once again.  I think maybe I’d be okay if I didn’t have to be surrounded by these image of better looking people.  It only serves as a reminder of what I am not, what I realized I would never be able to achieve despite the creams and clothes.  I suspect I will always struggle with this for the rest of my days, just like I will with my weight.  It’s no giant leap to say that my weight and self-image are closely tied.  Perhaps one day will come when that mall walking epiphany hits me again and will possibly stick but I doubt it.  It's just like the clicking inside my head.  Sometimes positivity penetrates and other times I'm destroyed by depression and at this moment, I have no way to control it.  And it’s sad to know that I will struggle over something that I don’t have much control over.  Physical fixes are hard enough but the emotional and mental defects are the hardest of all to heal.  And what started out as a mission to fix the flaws that other people had proposed has turned into a journey of self-loathing.

Just like how I struggle with people's negative opinions of my appearance, I also struggle with compliments.  As few and far between as they are, they do make me feel good.  Mostly.  Depending on the person, a compliment can make my day or not affect me at all.  It's as if compliments are like the marshmallow fluff of statements to a terribly insecure person.  It's sugary and sweet and it tastes good for a while but at the end of the day, I'm still pretty empty.  It's crazy because as much as I feel people's opinions still matter to me, they almost don't at the same time.  As much as I want to hear the words, I can't help but not believe them.  And I want more than anything to believe them. 

I don't really know where to go from here.  I believe I have somewhat identified my problems yet I don't know how to go about fixing them.  How can I undo approximately fifteen years of insecurity?  How can I overcome my own skewed perceptions of  what is acceptable and attractive?  They say everything takes time.  And maybe it's not so much time, but what time provides. 

Time gives way to exposure, to discovering different perspectives.  I didn't turn into a troll simply from the passage of those fifteen years.  It was the things I saw and downfalls I went through that accumulated over that period of time and caused me to end up this way.  Time is nothing more than a vehicle for change.  Time provides the opportunity for growth, stagnancy or regression.  And I've walked a tightrope between stagnancy and regression for far too long. 

I think the first step in reaching growth is the decision to want to be happy with who I am.  For so long, I never gave my own happiness consideration.  I thought happiness came from the opinions of others.  Now, I see that was wrong.  I want to be at peace with my face and my body and I not be as restricted by other people's standards.  Now, it's just overcoming those standards that have been so heavily embedded into my brain.  Perhaps time will provide the ability to mature and find priority in things that matter more than my looks.  I already feel like I've made some progress.  I know now that I am not conventionally handsome and I never will be.  That doesn't mean that I'm hideous.  It just means I am who I am and I'm going to have to accept that because this face is going to stick with me for a long time.  Perhaps my insecurities will fade when I fully realize what I am and just embrace the flawed face and bloated body.  Then, maybe change will follow.  And maybe, just maybe, that liberation will last.

Actually, No I Don't

"Oh will you ever know
That the bitterness and anger left me long ago
Only sadness remains
And it will pass..."
-Sia, You Have Been Loved

Forgiveness is the hardest thing in the world.  People are not easily forgiven in my world because it almost feels like when they are forgiven, they win.  They've hurt me and yet I forgive them and they need not feel any remorse.  They can carry on like nothing ever happened.  Yet, I still keep their harsh words, their neglectful actions bound tight within me.  Why should I be the only one to suffer for what they did?  Keeping forgiveness dangling over their heads feels like my only way of properly punishing them.  It's not that I want them to hurt like they've hurt me.  It's not that it feels good.  It just feels right.

It doesn't help matters that I can't let things go.  If I could, then maybe I could forgive easily.  It just doesn't seem fair to hold onto the hurt while the one who inflicted the damage can frolick around absolved of their actions.  That's pretty selfish of me.  Should someone be tied to their transgressions for eternity?  Of course not.  Everyone makes mistakes and no one is perfect.  I, myself, have offended many people but that doesn't mean I should feel guilty for the rest of my life.  So, why should these people who have offended me?  They shouldn't.  I just need to get over myself so I can get over them.

Forgiveness isn't impossible.  As far as I can tell, I've forgiven my former roommate, the one who made my life hell for close to a year.  It's definitely taken a long time and some days I'm still sore from what happened but I think, overall, I'm okay.  Forgiveness is just going to take a lot of time, patience and maturity.  As a Christian, I have to forgive those who have hurt me.  As a fallible human being, I don't think they deserve it.  But this is where I have to wander outside of myself and do the right thing.  I have to let go of my personal protests and forgive as God does.  Harboring hurt isn't good for the soul.

I think a lot of times the anger dissipates quicker than I've realized.  What I mistake for anger is actually a sadness, a confusion as to what just happened.  The confusion turns into frustration which leads to anger.  I'm not angry at the person so much as I am at the situation.  How could they have said that, done that?  The angry slowly drips away but the sadness remains.  I suspect that's what takes the longest to get over.  I suspect that's what keeps me from so easily forgiving.  But, I will.  I always do.  It's just the right thing to do.

OK, I Feel Better Now

A work of (almost) fiction.

“You killed me, you stupid bitch.”

That’s all he could write.  Page after page scrawled with the same scorned sentiment.  As much as he tried to express himself, as much as he had articulated all the hurt and pain and sheer misunderstanding of the entire affair in his mind, his heart was guiding his hand to reveal something else.  He had entire monologues mingling inside his skull, thoughts and feelings about her that he was so intent to express but every time he looked down, those same words were slung across the page, as if his hand and heart were disconnected, as if he had broken the link between his brain and fingers.  He had written three pages of the same sentence without realizing it.  He sighed and put down his pen.  His hand was cramping.

Had she in fact killed him?  Was this some kind of subconscious revelation that was now coming to the surface or was his denial finally boiling over?  No, she hadn’t actually killed him.  Her negligence, however, played a big part in his demise.  He was drowning, suffocating, dying with each weakened breath and she saw fit to stand out of the way.  When she left, she had known he was in trouble.  She was his only lifeline in the end and when she wasn’t there to pull him out of the quicksand, he drowned in the dirt.  The world got to him and came down on him and crushed every bone.  Every mutilated muscle called out to her and she never came.  His last thoughts were of her cruel absence.

God, why had she abandoned him and for that matter, how could she have done this so carelessly, so easily?  Was he wrong about her the entire time?  Was their relationship translucent and flimsy?  What happened to the poetry critiques and five-hour phone conversations?  They had conquered so much together.  They had defeated time and distance and defeated the odds.  They were two damaged kids and no one thought they’d make it out of their teen years.  Yes, they were damaged but when they were together, they weren’t cut up or broken.  It’s not that they made each other whole or completed the other half of one another.  No, when they were together, they felt like they were allowed to be who they really were, allowed to bring out all of themselves.  They didn’t need to hide away bits of pieces of their personalities.  It was very clear that they were both nuts but they accepted each other, crazy and all.  And it worked.  And there were good times.  At least, that’s what he thought to himself.  Were all of these good times one-sided?  Was he mistaken?  Was everything he ever thought and felt about her and their times together utterly false?

As much as it hurt when she left, stopped writing, stopped calling, the one thing that got to him more than anything, the one thing that cut to the core was the question of why.  Why had she left?  She was known to skip town every once in a while to clear her head.  He was used to that.  It was a simple part of her craziness that he had accepted.  But, she was never gone for too long.  It always seemed by the time he had another breakdown, she’d be there to help him through it.  Not this time.  No, when he needed her the most, she was gone without so much as a note of explanation.  She left him alone with strangers.  She left him to fend for himself all the while knowing he wasn’t equipped to handle this world.  How could she do that to him?  After all they had been through, after all those years of friendship, she threw it away and for what? 

She e-mailed him a half-hearted apology one day.  He replied that he’d forgive her eventually.  They never talked again.  At the time, he was so angry, so confused, so upset that he didn’t even want to respond but he knew that he wouldn’t stay mad at her forever.  How could he?  So, instead of ignoring her, he sent a short response of eventual forgiveness infused with enough acid to let her know things were not okay, although they would be in the future.  Yet, over the next few months he realized how easily he could stay mad, how the very thought of her sent his brain into a frenzy.  Forgiveness was beyond comprehension.  If it were ever possible, he realized that this rift was too gaping, too wide to repair.  He could forgive but he would never forget.  He never did.  Any time anyone hurt him, he recorded it and put it in the recesses of his mind.  This didn’t mean he held grudges or was slow to forgive.  No, he had fixed problems with his relationships before but he just never fully let go.  With her, however, nothing would ever be the same.  They could never be friends again, even if he wanted to.  The worst part was she didn’t seem to want to.

He regularly read her blog and realized one of her friends had left her as she had left him.  At first, he was quick to find satisfaction in this turn of events.  He quickly squashed those feelings, though, because he realized he didn’t want her to hurt as much as she had hurt him.  She never did actually do anything to him, after all.  She was never mean and she never participated in killing him.  She just wasn’t there.  She just checked out of their relationship, threw it all away for no discernible reason.  No, he didn’t savor the fact that she was hurting.  If anything, it made his hurt grow because she was more upset over the loss of her other friend than she was at the loss of him.  And this other friend was the one who left her.  Entry after entry detailed her utter breakdown over the loss of this guy and yet she never wrote about missing him, never once mentioned an ache or a teardrop over his loss, over leaving him and then feeling guilty because he was dead because of her.  No, it seemed like she had forgotten about him completely.  He stopped reading her blog.

And yet she was still on his mind.  It seemed he was playing the role of grieving friend, grieving over her like she was grieving over this other guy.  It was completely backwards and made no sense to him.  She should have been grieving over him.  After all, it was her fault.  She left him.  She never explained herself before she took off.  She left him wondering.  She left him worried.  And yet, she was done and it seemed like she wasn’t going to hurt over him like she was going to hurt over this guy that left her.  This only inflated his emptiness.  She was, after all, his best friend.  It might not have seemed like it but after she left, he had a lot of time to think about her and he realized how in sync they were, how suitable they were for friendship.  He really cherished what they had but that realization didn’t do him any good.  She was gone and it felt like she wanted to keep it that way.  The way she could so easily give up on him, how she never called or wrote or e-mailed or reached out in any way.  One puny e-mail and that was the extent of her effort.  After all the years, laughter, crying, imagination, creativity.  After everything, there was nothing.

He had tried to write to her, to somehow create some closure for himself, to explain how he felt in the wake of her absence and his eventual demise.  But, he couldn’t.  All he could write was that same sentence over and over again and he realized something.  That sentence basically wrapped up the end of their relationship.  The end of their relationship ended him.  Without her, there was no one to help him get through.  She killed him.  She killed him and he wondered if she would ever know, if she would ever be able to grasp the pain and the anger and the confusion.  Sure, she might have been feeling that way toward the other guy, the one who left her, but she wouldn’t feel that way toward him.  She was getting hers but he felt no satisfaction because she didn’t know how badly he was getting his.  Maybe this was how karma was going to cut her.  It seemed pointless, really, considering the fact that she might not even realize why she fell into such an unfortunate circumstance.  That she was being punished.  No, he didn’t want to think of things that way.  But he did want her to know how badly he was still hurting.  He wasn’t going to tell her, though.  For some reason, it was easier to sit back and bleed.  To talk to her now would be too difficult, too much of a strain on his already fragile mind.  It would be too complicated and too much of a nuisance.  No, a letter was more suitable.  After collecting himself, he finished his letter.  He didn’t send it to her, though.  Maybe there was no point to any of this.  She obviously didn’t care how he felt because if she did, she would have checked in, made more of an effort to mend the relationship.  No, it didn’t even matter anymore.  But, he still wanted her to know.  He posted it in his blog instead of sending it to her.  That way, it was out there.  He didn’t know if she even read his words anymore but if she did, maybe she’d finally catch a glimpse of understanding.  If she didn’t, at least he got it off his chest.

She not only killed him.  She was the reason he didn't believe in relationships.  She was the reason he was hesitant to call anyone a friend.  He had built up walls because of her, walls that were too high and too thick for anyone else to ever pass through.  It was all so cliché but pain penetrates through clichés, dramatics and predictable patterns of behavior.  Doesn't everyone build a wall when hurt?  And aren't we all at our most similar when we are in pain?  Perhaps she was writing a letter, too.

Love is a construction within the heart.  It does not form a sweeping monument overnight.  Instead, it builds over time, laugh by laugh, brick by brick.  And despite the months or years it can take to form, it can shatter in seconds.  There's nothing left but wreckage, jagged memories and sharp hesitations that cut long after it all comes crashing down.  And even when the debris has been cleared away, there's still the spot where this beautiful construction was located, the place where hope and happiness dwelled.  There is a vacancy.  And as much as he hoped writing the letter would clear that debris, he knew the pain would still linger.  There was still a vacancy.  And he was too tired to rebuild.

That stupid bitch.

Kill Capacity

what does it take to make a man snap,
to lather his hands in the blood of anyone?
life rises up and crushes everything
and leaves behind a bitterness
a hate that resembles blocked arteries
that closes off all capacity for compassion
hidden within and coming out in coils
it vibrates these bones wracked with rage
oh, how life can turn a person into a pariah
a beast that snaps at a helping hand
as the capacity to kill courses through me
i’m shaken at my ability to sink so deeply
into the sick thoughts that soothe me
i'll wrap my teeth around my throat
and tear out my own temperance
there’s no going back
once you’ve drawn a little blood

Martyrs (2008) Review

They Did Not Finish to be Alive

A little girl named Lucie escapes from an abandoned slaughterhouse where she was kept and tortured for a number of years.  She is sent to an orphanage where she meets another girl named Anna.  They become close friends as Anna helps nurse Lucie back to help.  Fifteen years later, Lucie has found the ones who tortured her.  Entrails really hit the fan when she goes to their house to exact her revenge.

All I can say after finishing this film is whoa!  I feel I’d be doing a disservice to those who have not seen the film if I elaborate on the plot beyond what I’ve already said.  All I will say is the film is basically split into three parts and each part is tougher to watch than the last.  This French film falls into the same vein as other French “torture porn” films such as Inside, Frontiers and Haute Tension.  There will also be comparisons to the Hostel movies but I reject that comparison outright!  Hostel wishes it could be half as hardcore as this film.

What I enjoyed about this movie was how the violence was unflinching and realistic.  It wasn't exploitive, either.  The gore wasn't overly abundant but when it hit, it hit hard and hit with a purpose.  The French have a knack for spreading the blood thick and messy and in a way that isn't entertaining but unnerving.  One of the big differences I've noticed between American horror movies and French horror movies (and let me just admit that I haven't seen very many, to be fair) is that we tend to root for the killer more often than not.  I don't think I've ever seen a slasher in which I hoped the dumb girl with the big rack wouldn't trip on that random patch of grass, twist her ankle and then crawl away from the demonic plumber as he breaks his plunger off into her torso.  Alternately, I care about the French victims because there's some actual backstory on the characters and even when there isn't, they are put through so much that we can't help but to root for them after a while and hope that they can make it to the end.  And I thank the French for that.   

And the reasoning behind the madness!  How beautifully twisted!  I definitely wasn't expecting that and it brought a whole new dimension of thought, fear and discomfort.  The film left me thinking and IMDBing it long after it was over and I love when a movie stays with me after the credits have rolled.

With that being said, it wasn't a perfect movie.  While I thought the themes overall were great, some of them were handled in a clunky manner.  Some of it was predictable.  The last block also felt a tad long, although I completely understand why they did what they did.  The ending, however, was fantastic and ambiguous but in the best way possible.  Sometimes ambiguous endings can be really lame if not handled well but this film did a great job with the openness and the final image brought the film to a new level of depressing.

Check it out if you can.  It's gory, gross, enlightening and frightening.

4.5 out of 5.