WWMSAT?

By Lauren Belcher
Weekly Blog
Word Count: 287

I'm 21 years old and I still care what my parents think about my decisions.

Not to the point where I won't do something just because they disapprove of it (i.e. the tattoo I just got redone,) but it's still always in the back of my mind. Kind of like WWMSAT, what would mom say about this?

I always feel my subconscious kick in right before I do something 'bad.' I'm not a bad kid and never really was one. I blame a lot of my crazy decisions on the fact that I missed out on a lot of fun. My fun started at 18, so sometimes I make decisions at 20 or 21 that a normal kid would have made at 15. I'm still learning a lot of lessons that should have been learned by now.

But other times, my adult side kicks into gear and I make the decisions that make my parents proud. Something small, like cooking my own meal for dinner or remembering to pay bills, makes all the juvenile stuff less appealing. I get to be a grown up now.

I'm graduating from college in a year come April. That's probably the most scary reality of all. The thought of going into the real world and starting my career makes me want to go back home and be a 15 year old again. How did this happen so fast? Is the fun going to really end in a year? Or is it just beginning?

This is probably why I hold so many of my freshmen friends close to my heart. It's nice to hang out and feel young again. Even if afterward I have to go home and work on my resume.

Image from Google Images

On being a loner

This was something a friend wrote that mimics my feelings on a lot of things. Enjoy the read :)

Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 1:22am

I have come to the conclusion that I am destined for a life of loneliness.

Now, before everyone overloads this note with comments attacking my usual melodrama and pinning a mental Post-it note with the word, “Emo” to my shirt, allow me to elaborate:

I am not saying that I am a victim, nor is this note an attack on relationships in general. To be sure, I have seen loving relationships. Take my roommate, for example. Mark and Demika are in love. I know this, because I practically live with BOTH of them. Mark is the personification of the Steve Miller Band’s song, “Joker,” unconsciously thumbing his nose at any conception of plans outside of college, organization, and the uptight world with its schedules and palm pilots and suits and ties. And Demika is the perfect mate. The two adorably apathetic lovers have a relationship so blissfully low-impact that it makes every single attempt that I’ve made to “take things easy” look like the pathetic attempts of a socially awkward fool.

Well, that’s because I try to be the fool, in the literary sense at least. In medieval times, the fool was the member of the court who was allowed to lampoon the king. Every word out of his mouth oozed with the saliva of satire, but here’s the catch: he was funny. The jester could critique everything about the kingdom, from the official decrees to the king’s unseemly back hair, so long as he did so as a joke. But I am not a jokester. I am a firebrand. A hotheaded revolutionary. I am Jacques in Shakespeare’s “As You Like It”—an idealist driven to cynicism at the moral depravity of polite society. And like Jacques, I long to be a Touchstone—a wise man that disguises his damnations of the status-quo with limerick and laughter. But I can’t.

Believe me, folks, I’ve tried. I’ve tried to “take everything in stride,” or “with a grain of salt.” I’ve tried to “laugh it off,” and “let it roll off my shoulders” and every other annoying cliché that you can possibly think of. But I can’t. I physically, emotionally, mentally cannot be apathetic or jovial about the state of our species. I can’t because unlike the majority of you, I DON’T think that the way we live now is inevitable. I don’t think that war, poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, class divisions, and all the other pretty little injustices that we take as “just a part of life” are ingrained within our DNA. And I CERTAINLY don’t think that the people on the top of this sinking ship we call a political system are there because they are somehow smarter or better leaders than the rest of us. So because I don’t buy the bullshit, I get very disillusioned when I see otherwise good and caring people don a military uniform, wear a badge, or become a businessman and perpetuate the same river of feces that we have to wade through every single hour of every single day of our lives.

So where am I going with this? How the hell is this related to relationships? Well, if you haven’t stopped reading by now and proceeded to mentally masturbate to the latest idiotic YouTube video, then perhaps you’ll allow me to explain further. Because every droplet of blood that courses through my veins is dedicated to the collapse of “business-as-usual,” that doesn’t bode well for a lover, does it? I want to be a muckraker. I want to sneak through the deepest corridors of money and power and politics, and expose the people who think they are untouchable—that no one notices or cares about the fact that they lie, cheat, steal, and slowly kill us with impunity. So yes, I plan to piss a lot of people off. That’s my job. But even if I DON’T get killed or maimed doing it, I can’t possibly settle down.

Let’s put our beers and water bongs down and be serious for a second, kiddies: You might not think it right now, but we are all socialized to believe in monogamous, committed relationships. From the first day we start thinking of other people in a romantic way to the time we’re put in the ground, we are told that we are supposed to get married and have children. Now that idea has been challenged numerous times throughout history, but the notion that each of us is supposed to be with ONE person for the majority of our adult lives is still grinded into our psyches. As much as you all like the concept of friends-with-benefits and three-ways and make-out parties right now, odds are most of you will abandon your sexually libertine-like lifestyles in favor of the “spouse with 2-3 kids and a white picket fence” model.

The sad thing is, with all my vicious vindictiveness towards mainstream America, this social model is one of the few things that makes me occasionally regret being on the fringe of society. I’m not saying I want to EVER get married, but I don’t mind the idea of having someone that loves you and cares for you so much that they want to spend the rest of their life with you. As horrid as that may sound to some of you, I think that’s a beautiful concept. Imagine: respecting and adoring someone so much that you are willing to put up with every single solitary annoying thing that they do until you are so old that both of you are shitting your pants everyday so you can’t complain about them anyway. Real, uncensored, unfiltered, unsitcom-like love. I don’t care what any of you say; that’s fucking amazing.

But perhaps the most aggravating part of a truly committed, loving relationship is that I will never experience it. Well, okay, perhaps I could. Maybe. But to do so I would either have to compromise the work that I am so passionate about doing, or else put the woman through emotional turmoil from my constant absences from home, fluctuating work schedule, and my constant obsession to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” And as much of a jackass as some of you might think I am, I can NEVER put anyone through such unbearable hell.

Some of you might be asking, “So what? At least you can have fun right now!” Come on, folks. You should know me better than that. Yes, I can have a few fleeting moments of bliss, but in the end comes the usual emptiness I feel at the realization that it won’t last.

So, before Facebook, the Internet, and the world, I declare myself a loner, destined to never have the satisfaction of coming home to a warm bed at night or staring into the eyes of someone who cherishes being with me despite my obvious neurosis. But, c’est le vie. I shall not shed a tear at my future of singleness and singularity, for rather than be swallowed by my depression, I choose now to use this realization to reaffirm my commitment to my cause.

May my only love be the lady Liberty, for I shall never be unfaithful to her.

Defiantly yours,

Cal “Chaos” Colgan

P.S. Yes, I know that I rambled a lot, but I really don’t give a shit. It was fun to write. :-)