I’m becoming a real person. I felt a growth spurt the other night, sending an aching through my foot that I can only compare to the memory of the first time I felt it, sandwiched between my mother and father in their bed.
Psychologically, I have a lot of excuses. I slept in my parent’s bed far too late into childhood, and my mother walked around the house completely nude far too often for it to have been healthy for my development. My father is a narcissistic cheater with alcoholism, and my mother was a people-pleasing gambling addict who evidently had depression—or who at least experienced a sudden inclination to commit suicide—so I’m genetically predisposed to being a normal person.
But that’s all besides the point; I do not need excuses any more. Just like a real person doesn’t. If I don’t have anything to say, I still say something meaningless. When presented with a worldview that makes my stomach sweat, I know when to stop pushing it. Some people are too absorbed by a sense of moronic defiance to everything except themselves and will never understand that AI is going to spell the doom of all creation (which they cannot understand as important) and all natural life, and I guess I have to be okay with that.
I’m doing what normal people do. I’m not picky about food anymore, and I’m eating it in a practical fashion, at regular intervals. I’m able to follow a sports game, and I ignore my sister and my grandmother as they talk about People–human beings, that is. Those that we know, both living and dead; distantly related and those that are more than kin and less than kind. This is a matter that my grandmother understands much more intimately than my sister, so I watch the TV instead of listen-in, and only put in a word or two when my name is mentioned.
The World Cup is on, and I’m able to follow it like the rest of the world pretends to, though I’m split on who should have my favor. England beat Mexico, which makes them my enemy for grossly personal reasons. But France is France, and although I felt sympathy for them after watching how rotten Paraguayans¹ could act, they remain Frenchmen, forever coming in at second on my Official List of Grievances.
But conflict is a part of being a real person too, it’s just about the way you handle it. And, like a normal person, I’ve decided to stop verbalizing the conflict I feel inside of me. They say that this is not healthy, but so far it has done me much better than any attempt I’ve had at conveying the unutterable feelings that bore pits in my stomach and strangle up my brain. I’m a naturally illogical person; operating at a terrible deficit, which creates a rotunda of diverging equity which features Love, Hate, Nihilism, Idealist Fantasy, Addiction, Zen, Late Nights, Early Risings, Brain Death, and Enhanced Cognitive Function.
When I look around me, I see most people as donuts: lacking a core, which is sold off to be consumed separately. And those that remain with their centers intact have been hollowed out and filled with cream. It’s bleak, but I live on.
All of this is highly irregular, so I won’t say stuff like it anymore. I’ll pivot completely to Sports Journalism, which unfortunately interests me less than Hermit Crab Journalism, but I think that my interest in hermit crabs is irregular too. At least, my grandfather laughs when I bring it up, and most regular people find humor in the irregular. So I’ll laugh at irregularities too, and write about sports:
I don’t know who won the England/France game, and it doesn’t matter anyway. England was crushing France while I was watching, but I couldn’t root for either of them, and I think the whole thing is over now. I think they played the final match the next day, and I don’t know who took the championship home either. I saw pictures of Messi crying, so it could have gone either way, really.
What a start! I’ll be one of the greats in my field, because I am even less than mediocre. They’ll rename the Philip Merrill school after me, and they’ll decide to teach exclusively sportswriting, since it’s the only normal thing to write about.
So hello Muddah, hello Faddah, I’m joining you in the Real World now.
Typically,
- Tyler