Wouldn't your family be proud?

This is what it's like inside the box. The walls are finally visible, I can't run outside of it anymore. That thing I've been looking for, that I've been chasing after is on the other side of this wall and I only realized that I couldn't reach it. I learned that these walls exist because I've finally run into them. This is the limit of what I am capable of in this state. There are no doors. The walls can't be seen by the naive dreamers or the hopeless romantics, they don't have the venom dripped into their eyes yet. There is a ceiling. I can watch the planes go by, watch the leaves blow. And I realize that is what I wish for. To be outside of this, either having some pre-set destination to look forward to, or to just drift aimlessly and let things decide where to take me. What I am here, is standing still, trapped. The only thing I can see the moon, and it's going to kill me. As the full moon wanes, that crescent scythe gets sharper and eventually it's going to fall from the sky and dismember me. Hopefully I'll be asleep so I won't have to notice a thing and that'll be it.

And that's what most people amount to. They realize that their dreams are on the other side of the glass and they can't reach it. They can't chase after it anymore because they're trapped, and all they can do is settle. Make do with what they're comfortable with. To sit inside the box just to watch the moon phase in and out while the planes fly by with the only mental manifesto being “good enough”. The best you can is good enough. And your “good enough” was not.

Your dreams and goals were a farce.

You weren't good enough for them and they were too good for you.

You're not capable.

You're not happy, you're content.

You're a dark soul who won't go outside into the dark because he likes the lights on.

You're a piece of scenery.

You're the one in your family they “had such high hopes for.”

You don't achieve, you settle.

You're no good.

You're a fucking loser.

We all stagnate like cobwebs on the wall, praying to go unnoticed until everybody realizes how much of a pointless sight you are before they dust you off, to sweep you under the rug. But I, we are too tired to move. We are too stuck to move. If our car gets stuck in the mud, we decide we just aren't going to drive to work today. What I can get by with, it's good enough. I wear glasses because I'm nearsighted. The glasses don't help. The only thing the future holds is dread, or it holds nothing. Thankfully tomorrow does not come today. It comes tomorrow, and as long as we can continue living in today we don't have to worry about tomorrow. That horizon, that sudden drop will show up. And we spend every opportunity waiting in fear when it will show up, yet ironically be surprised, woefully unprepared when it does.

The box will torture you. It will work for your needs. You can't hear the people out there, vocalizing their disappointment, their anger, their disgust. But you can watch them, and they're always watching you. Always silently reminding you that you weren't good enough to make it out like the rest of them. Some people learn to ignore it and just be content inside, accepting mediocrity, accepting that this was the best they could do. The rest of us, me, I realize finally here on the onset of my 25^th birthday, that I look around and I've spent most of my strength over the past year attempting to break out after finding out that I'm in here. It's not working anymore. I'm getting tired. I want to go to sleep and just sleep for once. Thought is for the talented. Thought is for the troubled. Thought is not allowed in the box. Those who think in the box will eventually pull the trigger. And if they don't, they just look up at the moon and wait for the thing to finally fall out of the sky. To live in the box is to drone on, to eliminate all thought to ignore the personal Hell you've created for yourself.

It's all your fault, no one else's.

Why are you still blaming other people?

Can't you just accept that you're defective?

That you're broken?

That this is entirely your own doing?

You built this yourself, stop making excuses.

Sit down and accept that this is it for you.

Because you can just be reminded later that at one point you told yourself that this was “good enough.”

Thank Muhammad for politically-correct homogenized semantics.

The other day I was in one of my drug-induced deliriums and from the monotony of working a delightful retail job that was slowly sending my soul into the abyss, and I failed to note what holiday Monday was. When I asked my father, he was angry as expected and said he expected a foreigner to ask that question, not somebody born in this country. It was Veteran's Day, of course. And I say: big fucking whoop to that. Now I'm being completely serious here; what have veterans ever done for me, huh? Fight for this country? Fight for our freedom and the glory of America? Alright, dandy. But why should I care? Stay with me, there's more to this.

I'm a man who has always found the concept of patriotism... peculiar, to say the least. Now with that said, some people are going to assume that there's some anti-American sentiment taking place here, and I would call you mistaken. There's merely animosity. Because in the big picture, absolutely none of this affects the average person. Those people who were over in the Middle East? Do you think they're fighting for a good cause, fighting for our benefit, for our freedom? That the terrorist threat would somehow crawl their way out of whatever cave they're huddled in at the moment and somehow through neglect of us lifting our almighty thumb would manage to find a way to dismantle the American infrastructure, to make sure that you, you and whatever backalley town or minor city you live in, end up threatened and your lives would be altered in any drastic way if these people weren't dying overseas? I mean yes they're dying for what can be perceived as a morally just and righteous cause, but is beneficial to you in any way? Probably not, other than a sense of pride that through whatever collateral damage we're causing policing the world that occasionally something good might come of it.

Now what about the veterans of yesteryear who fought for America when the country was legitimately threatened? Fair enough, they deserve respect for helping preserve the country in a dire time. But let's talk about general patriotism here for a second; I don't believe in it. Not to say that I'm not grateful for being born in this country where I'm given a good opportunity and an honest shot at making something of myself despite my apparent squandering of it at every possible turn because I have time like that to take it for granted. Or do I? Why do people call this the greatest country on Earth? What are they making comparisons to? They're comparing us through our looking glass of other countries. Most of us have lived here for our entire lives, some of us in a single state or only a handful of them. What arrogance does it take for you to say that we're the best when you don't know shit? There could a village tucked away in the darkest jungles of Africa where all the women have magically developed Saccharomyces cerevisiae in their tits and are lactating beer and are willing to have sex with you while their husbands are at work, and then you go to the bar after work where the husbands buy you drinks on the house and then ask you if you want to go home and have a Nyotaimori-styled dinner of barbequed ribs and bacon on their wives before you have sex with the husband the wife of course the wife again, only to go to sleep on a pile of sexy young Indonesian boys even though this is isn't anywhere near Australia but this is my fantasy so fuck off. And if a town like that exists, fuck country loyalty I'm going to Africa because that's the greatest city on Earth and none of your hollow patriotism will change that.

I approach this the same way I approach race and women: by mindless discrimination and hatred by asking one simple question; why are you proud of something you had no hand in determining? You did not choose when and where your dad decided not to pull out. The definition of pride in the positive annotation is a sense of satisfaction or pleasure from an accomplishment, achievement, or qualities/traits that you possess. So while you could technically be proud of being a woman, an American, black, etc... what have you done to earn it? What have you done to deserve it? It was given to you. Now there are loopholes here; you can be proud to be a feminist because that's a conscious effort to embrace particular ideals and philosophies, but you can be a feminist without being a woman. Or hell, when my dad brought up foreigners, I thought to myself “Well fuck, if anything THEY have a right to be patriotic or to say that America kicks ass.” I would believe them more than an American. They're more entitled to their pride because they earned their right to be here, they fought for it, they have somewhere else to actually compare America to in order to draw that conclusion. Most Americans can only reference what they know, which is extremely limited in scope for the most part. That's ironic to say coming from somebody who just made an enormous generalization about pride in nationality who doesn't even know what nationality he is other than “white” and “just enough Native American to get free money from the government but not enough to care about the culture”.

Which also comes back to one of my other points; you can be proud of or fascinated with a culture irregardless of whether or not your heritage has anything to do with it. I'm glad that Spanish people still speak Spanish even though when we're at work I can't understand a fucking thing that they're saying. And not just because Spanish food is delicious, either. They can be proud of their culture simply because it's not in its original context anymore; it's something they have to actively participate in to maintain instead of assimilating like the rest of the mindless beige and peach drones sprouting up in the country. It's not being handed to them anymore. There's a difference between that and race. Being black and proud strikes me as odd because there's little to no impression of actual African culture at this point; it's a subset of American culture, which aside from the police hating the shit out of you and being entitled to use the word “nigga” is by and large remarkably similar to standard American culture.

Of course at this point you can ask what defines American culture, and the fastest way to find out that answer is to attempt to live in another country, like somewhere in Europe, and just see how your mannerisms and personal priorities manage to be different than everyone else. And then you can be proud to be an American when you realize how shitty Britain's food is and how you want to shove some ribs into your facehole while talking about how much better the world is after we've been policing it.

Sometimes I wish I just reproduced by budding.

I've masturbated to some weird shit as of late, have I told you people? And I mean some seriously out-there kind of shit. Any sort of sexual deviant who has some perverse fetish, I feel I must apologize to you. Because at this point, I feel like that there's a good chance that I've probably been there. I might be able to understand. I might be able to understand why some people prefer 2D to 3D. I might be able to understand why lamias and centaurs are a thing for some people. I might be able to understand what makes a pedophile tick, regardless of how horrific it is. I feel like I might be able to understand S and M a bit more. Though I still don't understand why people are into scat or vacuum-packing fetishes, you people are fucking weird. But I might be able to sympathize. Because again, I've probably been there at this point. There isn't a picture on the internet my one-eyed monster hasn't looked at and there isn't an object in the house that hasn't had some rope arched over it at some point. And in whatever position imaginable, to boot. I can tell you that the onset of this discussion began after I had the really bad idea of jerking off while propping my back up against the wall upside down with my ass sticking in the air, and it ended about as poorly as you'd expect it to. I just sat there for a bit in that position in the dim afterglow. Blood rushing to my head. Breathing heavily. Covered in my own semen. Noticing I forgot to take my good work clothes off. “This is no way to live” I muttered to myself. Then I got on my computer at looked at illicit pornography of men and horses and the process of degradation began anew without a fuck given in the world.

Man, all this masturbating feels like a second goddamn job. Every morning and every night my little man goes “HEY MOTHERFUCKER, WE HAVEN'T HAD SOME FUN YET, LET'S CHANGE THAT” and I'm like “NO FOR THE LOVE OF GOD LEAVE ME ALONE” but it won't. I just want to live a normal life and have normal conversations with people, but the entire time I'm talking to a customer at work about where to find the men's shoes the only thing I'm thinking is “I wonder if she's shopping for her husband. I wonder if his feet are small. You know what they say about big and small feet. I might have a shot. I MIGHT HAVE A SHOT, THAT DUDE MIGHT HAVE A TINY PECKER AND I CAN NAIL THIS WOMAN IF MY FEET ARE BIGGER THAN HIS.” And she might not even be that attractive. I'm just desperate. I don't know why, it's not like I truly know the carnal joys of sex since I only had it once in High School and it was FUCKING TERRIBLE. The only thing I recall was me being drunk and her crying and me going “OH JESUS THERE'S BLOOD DID I STICK IT IN THE WRONG HOLE OH GOD I'M GOING LIMP WHAT DO I DO FUCKING HELL” and that's it. I've never had any particular inclination or positive experience with sex, so why the obsession? I find it incredibly peculiar that there are people like me out there who haven't had much or any sex at all in their lives, yet are complete and utter slaves to their throbbing libidos. This isn't just my attempting at rationalizing my inability to get laid, so bear with me there's more to this.

Hell, maybe it's more like a drug addiction. I don't know what that's like, either. I binge-drank for a while in my youth, but I quit that cold turkey. I took a lot of Vicodin just to keep the shakes and growing pains off, but again I just ended up stopping that. Like any good drug addiction, there are visible signs of an addict suffering from a relapse. Sweaty and pale. His hands are no longer soft and delicate from excessive use of lotion (which explains the compliments people give me). His pants look like he's smuggling a ferret in them and he's twitching enough to make you believe it. He has a borderline obsessive fascination with household objects a normal person wouldn't consider would make for good sexual stimulation, like the radiator or toaster. And like every good drug addict, he'll go to more and more excessive lengths to get his fix because normal shit just doesn't cut it anymore at some point. It does nothing for him. He and his penis have to go on a fucking jihad through the anus of the internet just to find an oasis of sexual deviancy that will be enough to quench his thirst before he meanders to the next watering hole. It never stops. He'll either die before he makes it to the next stop or he'll eat his own dick to survive and then he can wonder what the fuck he's doing in the desert before going home and MAKING SOMETHING OF HIMSELF.

You may note the excessive use of the masculine pronoun in this discussion. That is because this is only a man's problem. What? It is, don't give me that bullshit. “Oh, I think about sex a lot too” you women say. No, there's a fucking difference. You women have wants. Men have needs. Women are commuters through sexual perversion, men are hostages. I don't want these thoughts, they're like the asshole children you get in the divorce settlement that you know are lost causes but are stuck raising them anyway as they slowly leech money, happiness, and hope out of your body. It makes perfect sense, because there are a lot of instances of sex or masturbation or sexual perversion where it's a lot like a Las Vegas marriage after a night of binging. Then you relapse into proper judgment and you tell yourself afterwards “Well, it seemed like a good idea when I was horny” as the post-wank shame starts to settle in and you frantically close all the incognito tabs on your internet browser riddled with Thai prostitutes, bestiality and vore while you just sit there. You sit there, and you think about what you've done, and you think about how you'll never be able to have a realistic, healthy, normal sexual relationship with another person because they don't meet your ridiculous standards of having a literal horse's ass while they perpetually lactate beer to compensate for the fact that they probably look like some misbegotten Godless heathen that reminds you of the evils in the world.

Honestly if I could, I would do away with sex entirely in my life. Life would be so much more convenient if I didn't have to have sex. It means that I wouldn't have to worry about being in a committed relationship or that I would be pissing away my hard-earned money on prostitutes.  But I can't stop, regardless of what I do or what happens.  I could cut off both of my arms and I would find a way. And the fact that I can say that is horrifying.  At this point the thought of it repulses me because it's been tainted by so many extremities and factors. It is an impure, horrific, disgusting experience.

Until I get a chance to do it again.

Hate magnet.

So my car's a piece of shit, let's make that clear. It's a 2003 Hyundai Elantra, and if you know anything about cars (I don't), that apparently means that it was constructed from industrial waste and has about a lifespan of a fortnight. I think it's a suitable car for me because it looks like a fairly nice car but it runs like absolute shit, which is a perfect metaphor for the kind of person I am. I remember one particular ordeal where I was driving home at night and the radiator cracked while I was on the highway. It looked like something underneath my hood blew up, and going 70 miles an hour at night while this is happening when my phone just died had me swearing loud enough to be heard over traffic. As of late it was leaking oil underneath the car (another suitable metaphor for myself since I have a hemorrhoid), and after getting it taken in, they fixed the leak but ANOTHER leak showed up because of a faulty oil cap. I don't know if any of this is actually true and if I'm explaining it correctly because again, I don't know anything about cars and a gear nut could be reading this and have his brain melted in a way that nerds would have their brains melted watching an episode of The Big Bang Theory.

So it was taken into the shop again and I still had school this morning. So instead, since my dad's on vacation, I got to take his 1986 Camry to school. My dad's nickname for it is the “ghetto sled.” I don't know if any of you people have seen this car. Go google it, I can wait. Or I can post it here.

Mine looks worse. The windshield is cracked, and the paintjob is completely faded to the point that it looks like matte, which means it's like driving a bigger and even uglier Nintendo DSi. This car is the definition of a death trap. The doors are thin enough that I felt like if I kicked them hard enough that I could get my foot through them. That if it even grazed a big rig, it would be sucked into it and ground up into metal confetti. It feels like driving a sand castle, where the slightest contact with anything means dissintegration. And apparently, I'm not the only person who thought this.

While I drove to school today, I noticed something... odd. People were going around me. I checked the speedometer. “Huh,” I thought. “I'm going the speed limit. Hell, I'm going over it (unless my family's reading this, in which case I'm going the speed limit). Maybe I have a lot of smog coming out the back?” I rolled down my window to check, emphasis on the word “roll” because the car had those cranks that you turn. That is what kind of archaic machinery rests in this car. I never thought that I, that we would become spoiled enough as a technologically-driven culture that I could be capable of missing buttons that rolled the windows up or down. But... there was no smog. People were simply afraid of this car. I mean I couldn't blame them; I go to school in a town filled with rich and entitled white kids. If your car is anything older than a decade, then chances are you came from that fucking ghetto in Oakland and you were going to menace society with your car's sharp edges and flat paint job. I drove a car that was older than most of the people going to my college, by all means I shouldn't even have the money to be going to school if this tin box was the best I could afford. You stuck out, and people were disgusted yet strangely fascinated with you. It would be as if a black man went to Japan; people would be horrified that some Not-Japanese person is roaming the street, but look at him. He's a product of a lost era.

This discrimination didn't stop when I got to school, either. I got to school early, so the parking lot was empty. I wanted to park away a bit from the campus because of my shame that I'm driving this angular death machine, so I got my shit out and went to class. Now usually the parking lot's filled up when I'm going home because of classes later in the day. Around my car, was a perfect U-shape of empty parking spaces. ...nobody wanted to be near my car. Probably due to an insurance liability, but Jesus Christ. Not that I would know if they dinged it anyway, it doesn't have an alarm system. Or doors that worked. The driver's door did not work on the outside. You had to open it from the inside, which meant other doors had to be unlocked, and then you had to open the driver's door from the inside of the car. I cannot begin to explain to you how incriminating this looks in practice. Other people could because of the afformentioned empty parking spaces around me so that God and everybody could see.

Now despite all the shit that I've given this car, I enjoyed driving it to school. For one, there's a reason that this car is still being driven after 27 years, and that's because it actually runs like a fucking champ. What this car looks like on the outside is what my car would look like on the inside; it feels like driving on a baby's ass compared to my car that winces and screams with every bump I hit. And I say that not to imply that I've run over any children before, even though I would wholly admit to doing so otherwise. And secondly, you just feel happy driving this car. Humbled, even. Because it is a hate magnet. Every driver around you turns into an asshole when you drive this because they look down on you and they avoid you like your car contains a virtulent plague. All the hatred and frustration you feel towards people being assholish drivers, any possibility of self-doubt you have about your skills of a driver are out the window because you know it's everybody else's fault for hating the living shit out of you while you drive this car.

Though now that I think about it, that might be a bad thing since I would imagine in the ghetto this would reflect upon everybody until the anger just reached critical mass and they'd all start shooting and killing each other like a bunch of uncivilized niggers. ...actually given the presence and prestige of cars in the ghetto, I think I just might be on to something. I'll get back to you on this.