You’re Dying, But That’s Okay

What we got here is a bona fide pickle wrapped enigma, and we don’t have all day to go beating the perimeter of any bushes, so slide into your Haz-Mat suits and let’s dive right into the goop. If this is your first time donning your Haz-Mat suit go ahead and look to the fella with the over-eager stare on your right, the one with the randy weasel on his shoulder, and now I want you to go against your better judgment and turn your back on him so he can zip you up.

I don’t know why they put the zippers of these things on the back… actually, I’m making that part up. I’ve never worn a Haz-Mat suit—have you?—but I imagine they are incredibly uncomfortable, impractical, and whoever is responsible for their design must not have realized he was creating them for humans and not giant marshmallow people. With that said, in my mind these bitches zip up from the back, and you’re on my turf, Holmes, so suck it up. If you want Haz-Mat suits with zippers in the front, then go make your own website, for I shall have none of that chicanery here.

I digress. Regress? Egress. Ingress!

How’d you get in my suit? No, no, it’s okay. You can stay. We can share. But keep your eyes to yourself and your hands on me.

Okay, so you had your assignment for last week which means if you’re anything like me, you busted out your ripped stockings, a black leather jacket studded with safety pins, grew out your hair, dyed it black like my soul, and cried a little when it came out an off black bordering on gray not dissimilar from my personality.

Oh, the torment of my everlasting self, does my suffering know no ends?

Anyways, I’m crossing my fingers and toes, throwing sacks of pennies into fountains, and generally hoping, wishing, praying, that you got something useful out of your time pondering your fate.

But now that you’ve done that, we can move on and figure out what to do with ourselves. Cause you have plenty of time, but none to spare. So don’t go wasting it in great heaping handfuls that you toss to the pigeons.

I’m not saying feeding pigeons is a bad use of your time, by the way. Perhaps that’s the one thing in life that really gets your engine revving. That’s not weird, that’s just you. Being you is good thing, and anybody that would tell you otherwise deserves a swift ninjitsu soul tickle.

Here’s the problem and it’s stinking up the joint: we so rarely get to be ourselves.

To the astute reader, you’ll reference back to Love, Life, and Beaver Pelts and see the thread of continuity; to the rest of you, you’re probably getting distracted with a ball of yarn.

Regardless, cats will tell you string is fun, and they’re pretty much our silent overlords, so it’s safe to assume they know best.

So who are you? The true you?

How do we figure out what the true you even looks like?

That’s a tough one. Truly. There is no easy twelve step process to follow, unfortunately. And if there were, believe that I would not be sharing it here for free. Man’s gotta put bread on the table, cause… ya know, it makes a good center piece or something.

Ignore that. There are starving peeps out there and food shouldn’t be used as a decoration—looking at you ginger bread houses.

Starving children in Africa? But look at the M&M roof!

If you’re anything like me— for your sake I hope that doesn’t extend much beyond the fact that we both have eyeballs and not-quite-black-as-my-soul hair—the true you is kind’ve a weirdo. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, I think it goes for everyone, across the board.
We’re all really weird. Conversely, we’re all really good at pretending to not be really weird. Note the gratuitous use of the word really.

Society hogtied us somewhere around the age of six or seven and held a piping hot rod of metal against our bums. We’ve been branded and convinced that our true self is this other person entirely. A weird person who has no function in polite society. So we hide it.

Fuggetaboot that, ya?

The world doesn’t need more knock-off designer purses, and it sure as shit doesn’t need any more knock off-designer people.

Authenticity over conformity.

Originality over normalcy.

Cotton candy over apples.

Hm… maybe even cotton candy covered apples. That’s a million dollar idea right there. Dibs!

Lets tie this in with last weeks post; your time is limited. Sure, we want more time, but what good is more of something if we aren’t properly using that which we’ve already been given?

It’s a losing investment, and whichever pimply faced deity is manning the controls of this insanity fest of a carousel ride would be a fool to give you more if he/she/it/they/we/me/hehe know you’re just gonna waste it anyways.

Stop wasting your time.

None of this really, really, really helps us get any closer to our true selves, though. We can want change, and we can go searching our inner psyche for that poor lost child locked under the stairs and told to keep quiet, but we need the key to that door if we ever hope to unlock it.

I’ll save you the trouble of tearing apart the skeletons in your closet with hopes of finding the key, cause it’s right here. Dangling from my fingertips. All you got to do is come a little closer and take it.

I dare you.

Holy balls, you have quick hands… like carnie folk.

So now you see, here’s the answer: find those things, those moments, those people, that bring you closer to your true you, and then do those things, moments, people.

Do you enjoy sanding wood beams to a high sheen? Does it give meaning to your life? Not me. But I’m not you. I don’t know what your particular brand of weird likes, but I’m itching to find out. If you were a scratch and sniff you can bet your buns hun that I’d be all up in there smelling your soul.

Cause we’re all crazy unique in a way that sortve makes the world a scary place. But scary is good.

So go ahead, scare me a little. Make me tinkle. Tell me something weird about yourself. Tell me what makes you tick, who you like to lick, and something something rhymes with dick.

Anthony Vicino