I don’t get mad a lot. It rarely solves anything, and makes me feel miserable while the cause of my anger doesn’t seem to be impacted in the least. That doesn’t seem fair. I try to solve and/or eliminate things that push me toward being mad, which seems to be a better channel for that negative energy.
But there is a thing. One thing that really frustrates me. It’s dumb. It’s not important. In the spectrum of all things on the planet, it is incredibly minor. Rationally, I should ignore it. Let it go. Put it out of my mind. But I have not reached that level of zen yet. I am a work in progress. A seed that may one day grow to a sapling, and if I truly apply myself maybe even a tree before we burn this Earth forest to the ground. All that is a hope, a dream, a wish, because I know this one thing will tweak my turtle for my entire life. It will never go away. It will always be there, mocking me, laughing at my frustration and mental anguish, over and over chipping away at my sanity with a tiny pickaxe pick pick pick pick slowly burrowing through my skull until it becomes a rest home for the hyper-aggressive squirrels that roam these lands. There is no escape.
In an effort to defeat this demon, I want to put a name on my failing, my weakness, my Achilles’ heel, this vile putrid darkness that resides inside me, strangling the joy from my life. As the first five to ten installments of most therapy investment plans will tell you if you can identify your tormentor as outside of you, not part of you, you have taken the first step toward isolating and eventually overcoming the beast. It is not ME, it is NOT ME, the other, the elsewhere, a parasitic remora sucking the life energy from my soul, a snubnosed eel grinding into my psyche like a shai-hulud devouring sand without excreting any spice as a reward.
What is the name of this putrid poison you ask? It’s the newspaper. Not just any newspaper, but the ones that litter my lawn under the auspices of ‘enjoy this complimentary copy of today’s news’, plastic wrapped bundles of backwater advertising bound together and abandoned on my property over and over again. I do not want your filthy rag, sir, and each time you deposit it on my abode I vow louder and more emphatically that I shall never suffer your subscription to printed insanity. I know you have charged your advertisers an additional premium for the ‘privilege’ of placement in this weeks ‘widely distributed edition’ and I cry foul–FOUL! Foul on you and your nefarious schemes to leach even more money from honest businesses as you leave your litter lounging on my lawn. Foul on you a thousand times for each page of frivolous fallacies you fling into my frame of view. Foul, foul on you, sir.
Why is this allowed, I ask. Why when we all, the law abiding citizens of this fine community, are encouraged and enforced to remove our own refuse to the correct receptacle do you get the unrestricted right to drop your advertorial dung on my doorstep home after home after home, forcing us to pick up and dispose of your wretched rag, overfilling the recycle and waste bins we pay for with our hard earned salaries. When we work hard to earn the right to leave our homes for work or vacation are we immediately ambushed with your brightly colored bags that blatantly announce our absence to any and all who may wander by our once secure domiciles. Foul, oh foul on you, a thousand times foul.
I know I am not and will never be the victor in any fight that would come from this so this feeling stews in my heart, eternally tormenting my mind. I see you, I know you, and now you see me and we both know you are foul; a foul, festering blister on the face of this society. And I will forever be watching, waiting for my chance. I see the changes of time as well as you can. You will bring doom on yourself, and I will watch. Oh I. Will. Watch.