The f word

One of the most frustrating things about being an adult is the fact that when something fucked up happens, whether it happens or you cause it to happen, is that there’s not many ways to express your anger and your distress without looking and feeling like a total fucking idiot. I mean, yeah, technically you can. You can throw things and scream and break mirrors and even cut yourself, if you were so dramatically inclined, but for me, at least, I have this little voice in the back of my head going, “Really, this is ridiculous. I’m not some little emo fifteen year old fuck, moping around Hot Topic. If I lose my shit, I lose everything else. Cut the dramatics.”

When you can‘t freak out and destroy things or yourself, you do other things to suppress your central nervous system. Drinking, losing yourself in pleasing imaginary scenarios, shopping till you drop, throwing yourself into work or some other illusory hobby to distract yourself from the fact that you are indeed fucked in the head and you have no fucking idea how to fix yourself.

So you think about going to therapy and call your insurance, trying to figure out how much additional stress you’re going to have paying

for someone to crawl into your head and poke your brain into expressing your feelings in a healthy, safe environment. And all the while you’re thinking that you will feel dumb as fuck talking to a shrink about your problems because they’ll hear you and think, “This stupid bitch is giving me money to figure this simple shit out? Sucker.” You know inherently that this isn’t true, that ‘everyone’s trauma is valid’, but you have a bad habit of always conducting both sides of a conversation anyway.

Meanwhile all this anger and frustration and guilt is burning a slow hole in your gut because you have no way of expressing it that doesn’t make you feel like the world’s biggest asshole. You live alone, work at home, and could certainly let out anything you want in any manner you want without bothering anyone, as long as it’s not a chainsaw and doesn’t disrupt your neighbors. Deep in your subconscious, where the soil is uncommonly fertile and the neuroses grow, you don’t feel as if you have a right to express those things. Because you caused these things to happen. And because you feel you don’t have a right, it makes you feel like some sort of stupid martyr when your guard slips. Which is annoying as fuck.

It feels as if you’re sitting in a chair (a very uncomfortable one, I might add) with the worst version of yourself sitting across from you, watching you like a hawk for any sign of self expression. If you cry or scream or throw something or admit to missing them, that other bitch pounces on you.

You don’t have a right to do that. Shut the fuck up. Deal with it. Quietly.

What she really means is: don’t deal with it, because it’s the price.

Which negates the entire point in the first place, because you’re trying to deal with the thing that made you start this whole mess in the first place. That thing is buried under this thing. And you’re aware that if you don’t find a way to shut that bitch up, you would have hurt someone you care about for no reason at all. And that, above everything else, is not only forgivable, but what keeps you up at night. The weight around your feet. There’s a way to make all of this stop, but it’s selfish. And it’s cruel. And it fixes nothing. And none of it is fair.

Fair. It’s the worst f word. It doesn’t apply in adulthood. It is the needle in the haystack.