A Motherfucking List Because I'm Sorry

I literally cannot get my shit together, you guys.  It’s like I’ve spent the past four to eight years being Girl With Her Shit Together and then BAM - over the course of three short summer months, all of my shit inexplicably fell apart to the point where I wouldn’t know how to reassemble myself even if someone were shouting step by step instructions at me through a bullhorn.  I’m like a blind person with a new IKEA bed frame - I’ve got all of these little pieces but no idea how to build them back into a working bed (i.e. functional person), and every time I try, I only create a strange, uneven metal rhombus thing that would never actually support a mattress (i.e. a functional life).  And that metaphor really sucks a hot one, but I don’t know how else to describe how all over the place I’ve become, and come on, a blind person fiddling around with a crate of IKEA bed frame knick knacks is kind of a good visual (pun intended).

My life, sans the heavenly glow.

  Of course, this is all really unsettling, particularly if you’ve spent the majority of your life being on top of everything like I thought I had, but LISTEN . . . I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking lately and I’ve come to the conclusion that worrying extensively about not having my shit together really isn’t going to change the fact that nearly everything about my life right now is fucked up.  Like, laying in my bed all day obsessing over not having any “career path” and whether or not anyone will ever love me again and the fact that I accidentally ripped my diploma and how I can barely hold a conversation with another person without saying something completely awkward and I still haven’t done my laundry regardless of the fact that I ran out of underwear like, a week ago – worrying about this shit all of the time is honestly not going to accomplish anything other than make me fat out of refusal to get out of bed and depressed out of over-concern for my future.  So I decided I’m just not going to do that anymore.  Instead of spending every second of every day filled with guilt, dread, and gloom, I’ve come to the conclusion that everything about the shattered remains of my life right now is okay, not because it actually is, but because it has to be.  I’m Vick.  I’m 22, single, getting paid hourly to work as a hostess/office bitch, living at home with my mother, and all of this has got to be fine or else I’ll suffocate myself with useless self-loathing.

What’s been adding to my general dumpiness (which by now you know has been going on since I first mentioned it in April, even though I’ve had a few moments of clarity since then) is the fact that I’ve blatantly ignored writing in this blog.  It’s not that I haven’t tried either – I’VE FUCKING TRIED, but it usually goes a little something like this: I’ll say to myself, “Hey Vick, why don’t you just try to write a little post?  Maybe you’ll feel better?  Maybe then you’ll get some of the gunk in your brain cleared out, unleash some of the anger you have over life’s small annoyances to create space for some new, positive stuff to thrive in your head?” and I would open up a New Post and I’d start to type and I’d get three sentences in and then stop.  I’d re-read what I had done, delete it, and try again.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  By the seventh or eighth repeat, I’d exit out of everything, slam my laptop shut, and be left off in even worse condition than I was before – my internal monologue would be all “Great going Vick, you have one thing in your life that you’re supposedly good at and you can’t even get yourself together enough to write something worth reading.  I bet you don’t even fucking recycle, you piece of shit.  Oh that’s really great, go ahead, just shovel the Nutella into your mouth, that will solve everything.  You are the worst, and that’s why your pre-school boyfriend Jeremy wanted nothing to do with you when you guys moved on to kindergarten.  Loser.”

Actual photo of Jeremy and I in Preschool (he's to my right and I'm dressed like a sister wife).  I don't understand why he wouldn't want me when I am so clearly on his level in terms of being fucking hot, but I guess Ian Curtis was right - LOVE WILL TEAR US APART DUDE.

BUT NO, OKAY?  NOT TODAY.  You know why?  Because my internal monologue is a douchefuck who needs to sit down and shut up and let me be.  And for the moment, she’s sitting quietly, so I’ve been able to make the following list of Things That Are Slowly Ruining My Life.  I hope to god it comes out good.

1.  People that insist on talking to you when you are wearing headphones.  This specifically goes out to all guys riding solo on any/all forms of public transportation who see a girl similarly riding solo but blatantly listening to music, and somehow manage to reason that striking up a conversation is an acceptable thing to do in this scenario.  I was under the impression that wearing headphones is the visual equivalent to hanging a “Do Not Disturb” sign around one’s neck, but apparently I have been grossly mislead for the entirety of my youth because people (namely Guy On Public Transit) think that it’s okay to begin discussing things like where I am going, where I am from, my mother’s maiden name, my credit card information, how I feel about gas prices, etc. when I’m just cresting over into the chorus of Kanye’s heartwarming ballad “No Mercy”.   

For real though – what part of me sitting silently with headphones in is giving you the secret signal that you should immediately begin playing 20 Questions with me?  And yeah, okay, you caught me – ninety percent of the time that I’m wearing headphones, I’m not listening to jack shit.  I’m eavesdropping on what the people around me are saying, and becoming personally invested in their conversations, and like, how am I going to find out why Christine and Mark broke up and what the backlash has been within the family if you’re moseying over to talk to me about random crap that I don’t care about?  Sure, I concede: doing this headphone/eavesdrop-fake-out thing makes me a creep, but it makes me a passive creep, whereas you coming over and trying to talk to me when I’m clearly really busy makes you an active creep, and that’s a very large difference.  And for the record, this line of reasoning also applies to reading - like the amount of times I've had this conversation in my life is unreal:

Me: *Reading with fervor*

Other Person:  “Hey what are you reading?”

Me: “Well I WAS reading A Scanner Darkly.”

Other Person:  “Oh cool, what’s it about?” 

Me:  (two options) a.) “I don’t fucking know because I’m trying to read it and you’re talking to me.”  OR b.) “It’s a list of instructions on how to gut a human being and harvest their organs for sacrifice to the dark Lord Satan.”

I don’t know how to make it more clear that I don’t have any interest in talking to people when I’m doing something else, especially something reflective like listening to music or reading a book (or throwing a virgin sacrifice).  Let's just say that if I were to run for president, part of my platform would include a swift death by firing squad for anyone who attempts to intrude on another person's Quiet Hobby Time.  Bye.


2.   Taxes.  Listen, I’m not trying to get political here whatsoever.  I know taxes are necessary and everyone has to pay them and people get all pissy and heated and Republican over everything to do with taxes constantly, and if I even utter the word within a five mile radius of my house then my father pulls out handwritten charts of how pissed he is about having to pay them and how the Democrats are fucking him in the asshole with social programs and the country is in the shitter and WHATEVER.  I DON’T FUCKING CARE.  I just want to take a brief moment to talk about how taxes blow a dick outside of a political context because I really think that this is a subject we can all bond together over.  

Obligatory pro-America picture to dispel any soon-to-be burgeoning rumors that I'm a Communist.

 My reasons for hating taxes are apolitical and purely selfish, and they revolve around this: over the summer I work a lot, and my weekly paycheck is supposed to be something like $1,000.  In fact, when I get my paycheck, and it shows me the amount of money the check SHOULD have, before the soul-sucking tax deductions, I feel my heart leap with joy because fuck, a grand a week is drug-dealer status kind of money (or like, regular people with a middle class income status money, but hey, we all have different ideas of cool).  That leap of the heart quickly turns into a leap off of the highest surface available in an act of rage when I see that no, my check isn’t made out for $1,000 but made out for a mere $750 (give or take; mostly take).  I know this is a total white girl problem and that that’s still a substantial amount of money but what the actual fuck dude?  I don’t work 65-70 hours a week for my own health, so why break me down like that?  At least hide the amount I could have been making before taxes – showing me all the money I could have had is like a putting Olivia Wilde’s vagina in a room full of guys with boners and then telling them no, sorry, you can’t go in there because there’s an Olivia Wilde vagina tax and it’s that you have to cut off your dick.

Sorry dude.

I’m not saying that my paycheck is Olivia Wilde’s vagina, nor that I currently have a boner (I’m supposed to be a girl), but the point I’m trying to make is that the government should fuck off of my paycheck and that everyone should throw money at me all of the time so I can buy my fancy hair care products and afford to shop at Urban.  IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK.


3.   Flourescent lighting.  I’m sure there are many uses for fluorescent lighting in this world, and there is probably a tremendous backstory behind it’s invention involving a small orphan boy who went from rags to riches and now is a multi-millionaire but never forgot his poor child roots, and while these things are Nice, I still feel obligated to dole out a giant middle finger to fluorescent lighting.  Is it any surprise though?  Think about it – fluorescent lighting is used in all of the worst fucking places: school, hospitals, horror movies, make-up stores with 50+ mirrors canvassing the sales floor (fuck you, Sephora).  Is it really my fault I can’t stand fluorescent lighting when I’ve been conditioned my entire life to associate it with misery and low self esteem?  And why are there always dead bugs in the light fixtures?  It’s a literal insect cemetery, and since this is a developed nation, I don't have the patience for that.  Also, all of the flickering gives me a migraine, which I’ve never actually had before in my life but I'd imagine hanging around fluorescent lighting when you easily get migraines is probably a shitty time.  And like, I can totally empathize with migraine sufferers because one time I sucked back a snow cone in less than a minute and a half and I got a headache, so.

4.   When your chip breaks off into the dip.  This is an ode to all of my chips that break off in my dip.  Let me start by saying that chips and dip have a weird significance to me in that if they didn’t exist I would go on a killing spree.  There’s something the mix of salty, ruffled potato chips and smooth, sweet dip that really waters my garden (both non-sexually and sexually; also, what?).  Basically I just take a lot of comfort in knowing that at any given moment, I can retreat into a chips and dip oasis and drown out the harsh realities of life/the outside world – and I literally mean drown them out, because eating chips makes you Inside The Head Deaf to the point where Teresa Giudice’s shrill faux-Italian screeches can no longer penetrate your eardrums as you try to watch the train wreck that is RHONJ whilst snacking.   

lol gurl ware's ur forehead

Because of the importance of chips and dip to my daily functioning as a human being, I experience a swelling of rage whenever something goes awry in the process of eating them, and the most common problem is when my fucking chip decides it wants to break off into my motherfucking dip.  Come on, chips, I spend hours (seconds) selecting the perfect chip candidate, calculating in my head a flawless chip to dip ratio, and when I go to finally execute the plan, you fucking bail?  Everyone knows that the only time it's okay to back out on your team (WHICH IS WHAT WE ARE, CHIP.  YOU, ME, AND THE DIP, A FUCKING TEAM BRO) is when you are our Lord and Savior Beyonce and your team is Destiny's Child.  Guess what?  You're not Beyonce.  You are a mere chip, and there is an entire family size bag full of chips just like you.  I could have picked any of them, but I chose you, and this is how you fucking repay me, you ungrateful sack of shit?

And you know what?  Maybe it's my fault.  Maybe I put too much pressure on you as a chip.  Maybe the dip was simply too much to handle, and you couldn't stand up to the task of scooping out such an enormous glob of creamy goodness (I'm not going to bother rewording that).  If that's the case then I guess I can forgive you - I'll just use another chip to excavate your remains from the dip and move on, and you'll soon be forgotten and the world will keep turning and I'll keep staying on track with giving myself diabetes.  No harm, no foul.  But so help me Beyonce, chip, if I come to find out, in the afterlife or wherever else my spirit might go when my body rots away, that your chip breaking ways were intended maliciously, I will go full Liam Neeson on your salty little ass.

It won't be hard to do because you are located in neatly numbered/labelled aisles in grocery stores across America.

As a closing note on the whole matter, and on this list in general, I feel it necessary (for therapeutic reasons) to mention a particularly heinous chip/dip experience that happened to me not too long ago.  I'm referring to The Great Chip Fake-Out of August 2012, a hour of my life so horrific that reliving it rattles the very core of my being.  Instead of rehashing that nightmarish evening in words, I'll let my tweets during that time speak for themselves.

That's all I got.