The Loneliness of the American Savage

It’s Two O’clock in the afternoon as I lay on an old couch that I bought used from a friend after a bed bug infestation destroyed all the furniture. I’m trying to watch golf and calm down after a weekend of extreme drinking. My endorphin count is negative.

Elsewhere one of my two roommates is having a full blown panic attack because he lost his company car keys and thinks it may lead to his firing. He goes to a bottomless brunch to deal with stress. I see my phone start vibrating. It’s my dad and there is absolutely no chance I am mentally prepared to talk to him. In all likelihood he wants to ask me about the college basketball games over the weekend or even a shot Tiger Woods just hit.

But there is a chance something is wrong at home, a chance I overdrew my bank account over the weekend, things that I am in no way prepared to handle on a Sunday. I twice hit the ignore button and 20 minutes later when I receive a text asking if everything is OK, I can barely muster the energy to just respond ‘yes.’

For those of us that chose to live this life we’ve managed to freeze time in a way. I still look substantially younger than my age, often mistaken for 23 or 24. I have a hairstyle that a college kid might sport, I wear hoodies to work. I’ve maintained an athletic frame. Sure, some fortuitous genetics might be at play there but sometimes it seems I’ve tricked my body into not aging. Perhaps it’s the fact that I get 12 hours of sleep on Sundays when I don’t get out of bed until 3pm. Or that my liver is so busy processing alcohol and fast food that my body has forgotten to start turning me grey. I don’t look GOOD per se, just perpetually like a 20something on the back end of a bender. Nothing a shower and a good night’s sleep can’t fix.

But also frozen in time is a lifestyle. I’m still living paycheck to paycheck in a starter apartment with multiple roommates. I’ve bounced around entry level jobs in the entertainment industry because of a mix of bad luck and personality conflicts. Well and probably poor performance, let’s be real. While more and more people look to real life responsibilities, I keep existing in a kind of vortex in which 2011 never ended.

People are always happy to see me, I think it reminds them of a simpler time; a guy who just wants to have fun, a person who doesn’t stress about the insecurities of growing older. As you can imagine though the romantic relationships are typically brief and fleeting. Women our age aren’t looking for a guy who his friends refer to as ‘a hero.’ They aren’t looking for the life of the party. They want a dependable partner, someone they could see a future with. Some may find me acceptable for the night, especially coming off a break-up. Being in proximity to me will certainly make you feel young again, if only for a short while before you return to reality. I’m a good hang but it could never be serious.

Depression as humor has really taken over on the internet. People love to use a self-deprecating tone to laugh at their inability to find a partner, poke fun at their unwillingness to get out of bed every morning or satirize the fact that they often stay in at night and cry. In psychology this would probably be considered a displacement, I’ll take my sad feelings and use them to make others laugh! Whereas the life I live turns into a classic regression. I try to push out of my mind any feelings of negativity and just focus on getting to the next good thing. I just need to make it to the weekend, this trip I have planned, this holiday, this movie release. The problem of course is, these good things come and pass while I remain empty.

Sure, it is a way to live but there has to be something more to life than ripping it with the boys all weekend and limping through a week until the following Friday, living vicariously through my own past accomplishments doing deep dives through a TimeHop history that once revealed a future of so much promise.

People that I haven’t seen in a while will often give me a wide smile and say things like ‘you haven’t changed a bit’ which I’m sure is intended as a compliment or at least a term of endearment but it also reminds me that my feet have been stuck in mud really since college and all I have to show for it is a few free t shirts I got as wrap gifts.

I rarely write seriously on this blog because it’s much more fun to write about dating and hard living than it is to be honest with oneself. But for those who always assumed I wasn’t self aware, I assure you the smile is often a mask as I’ve been hanging on by a thin thread for quite a while at this point. It’s an interesting position to be in when everyone loves you but also kind of perceives you to be kind of a joke, unfortunately myself and countless others in my position do nothing that would lead one to draw any other conclusion.

Some may see this as a cry for help, but I promise it isn’t. I write so much stuff on here the glamorizes debauchery. Sure, it’s an ACT to a certain extent and most of my more autobiographical writing comes in tv and film where my last three projects have been 1. About a guy at IU. 2. About a guy and his relationship with his conservative father and 3. A chick who wants to run away from life’s challenges and live in a hostel.

That said, it helps to be open and honest on here sometimes as well, it freshens my perspective and helps me clear my thoughts and reset my goals for what trials and tribulations lay in wait. At the moment, I’m not necessarily where I want to be or who I want to be, but at least I know who I am and where I want to go.