Mental Masturbation

It was morning, like any other, in that I was strewn across my floor, sleeping off my hangover. There came a point in these benders where anything other than the fetal position on a wood floor felt like the spinning teacups on speed. I stared across my room at my digital alarm clock. The numbers were always hard to decipher from this angle. It was either 11, 1 or 7, and even though only two of those answers were acceptable, all of them were entirely possible.

It was in this deja vu, of waking up in a panic for the millionth time, that it really hit me. Before the sore back, and shooting pain behind my left eye would sink in, I would think; this is the last time. This time is different.

I planned to drink a liter of water, hit the gym and forget this ever happened. But that always never happened. That was just a sweet reverie I would sing before settling onto the couch, taking a fistful of Motrin and queuing up Netflix. The only place I would go on this day was the corner store, for my daily dose of Gatorade. It had become the only thing I could ever guarantee a weekly occurrence of.

It wasn’t ever different. It had never been before and I slowly began to realize that it was never going to be. It was always the same.

Different was the only idea that excited me anymore because it was still an idea. It was far away. Like a dream nestled in a cloud, different was anything I wanted it to be without the suffering of sacrifice, and the sober bleakness of reality. Everything yet to be experienced was so easy to sum up with my small minded fantasies and fears. Everything was something special before I was bored of it. I thought long and hard about how long something special could really last for a guy like me. The whole reason I would find my special something is because I was out searching for it, unhappy with my boring nothings.

And so it was made simple in that moment.

Do the right thing, feel smug and be bored or douse myself in gasoline, light the town on fire and shame myself for weeks after the dust had settled.