Feeling Sorry For Yourself And Other People Is Stupid (How I Spent My Saturday Night: 5/25/13)

I soldered my lips together and cut my hands off with a rusty machete that had black electrical tape wrapped around the handle. Then I picked up some drugs, spat a used needle out the window on my drive home, and listened to it skip off the pavement. It was Memorial Day weekend, and I made it home without getting arrested; phantom hands and fingers gripped the steering wheel.

A replay of the Champions League Final was on my aunt's flat screen tv, and my ass sank into the couch.

At the same time, Ryan, someone who was on the same swim team as me in high school, and now hangs out with/does drugs/gets pissed at me from time to time for various reason (some known, some not), is cooking a steak for himself and a girl that works at Logan's Steak House with Shannon, this girl I know. He left the army (honorably), and moved back into his parents' house, which is a couple miles down the road from my aunt's.

We were over his house last night with Carrie and Shannon because his parents were out of town. He pounded two rib eyes with a meat mallet, put them in a Pyrex dish, marinated them, covered the dish in plastic wrap, and put it in fridge, while Shannon argued on the phone with her off and on girlfriend. Shannon got off the phone, and we went into his living room and Carrie put on a movie.

Shannon and Carrie were telling Ryan how excited they were for his date and dug for the details of what he had planned, and Ryan explained. Shannon and Carrie thought it was cute, a homecooked dinner for two, before the three of them went over the ways in which Ryan could fuck it up and how to avoid it. I nodded off on the couch. Carrie woke me up when it was time to leave. Ryan gave Carrie and Shannon a fist bump and a hug; I got a wave and a cold look—I figured he got pissed because I was nodding off, which made it seem like I didn't care.

Sitting on the couch, I thought about the word, “cute,” and why I don’t care about other people’s happiness.

Sitting on the couch, I wondered why I cared about people who live hundreds of miles away from me that I've never met in person.

And those people are scratching my limbic system with fingernails made out dull razorblades, then kissing the wound to make me feel better.

Cracked lips puckered up, I scraped together an answer that I really can’t explain.

I turned the tv off by hitting the power button on the remote with my big toe.

Spacing out to the electric lullabies of household appliances.

Not hanging out with anyone.

Thinking about a specific individual that I've never met in person who genuinely cares about me.

Smiling the entire time, as I bled out.