You cant be an anxious man-child
‘you can’t be an anxious man-child,’ someone one typed and then just left there, on some web forum, in 2009. ‘what terrible parenting,’ I thought, ‘just abandoning your sentences there, on some web forum, in 2009.’ you can’t be an anxious man-child, you can’t be like ben lerner in, ‘leaving the atocha station,’ you can’t try to make sense of things and in the process experience a kind of gigantic existential dread that will last you for days, the way squirrels survive the winter. but then what if I am always accumulating ambiguous relationships, to a point where it makes me feel like I could put out spring and fall catalogs of them, what if I constantly interpret the message behind 90% of indie rock music as, ‘if you really loved your cat, you would set it free,’ what if I keep examining situations from multiple angles and arriving at different conclusions, like solving a long-form math equation multiple times and getting a different final number each time, what if I am so numb that it makes my emotions feel like flash cards with words like, ‘sad’ written on them instead of the actual emotions themselves, what if the only functional bodily sensation I have left is anxiety, and I use it on everything, like ketchup? ‘what terrible parenting,’ I thought. ‘using ketchup on everything.’ I don’t want babies, I would just give them names that I think are funny and then grow disinterested in them. you can’t be an anxious man-child, you can’t be the squirrel of your own self-obsession eating from the garbage of your feelings, you can’t be lost and unsure of yourself and thinking things like, ‘I am a long-form math equation whose final number is a different person each time,’ the internet won’t allow it. 90% of indie rock music is terrible parenting, I would feel a lot calmer if I owned flash cards with things like, ‘ben lerner’ written on them, my cat’s name not being funny enough isn’t a logical reason to cry, but I don’t care, I want to try crying anyway, and if you really loved your existential dread, you would set it free.