SR XLVIII: Our Jimmies Are Eternal

I guess I should start where I left off (December). If I remember correctly, one of my final posts was about quitting the fan-fiction I was writing at the time. And presently, it is true; I have stopped working on it and have no intentions of completing it. But I didn’t stop writing in December. No, almost right after I left PA I decided to continue writing it. The siren call wasn’t even that strong, and it didn’t need to be, because it became a place where I could vent all my sadness, all my anger, and any other emotions. And boy, was there a lot of sadness; it was pathetic, really. I won’t write out the plot here, but if requested, I could summarize it in the brony thread if anyone’s interested. Anyway, writing became the only thing I really cared about. Which is silly, because at most sittings I was lucky to get down 200 words. And yet, every day at school, at home, or with the withering amount of friends I had, my mind was immersed in the story and to call me obsessed would be to call Julius Caesar dead. Then one day I realized: this entire thing is f**king stupid (excuse the angst, I’m going for pure teenage “rage” (expect more)). All this work I put into it, all the time I threw away pondering it, and for what? Just some dumb story about ponies being all emotional. Who would want to read that garbage anyway? My writing skills had gone further down than the mantle, and honestly, I just felt like Sisyphus, working all for nothing. That’s what it was; nothing. It was nothing, when I tried to create something, but I was wasting all of my time on nothing, and this nothing was eating at my brain. To be honest, I would still work on it form time to time on and off until one day I decided to shelf it for good sometime in mid-April (the day I “came back” to PA) and haven’t looked back since.

           While vaguely on the topic of PA, I guess I can’t say I necessarily quit. You see, anonymous reader, I was in the Facebook group and was quite active in the group chat for the next couple of months. Now, if you remember correctly, I quit the nirvana dubbed “ProgArchives” because it ate all of my time. This constant activity on Facebook was essentially not different in the slightest except for the fact that I don’t think I ever typed a full sentence, honestly, I think it might have been one of the factors of hindering my writing prowess. Well, after a couple months of aimlessly chatting, much like I did on PA, I got bored again, so I decided to take advantage of a minute change in my life. You see, one of my sophomore friends/acquaintances who is also in my music theory class had recently become a brony (he made electronic music, so it was only a matter of time). Wanting any excuse to stay on Facebook, I made a Facebook group dedicated to a small circle of the pony-lovers with an “add who you like policy”, and- actually, no that will be the end of that story. Anyway, after about a month of the creation of the group (Mid-late March) I quit Facebook and have yet to un-quit.

           A long time ago, I may have mentioned a teacher who, along with the class, though I was a serial killer. She was actually a really good teacher, arguably one of the best I’ve had, and we had a lot in common, and after first semester she left. Maternity leave. Enter this forty year-old man acting half his age to seem “cool” around the students. No doubt a mid-life crisis, and it might be worth mentioning that he had kids who were only a few years younger than the class he was teaching. You see, this man is everything I hate about people. He always “knows a guy” and can talk forever about economics and politics, probably because money’s all that matters to him (he’s now living in Hawaii with his family, I sh*t you not). But this alone I could deal with, after all, I don’t really care what the man is like, as long as I’m learning something. I can say without hesitation that he was the worst teacher that I have had in my life (so far). I consider myself, more or less, a rational person, and would never think that a teacher would be “out to get me”, but, mother of f**k, this man hated me. It wasn’t just me who thought this, when the good teacher returned, the whole class would testify that the man looked at me like a Ferrari driver looks at a smashed bug on his windshield. For starters, he was Mr. Quantity over Quality, I remember taking notes the very first day he taught our class, he walks over to my desk and says “write it all down” (referring to the notes he had written on the board). You see, the thing was I DID write down everything he said, just not ver batim, because that’s kind of the point of taking notes, and to add to my grief, I had small handwriting. I tell him that I had in fact written the specified notes and he walks away in a “sure, I’ll believe that” way. Plus the guy thought I was a stoner, which was funny, because he would always play his sh*tty Bob Marley and Dave Matthews Band radios on Pandora, which made me want to jump out of the window I always sat next to. I wouldn’t say the hate was unwarranted, though. I was known for being a smartass in class, as well as constantly having to correct him on his facts. Yes, I did actually have to correct him, and on a regular basis too. I remember vividly one day, we were reviewing questions on a test and the correct answer stated that religion did not really have to do much with a certain event. I then told him that religion didn’t really have much of an effect on anything, and he looks at me and yells “Cameron, you could write a MILLION PAGES on how religion doesn’t effect anything! I’m tired of your useless comments which do nothing for the discussion.” “How about a million and one pages?” I reply (I said this to humor his quantity over quality policy). “Yeah!” He was pissed, and later that day he even threatened to send me to the dean. Eventually, the good teacher came back, but only for the last week. There were some other antics in this man’s class, but he sucks and I’ve already talked about him too much.

           One other thing that consumed a considerable amount of my time was track. Every school day, from late February to the end of April, I would show up at track practice. I’m by no means an athletic person, but it wasn’t really my choice to join track. I decided that my event would be long jump, and it seemed simple enough. After about a month of practicing and laughing at the runners because they actually had to do work, the first meet came. About a week or so before the first meet, I remember talking aside to one other long jumper “Man, no matter how much long jump practice sucks, I still come here every day because at least I’m not a runner.” Well, at the first meet, I scratched twice and scored a 13’ 6” when I didn’t. In non-athletic terms, that’s god-awful. Come practice the next day, and as the long jumpers are ambulating to the sand to sit around and watch the one black kid on the team jump a dozen times before going home, I and a sophomore were pulled aside. Due to our wretched performances at the first meet, we were stripped of our long jumping identities. Instead, we would be sprinters. For the 400 meter dash (the longest sprint). I have to admit, the practices were not horrible, but they sure were a wakeup call from standing around and getting sand in my shoes. Remember that sophomore, well, he was a tad chubby, and he did make me look not so mediocre, always coming in a couple seconds after I. We actually became quite good friends and always smile at when we see each other because of the miniscule inside-jokes that we share. At my final meet (towards the setting of April), my final time was 1:01, which I guess is pretty good for someone as un-athletic as me.

 When track ended, I was happy that I was now free afterschool to do whatever I want, but also sad for the precisely same reason. I didn’t want to slip into the void of introspection and self-hate, so I needed something to do before my mind would defeat me. Then I remembered: My senior brony friend plays this card game, Magic: The Gathering. I figured that I could learn the game and maybe hang out with him some more. I texted him this, and he was more than happy to teach me. By the next day, he helped me make a deck (from his massive collection of cards), and I began to understand the basic rules. Through him and the game, I got to know some more good seniors, and for the first time in years, I had made new friends. Well, one fateful Saturday, I was hanging out with one of my friends (same age as me), and we were just walking aimlessly around town after buying the new Meshuggah album at Best Buy. I had my deck in my sweatshirt pocket and was thinking about going to Target to get some more cards or something. On the way, we had to pass a busy intersection, and the crosswalk time was waning, so using my newfound track skills, I sprint across the street. I make it about halfway across the street when I notice cards flying out of my pocket like the intersection had just won the Vegas jackpot or something. No time to pick them up, the lights already changed. I lost about half my deck that day.

 Hesitantly, I tell my friend this once the school-week begins, and veiling his dissatisfaction, he tells me that there is a card store where we can buy more, so I agree to go there on Friday with him and a few other friends. I suppose it is worth mentioning that at the moment, my friend and I had kept in contact with each other quite often through texting. Well, during one of these conversations, we exchange out personality types. He and INTJ, and I an INTP. When I tell him mine, he tells me that one of his friends who will be coming to the card shop with (freshman in college, so I’ve never met him before) is also and INTP, and that INTPs seem to blend well with him. Keep this in mind. So, Friday comes faster than a masturbator with Parkinson’s, and me, the other INTP, and his brother (a sophomore in high school) meet at my friend’s house. The only reason I am including this segment is because he has a Luna plushie in his room and he let me hold it (:3). Anyway, I’d talked to INTP’s brother a couple times before, and he’s pretty cool, but he also kept saying that Big Mac was best pony. No troll. His brother jokingly said that Fancy Pants was better than Big Mac and, he got pissed. I was just standing in the middle of them and giggling like an idiot. My friend comes back, and we are ready to head off to waste money on playing cards. On the forty-minute drive, we mostly discuss ponies, and I spent a little bit of time teasing the sophomore about Big Mac. We finally arrive at some strip mall right out of the 90s, complete with half the employees of our store smoking right outside of it. Inside the store, well, let’s just say that I have now seen the faces of Internet dwellers as they really are. After a couple hours of helping me build a Black-Blue Zombies deck and failing on countless booster packs (INTP spent >$150), we decided to go to an actual mall to get some dinner.

 On the five-minute drive, I tell them of my aspirations that FiM should end on a big screen movie. They didn’t really like the idea. So, the four of us get there, and my friend is already in line, and I realize I spent all my money on cards. sh*t. My friend says it’s alright and that I can have his fries, he also gets me a drink, and while he seems sincere, I still feel horrible. After a few minutes of eating, a couple more of his friends join us, and it seems one of them is very much into anime. After eating, we walk around for about an hour because my friend needs to get some sh*t at Bass Pro or something. Along the way, we have some unmemorable, but joyful conversation. Those guys were all great. On the ride back to his house, (to try out the new cards and sh*t), I notice my friend and INTP arguing a lot. Granted, they were on the ride there, in the card shop, and in the mall. Anyway, my friend keeps saying how INTPs are made “like this” so by nature they are irrational/stubborn etc. I was just sitting in the back with INTP’s brother and trying not to exist.

 When we get to his house, it’s like 8:30, but it’s Friday, so who cares. We play our decks a while with everyone who was at the mall, but I notice that my friend seems rather peevish. At one point, he starts yelling at INTP because INTP was making dumb choices when playing, and was being stubborn about it (this is how most of their arguments began).

 An hour or so later, I have my mom pick me up, and I go to bed once I arrive home. What I have neglected to say in this post is that the next day, I would be attending a brony meet-up with those I was just with.

 When I woke up on Saturday, I felt a bit sick, but there was no way I was going to let myself miss this. Come 4:30 and I get into my friend’s car with INTP and his brother already in. I’m told that we will be picking up one more person (the guy who likes anime). My hips felt very sh*tty that day, probably from lots of sitting around, but I was also a tad congested, and oh god, my temperature. Well, I have no choice but to sit in the middle since I am the smallest. INTP is listening to music, so the four of us call him a furry a few times, and he hears us laughing. On the way, I had still not seen any new episodes since December, so my friend let me watch the finale on his iPod. It was good. When we arrive, we- actually no, I’ll stop there. The only things I’ll say about that meet-up is that I brought my beret because I thought my hair was messy, and that I told the anime guy that I had watched NGE. He started yelling that I was “scarred” and assured me that “it will never be that confusing again”. Imagine his surprise when I reveal to him I had only seen the first two episodes.

 I guess it would also be worth mentioning that this entire time, I had been depressed to some degree (but all Shredders are). Well, my parents dragged me to therapy about a month ago, and it’s not so bad, but kind of annoying. Most of the time, I just feel a massive void, which is horrible, so I protect myself with an ocean of apathy. While drowning in this ocean of apathy, I wasn’t motivated to do anything, making me fall behind in school (I think I had about eight or ten missing assignments in Biology (but I got As on all the tests)). This everlasting trend of falling behind forced me not to care even more, so that even the things that were important would not have me bat an eye. But back to therapy, my therapist is an OK guy who thinks that I’m some kind of genius. He tells me that my thoughts almost never come into the minds of those my age, if at all. He says that he is a lot like me. He also says that my ideas parallel those of existentialism, but more on that later. Before I regularly went to him, I took an MMPI; a 478 true-or-false test to determine if I had any mental abnormalities. The results said nothing I didn’t already know: high results in depression, obsessiveness, suppression (suppression =/= repression. Repression is bottling feelings, suppression is keeping feelings inside so long you forget you even have them), and low self-esteem.

 Now, for the past couple of weeks, I finally feel a freedom from school, but I just hope that it is not the “freedom” I had when track ended. I hung out with one of my friends a few weeks ago and made bleached shirts  sorry about the sh*tty pictures), which was nice, I think that I may do more of that. My senior friends did very much like them and even said that I should make more and sell them. Though, I declined because I felt that the process was too easy and I would be cheating people out of their money. Taking a cue from my therapist, I decided to look up existentialism, and I learned that my views are nearly identical with it. This prompted me to buy a book by Jean-Paul Satre, along with the Game of Thrones series, because why not.

 (Somewhat off-topic and seemingly unnecessary) I remember, for the past month or so, I was always looking at myself in the mirror. I don’t really think I am a vain person or narcissist, but I kept catching myself doing it. Then I finally realized: I’m doing this because I have no one around to talk to me. I became my own presence, my only friend. I can’t tell whether or not I like this, but I’m sure it’s bound to get interesting.

 What saddens me at the moment is that the seniors are now graduated and will soon be on their separate ways to colleges. But what saddens me the most is that I took such a long time to make a move and be friends with them. I think it may have been better if I had never met them; then I wouldn’t have to be saddened by their departure. Though, there is a meet-up on Saturday, but I am not sure whether or not I’ll go. I no doubt enjoy their presence, but some many bronies disgust me.

 While on that topic, I guess I’ll start my rant. I assume that you can see ponies have more or less been a common theme in my life for the past few months. And you know what? I f**king hate it. It’s just a show; it’s never done anything for me, why should I like it? In fact, if this pathetic excuse for a fanbase never existed, I’d be ten times happier, hell, I probably wouldn’t have to go to a f**king therapist! f**k this escapism, f**k bronies shoving ponies down others’ throats, and f**k anyone wasting their time on the dribble. Yes, this includes myself, but the magic is gone (see what I did thar). Is it entirely possible that ponies only represent me depressed feelings/life and that by hating ponies, I am extinguishing my depressed feelings? Absolutely. But who gives a f**k?

TL;DR I got 99 problems but a birch ain’t one