10 Thoughts I Have About Graduating From College

1. Thanks to the economy, even with a college degree I feel about as useless as Rosie O’Donnell’s personal trainer.

2. Without a job, I’m as broken as Kevin Ware’s leg.

3. I’ve learned at college parties that I don’t get exponentially sexier when people consume more alcohol. Thus, my chances of saving the human race by reproducing in a post-apocalyptic setting are nonexistent.

4. Future employers are monitoring my social media presence like the eyes of the Mona Lisa.

5. The delivery man from Papa John’s has learned my name and my consistent, destructive eating habits in the span of a semester.

6. There are more calories in my beer and sandwich than there are dollars in my bank account.

7. Miley Cyrus’ foam finger has had more action in one stage performance than I’ve had in my entire college career. Thus, I couldn’t get laid by a bed and pillow combination.

8. I’ve become an expert in making decent Netflix selections, awkward run-ins with an ex-girlfriend, and being painfully average. All skills that are pertinent to scarce jobs available in the real world.

9. I have yet to overcome my constant blushing problem even after countless presentations. My boss will love it when my face becomes redder than his dog’s erection during a meeting.

10. Hire me.

Why Do We Hurt?

Why do people hurt other people? In this case, I’m not talking about physical harm towards others; I’m referring to the hurt that can be engraved deep into your psychology. A wound dished by a swinging fist or the cut of a knife will bruise, scab, and maybe turn into a permanent scar. Maybe it won’t scar at all, instead becoming a ghost that used to populate your arm until the proteins and blood platelets in your body healed it. Emotional hurt is the most dangerous ghost there is because it lives inside of your mind to haunt you until your dying day. Why do people bestow these demons upon others to populate their psyche?

It’s certainly a hard question to answer because I’m assuming there isn’t one person in this world who wants to be hurt. Intentionally or unintentionally, there is no good reason to install negative energy into another living being just to make them feel uncomfortable. It’s a sadistic act that has personally affected me, my friends, my family, and basically anyone that ever existed. If there’s anything that I absolutely cherish, it’s the minutes I’ve spent being physically alive and the minutes I have left being alive. A perfect life for me is living in peace with myself and those that I love, however both parties are capable of becoming monsters and hurting themselves/others at the drop of a hat, therefore tarnishing the perfect life that I’ve proposed. Even the simplest acts can cause eternal pain to oneself or another, and I, much like many of you, have experienced this first hand.

The worst is knowing that the person who hurt you is carrying on with their lives with a smile as if nothing happened. It’s quite a wicked smile that fails to subside. I’m ashamed to admit that I’m guilty of this act, for I have hurt someone before, just as others have hurt me. The only answer I can provide why I hurt these people, people that I love, is because I was empowered by own misery to cripple another person’s happiness – usually the one who had hurt me. It’s a classic revenge story that should’ve never taken place but did because I thought that I could be happy again. I can’t speak for others on the matter; I couldn’t tell you why others have hurt me or why they’ve hurt others. Revenge? Jealousy? For laughs? Inherently evil?

Whenever I’m hurt, people tell me to man up or move on. The first assumes that the male population should be impervious to emotional hurt; I call it poor advice. I’m not afraid to admit that I spent most of October, November, and December of 2013 shedding tears because the emotional pain had become overwhelming. I had never experienced depression in my life until those months crept in. I’m still not sure if the perpetrator is aware of the emotional pain that they caused me. This is where the “move on” statement comes into play. In my honest opinion, it’s even poorer advice than “man up”. Numerous people have told me to move on and forget about this person, but that’s really hard to do because I loved that person. If love used to be there, wouldn’t it be safe to assume that it can come back once the hurt is extinguished? I’ve learned that love makes it hurt even more.

I don’t know if there’s a universal answer for why people hurt others, but I think it’s essential to learn that the minutes we have left on this Earth are quite precious. No one, not even your worst enemy, deserves to live these minutes emotionally tormented by another person. No one wants to have to rely on medication and weekly therapy sessions just to exorcise the demons that reside in a person’s psychology. My psychology has certainly tortured me recently, but I forgive those who have hurt me and I hope that those I’ve hurt have forgiven me.

I don’t want to breed and spread this negative energy to anyone. I’m interested in getting as close as possible to that perfect life that I described earlier. A perfect life is typically defined as being flawless, but I argue that a perfect life comes with a set of flaws that you get to experience and improve upon. Progress is perfect for me, and I sincerely hope we can progress as a society to make peace with ourselves as well as others. Learning to love one another rather than hurt one another is our ticket to a flawed, perfect reality.

Counting

They counted down the days until my inevitable birth.

They counted the amount of time between each contraction.

They counted the exact year, month, day, hour, minute, and second of my birth.

They counted down the days until my first word, step, and birthday.

They counted the number of I love you’s.

They counted down the days until my first day of school.

They counted down the days until I was no longer a child, but a grown man.

They counted on me finding the love of my life.

They counted the number of children she birthed.

They counted on me keeping count, because my kin will not live forever, just like I won’t.

I counted the number of blessings that have been dealt to me.

I will keep count of the memories to cherish.

No one can count down the days until my inevitable death, but each passing day I count a new loving memory.

I Can’t See My Face

Looking into the mirror, I’m able to note every physical characteristic of my being. I know the color of my eyes, I know the shape of every scar and blemish, and I know exactly what body my innards are controlling to walk this Earth. I live in a world where it’s possible to know who I am just by looking through a series of photographs, films, and mirrors. I’m not afraid of who I am because I know exactly what people are looking at when they look at me.

I’m beginning to think of a world where physical reflection, photographs, and film footage didn’t exist.

If this were the case, I can look down and see nearly everything from my shoulders down to my feet. Yet, I’d live my entire life without ever knowing my facial characteristics. I can pick hairs off from the top of my head to get an idea about other characteristics.  I could also trace the outline of the bones that provide structure, but I’ll never see the face that hosts the eyes responsible for visualizing the world for me. Imagine living your entire life being able to see everything but your own face. Everyone else can see your face, but you’re left in the dark for the rest of your existence. Sometimes what you don’t see is scarier.

You could always ask somebody to draw your face so that you could get an idea. However, you’re going to get a wide range of quality from the many people you ask. Some will only be able to draw a stick figure with a circular head, and simple dashes to represent the eyes, nose, ears, and mouth. Some will be able to draw a near photo-realistic portrait, but it’s open to interpretation. They could have drawn everything exactly as they have seen, or they’ve made a few adjustments, purposely deceiving you. Would you trust somebody else to tell you who you really are? No, only you know who you really are.

The First Kiss Is Always the Hardest

The practice of locking lips with another human being (pets and infants don’t count) is as old as the primates and other organisms before us.  For some reason, the inch-thick coating of slobber surrounding the orifice has been deemed romantic by the masses as many of them yearn for the opportunity of a first kiss.  The first kiss of mine that wasn’t from my mother, or her parents, occurred when I was a young buck just at the turn of the millennium.

Rarely am I autobiographical on my blog because my life is as average as you can possibly conjure up in your skulls.  Of course, fairly interesting events have occurred throughout my life, however, I frequently enjoy highlighting the embarrassing moments that shape my character.  This story is no different as prepubescent boys barely acknowledge the thing that’s swinging in between their legs, so what level of game could they possibly have?

The most beautiful girl I had ever known graced my presence when her and her family moved to my area all the way from Canada.  I met her in the late 1990s and she was the first girl I met in the neighborhood that would actually talk to me.  I couldn’t understand why my face was contorting itself every single time she made an appearance in my visual field.  She was a distal stimulus worth processing over and over again.  We grew fond of each other over the years, becoming the greatest of friends.  My parents probably thought I was gay because I was around eight years-old and I spent the majority of my time with a female.  Anyways, we grew up in that neighborhood together and accelerated through grade school each year as best friends.  I wrote her various letters throughout the year in obnoxiously large 4th grade handwriting so that she wouldn’t forget I existed.  How cute, one of those girl-next-door type of deals.

Fifth grade is the year of the damned for many students throughout the United States because it’s time to learn about the reproductive systems of the human body.  Obviously, I acknowledged that she was a girl, but many boys grew frightened on that memorable day when the teacher educated them on the contraption that is the female reproductive system.  Those diagrams remind me of the first time I saw the chest-burster scene in Ridley Scott’s film, Alien.

Ron Jeremy should’ve been my sex education instructor.

I finally discovered at the age of 11 what my schlong was manufactured for and I grew even more fond of her (no pun intended).  I knew I had a thing for her, but what 12 year-old knows how to woo a girl at such a young age with no experience whatsoever?  I was left with no choice but to awkwardly park myself next to her at the pool one day.  Like a dumbass gazing into the rays of the sun when mother told you not to, I stared intently into this girl’s eyes for a good five minutes before swooping in for a smooch.  Obviously, there was no tonsil hockey because kids only use their tongues to lick the Cheetos dust off their fingers at that age.  Nothing became of our relationship because, naturally, her and her family decided to move to another state.

I was distraught that she had left my life for good.  I worried for years on end that there would never be another girl where I’d get to share another one of those magical moments with.  It wasn’t until high school that I took a girl to the movies and employed the same serial killer-like technique of staring to get another kiss.

“This is how it’s going to work: I’m going to kiss the shit out of you now, and you’re going to like it.”

Certainly, there are many first kisses that you’ll have throughout life.  In my case, I can only count that number on one hand, although it does take up all five fingers.  The first two were in elementary and high school, then the final three have occurred in college thus far.  I have landed first kisses with women at the pool, in a movie theater, in a girl’s dorm room, in a girl’s basement, and at a crowded bar.  The first kiss, in my opinion, is the hardest kiss to accomplish because it’s damn near impossible, especially for an oblivious young fellow like me, to know when it’s the right time and to know if the girl wants it to happen.  I’m so oblivious that if a girl gave me a strip tease, I would assume she’s doing it just to be friendly.

The way I’ve conquered the prospect of whether to make a move or not is to just be myself and go in for the kiss if I feel it’s right.  The worst that could happen is that she yells “rape”, phones the police, and wrestles you to the ground so they can arrest you, although that scenario is highly unlikely.  The most common thing that could happen is an immature “Ew” or the much more mature “I’m sorry, but I’m just not that into you.”  Take it like a man and move on with your life, because a first kiss is not only supposed to be an extraordinary experience for you; it’s meant to be special between you AND the person you are kissing.

It’s truly a thing of beauty and something you can reflect on many years down the road.

Feeling Faint

Recently I’ve been feeling a little woozy.  My diet has suffered and my stomach continues to gurgle.  I need to eat something.

I should just pull out my small intestine and gnaw on it ’til it rips. It’s like a snake made out of mucous and tissue that’s decorated with braided veins.  These characteristics let the serpent slither about in my body. The snake stays in touch with my stomach by biting down with its fangs so it never loses that connection needed at meal time for proper digestion. It’s quite ropy and slippery, but I can get a good grip on it with my canines if I bite down hard enough.  Allow me to thank evolution for my opposable thumbs, as they’ll surely come in handy in assisting me to tame the serpent.  My canines are sharp enough to the point that I can sever the veins that imprison my half-digested meals. I can ingest the same carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins over and over; hopefully it will satisfy my hunger before I faint and fall on something sharp. I wouldn’t want that sharp object to spill meals all over the carpet and let them go to waste.

I could’ve plunged my arm deep into my esophagus to catch the food before it bathes in gastric acid. This reason, in particular, is why I will choose my small intestine over my stomach. If I pushed my face into a pool of stomach acid like it was a pie-eating contest, the hydrochloric content would burn my skin and ultimately dissolve my entire face. There’s not much I can do if my body melts into some kind of gelatin. You know when people express their pleasure with chocolate by saying, “It melts in my mouth!” Deadly pH levels can make that dream a reality.

Who’s hungry?

Smile

Whenever somebody flashes a smile your direction, what do you make of it? Unlike a mirror, one that is incapable of deception, a smile boasts the unique ability of possessing several different meanings. The mirror will tell you as it is while a smile works to truly mess with your mind. We’ve been taught to associate a smile with positivity, but does this positivity benefit the giver and the receiver, or does it mean happiness for one and hurt for the other?

Her face twists up into a smile, emitting a glow of beauty across the room. He’s proud of himself because he’s made the love of his life happy. He responds with a look on his face to match hers, reminding her that they’ll always have each other. The complexity of their love exists within the simplicity of a smile.

The little boy’s face drips with blood, trickling down towards his mouth where a smile used to be. It is no longer existent. The violence and hatred of his peers have taken the smile he once had for good, and they’ve used it for the purpose of evil. Their smile emits a darkness the little boy is uncomfortable with, reminding him of the darkness he bathes in within the boundaries of his own mind. Even inside him, his smile can’t penetrate the ridicule and hurt they’ve inflicted on his innocent soul. Never has a smile destroyed him like this.

She walks through life with a smile engraved on her tortured soul. Everybody’s jealous of the smile that she’s seemingly proud to wear upon her face, but what’s the real story behind this smile? We don’t know if it’s a smile that hides a violent history, or if it’s a genuine smile that encourages progression, that everything is going to be okay. Her smile is a visible scar from the damage done on the inside.

There’s a vast amount of interpretations that you can make about a smile. You just never know what the other person is thinking and you won’t know what their smile indicates. As far is I know, it’s just a crack in your soul.

5 Reasons Why I Was A Total Loser In High School

1. Waiting for the bus with a stupid smile engraved in my face, I managed to get one of those ill-timed erections that likes to happen when you’re surrounded by other women.  While my shorts were getting a mouth full, I wasn’t aware of the old, classic guy trick to hide my boner in the waistband of my trousers.  The other people (mostly women) quickly released a hound of cackles as they took note of the third arm suddenly growing out of my body.

2. The laws of puberty proved to be embarrassing in high school, especially for me.  During my freshman year of high school, my twin sister was about 2 inches taller than I was, and stronger.  In fact, she was capable of straight up kicking my ass.  Nothing is worse than being defenseless towards some blonde chick who has many friends to chime in on the torture with a symphony of laughter and an over-usage of the word “pussy”.

3. My hair used to be much longer, practically down to my shoulders.  It was a straight, strawberry blonde cut until you got down past my ears where it decided to curl and squiggle uncontrollably down to my shoulders.  I was convinced it was a ladies magnet because, at the time, many guys had longer hair to complement their “skater” lifestyle.  I wasn’t a skater, but I thought my hair looked good until a friend of mine took a picture of me from the side on his cellphone.  I realized at this moment that this catastrophe was a biological misfortune and the furthest thing from a ladies magnet.  Picture the thought of Honey Boo-Boo becoming an older woman and letting her pubic region grow without ever shaving.  If you chopped all of that off and pasted it on my head, I would look similar to how I looked freshman year of high school.

4. While I just recently complained about my unfortunate height in comparison to my twin sister, my eventual 6’2″ frame also proved to contribute to my loser persona.  I had landed my first real girlfriend by the power of being completely desperate.  She clocked in at about 5’2″, well short of my height.  This proved to be difficult by the time prom came around because I practically had to crack my vertebrae in six places just to lean over and kiss her and dance with her.  By the end of the night, I was on my knees more than a prisoner who had to suck dick to get an ounce of cocaine when he ran out of loose change.

5. To control my aforementioned embarrassments from further public exposure, my weekends consisted of playing video games, discovering masturbation, devouring pizza rolls and developing my imagination, sometimes all at the same time since weekends tended to go by really fast.  I never ventured beyond my house unless there was a new flick in the movie theaters.  It was really during these lonely weekends that I began to discover who I really was and who I was bound to become.

In reality, each of these 5 embarrassments have helped to evolve my character to where it is today.  I’m happy with myself today, so I suppose I can thank high school and my many misfortunes for where I am today.

Send Up A Prayer

I’m not one to write blog posts like these, ya know, telling people what to do.  However, today’s post is going to be a little different.  What I’d like to communicate to all of you today is that it’s time to think of somebody that isn’t you.

I used to be an atheist because I thought it was rebellious in high school and then I actually had passion for my atheism.  Ever since sophomore year of college where I was struggling at my new college, I’ve resurrected my faith in God.  Actually, “resurrected” is not the correct word because I never had faith in the first place.  I believed in what my parents taught me was right.  Sophomore year of college, I had become ACQUAINTED with the power of faith and prayer.  It was great, you know, just talking to God about whatever and having faith that I would do well on an exam or something important to my life at the moment.

I learned that I was not utilizing these principles correctly.  What’s wrong with having faith that you’ll succeed or praying that you’ll succeed, you ask?  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  I am trying to make the best of what I was blessed with in order to become a better man every single day.  I discovered that I was praying for myself and only myself, as well as just having faith in myself.  Yes, there is nothing wrong with having faith in yourself or praying for yourself, but I learned that faith and prayer work in other ways as well.

I began having faith in others and praying for others.  Currently, I’m in the position now where I don’t pray much for myself anymore; I pray for a family member, a friend, a pet, someone that I may not even know, or all of the above.  I know some out there may not agree to the power of prayer or faith, but this doesn’t mean that you can’t have thoughts about others.  Have thoughts and hope that someone else out there in the world is having a great day or persevering through their daily struggles.

Prayer, faith, thoughts, and hope for others.  It’s not too much to ask, and I guarantee if you’re looking for ways to better yourself, reaching out to others with kindness is a great start.  Let ’em know you’ve been praying for them or thinking about them.  Knowing that you’re on someone else’s mind is a feeling unlike any other.

The Reason Why I Started Blogging

This seems more like a post you’d see at the beginning of one’s blogging career, but here I go being a rascal and not following logic.  I started thinking about this blog today not only because I feel like I’ve been slackin’ on it, but also because I really wanted to discover the real reason why I started blogging in the first place.  Hopefully, at some point, you’ll think about the reasons why you started blogging and make connections with other bloggers/writers.

I always had a passion for writing ever since a group of neighborhood kids from my teen years and I started making our own home movies.  Film was my first passion, but then I was acquainted with writing when my friends and I were stumped on ideas for our next film project.  I told them I would handle it and they wouldn’t have to worry about it.  I then told them I would come back the next day with a full story idea written out.  When I sat at home alone for hours on end into the night, I, too, was just as stumped as the collective.  It wasn’t until I read numerous gruesome news articles on Yahoo! that ideas began to brew in my head.  I penned some simplistic story about a serial killer that filmed each kill of his.  The group liked the idea, but I felt the story itself was underwhelming and the movie we filmed based on this idea was complete crap.  But hey, you can’t expect 15 year-olds to make Oscar material.

It was senior year of high school and I needed one more class to fill out my schedule.  Every cool class was taken up and a class called ‘Mass Media’, a class where you got to make movies basically, was removed from the list of available classes.  Creative Writing I was the only other option I had.  I absolutely dreaded this because, but when I got to the class it quickly became one of my favorites in the history of my education.  It was the first and only class where I had creative freedom to do whatever I wanted, even if the subject material of my writing was inappropriate at times for high-schoolers to read.  There was one assignment where we had to start a blog and post once a day on anything we wanted for one week.  We also had to read and comment on other classmates’ posts.  The first post I had written was “The 7 Worst Types of Girlfriends.”  The post was a huge success, and I could tell because like our own WordPress blogs you could see how many times the post was viewed and how many comments there were.  I remember vividly that this first post garnered 142 views and generated 32 comments.  Every other post had on average 20 some views and relatively few comments.  Each post I had written afterwards for that week I received the same praise for my written work, even from this one girl in class who I thought was drop dead gorgeous and never noticed me in class until this week.  I told everyone I was going to start a blog if I was going to receive such positive reviews, but the project never came to fruition.

It wasn’t until my freshman year of college where I got dead serious about starting a blog.  The girlfriend I had my freshman year had an active blog on Blogger.  I told her that I was a writer myself, but I literally had nothing to give her, so it basically came off as bullshit and I couldn’t show her my talent.  Still, even with motivation to show my then girlfriend that I was a good writer, I didn’t take advantage.

As I’ve said before, I had a blog before “My Seven Devils” on WordPress called “A Living Oddity.”  The latter of the two was my first real commitment to writing during my sophomore year of college after I had transferred universities.  I realized after the first semester at my new school that I made the biggest mistake of my life and I wanted to go back to my old university.  I had no friends besides my two roommates at the time.  I relied on them to get me through the repetitive, everyday routine that is established during your school years.  When they weren’t around because they were attending classes or other matters, I was left to myself on a frequent basis.  The old idea of creating a blog then came to mind.  I wanted to write because I pretty much had no one else to share my writing with.  I thought it was interesting how I didn’t start a blog despite the positive reception I had in the past with my writing, only to start one when I literally felt like I had nobody.  It was through blogging, first on “A Living Oddity” that I felt I had a connection with others, even if it was only through the Internet to read and comment on other blogs.

Writing on a blog at first was a big risk to me because I thought people would be offended by the subject material, or they would just straight up dislike it and think I was a terrible writer.  I’m still not entirely sure how people feel about my writing, but I’m just happy that I started a blog anyway.  It’s a great feeling to have even if one person likes or comments on your post.  It shows that you’ve engaged them through your own words, and it’s quite rewarding.