Posts tagged angsty

gyzym:

This is a pastiche of Daphne Gottlieb’s incomparably stunning fifteen ways to stay alive, done to highlight all the things I feel about Britta Perry on Community that I can never figure out how to express. I strongly suggest you read that piece whether or not you intend to read this — it is so, so, so worth it. 

1. Offer them the little fuck-ups of your day — the spilled coffee, the bad jokes. If you have to, make some up. Do not offer them the missteps that got you here. Do not let them see the place underneath your breastbone where something blackened and afraid beats steadily despite itself. Let them have the small mistakes; you are not using them anyway. 

2. Wear your worsts between your clothes and your body. 

3. Pretend you don’t know what you’re talking about.

4. Pretend you never did. 

5. Offer your body to the jackass; offer the jackass to the void in your chest that growls with hunger. 

6. Only roll the green leaves into your joint. Brown ones will numb nothing. Purple ones will numb too much. 

7. Inhale. 

8. Realize that this is not your rock bottom, is not the last step you will hit headfirst in your steady downward descent, is not your Titanic, is not what you’ve left to weather before you turn yourself around. That day is yet to come. 

9. Use the smoke from your joint to wear down your edges until the parts of you that used to cut and sting are too charred to cause any damage. 

10. Practice little fuck-ups, bigger fuck-ups. Learn to make mistakes until you are defined by them, so that no one is ever surprised. 

11. Don’t think about the past. Don’t think about the future. Don’t think. 

12. Pretend you made up your successes, and only your failures exist. 

13. Pretend they’re right about you. 

14. Pretend that you were never an amalgamation of sharp humor and witticisms, pretend that you never walked with your head held high, pretend as if your stagnation depends on it because it does. Pretend that you never stared down your truths in a filthy grey-tiled locker room and trembled with the realization afterwards, the terror so heady that even your toes shuddered inside your combat boots. You do not need honesty. You are your mistakes. You are your failures. And they are right about you.

15. Forget your name.