10 Tips for Moving Back in With Your Parents

Living at home again is hard. You are not the same person you were before you left for college. Things have changed… For the worse.

1. Do things as a family! Be creative, try a new recipe or maybe go on a hike. Even if things sound lame remember that you are living at home and your life is inherently pathetic.

2. Remember: You can’t spell Parent without Rent. Just something to keep in mind. Under no circumstances should you pay for housing. That defeats the purpose.

3. Help out around the yard unless your parent pays someone to do so already. You don’t want to step on anybody’s toes.
4. Don’t neglect your physical health. Consider turning your old room into a fitness center so that your parents don’t have the satisfaction of doing so later on.
5. Don’t complain about your commute. Your parents have been doing it your whole life. Commuting can be an excellent time to brood about your current situation.
6. If you find your dad’s stash of weed, don’t smoke it! You don’t know what that stuff is laced with these days.
7. If your parents put a sock on the exterior doorknob of their room, it means they probably haven’t done their laundry in a while.
8. Don’t neglect your love life. Make sure to tell all potential mates about your living situation, but refer to your parents as “chill, older roommates” who “definitely did not birth you.”
9. Remember that in Europe, it is customary to live with your parents until the age of 25. Here it is not. It is important for you to move out as soon as you can.
10. If you stumble home drunk, do not crawl into bed with your Mom and start crying about how you’re an unemployed writer making top 10 lists for no money.

5 Things You Have To Do Before You Die

1. Play More Games: Learn to enjoy the little things in life. Do things that allow you to spend time with the people that are important to you. When you pass on, you will leave a rich legacy in the memories of your loved ones. When they pass on, their children will remember you from stories and pictures. This will continue until the last of your descendants die out.

2. Write a Novel: If you get published, you can extend your legacy. Your name will be preserved alongside the unique ideas put forth in your work. Consider the ancient Greek texts that we study to this day. And yet there were surely civilizations’ that preceded the introduction of the written word. What do we know of them?
3. Plant a Tree: We share our planet not only with one another but also with all living things. There are Redwoods that predate the existence of dinosaurs! When you die, your body will be recycled into the ecosystem of carbon-based life on earth. But how long will earth remain capable of supporting life?
4. Learn a new language: Being able to communicate with other cultures allows you to appreciate different lifestyles. If life exists elsewhere in the universe, we may be able to survive off their resources. How will you contribute to post apocalyptic life?
5. Wake Up Early: Time is running out. Every day you waste is another one closer to death. But linear time as we understand it may very well not exist. Maybe this is not the end. If that is the case, you can go back to sleep.

20 Uncomfortable Truths You Realize As You Grow To Be An Adult

1. Your parents will get more and more out of touch. They will still want you to do what they want you to do. It’s okay; you don’t have to do it. You are not beholden. You will eventually get to a point where you do, actually, know better than your parents – and there is nothing wrong with that. It happens.

2. Not only does the world not revolve around you, it never did.

3. There will be people who will see your discomfort or pain…
… and not care.
… and think you deserve it.
… and be amused or titillated by it.
4. People do not owe you their help.
5. You are under no obligation to remain in a relationship with someone who has harmed you, even if they are a parent or a partner, and even if they are dependent upon you. You have the right to your boundaries.
6. If you keep having disagreements with multiple people about the same things, there’s only one common factor: you. As a friend of mine said once a long time ago: If one person tells you that you are a jackass, you may safely ignore it. If six or eight people who are reasonably sound thinkers express the opinion that you are a jackass, go get fitted for a saddle.
7. Just because you are an adult with your own business and your own suffering does not mean you have a right to ignore the suffering of others. Adulthood does not come with the right to be self-centered. Leave that in adolescence, where it belongs.

8. How you treat those who cannot possibly benefit you demonstrates your character. The way you treat the homeless or the waitstaff is far more indicative of the person you really are than the way you treat your boss.

9. If you’re put in a position to choose between a promotion and a friendship, choose the friendship.

10. If you want the world to be a better place, the work starts with you. You have to do it too.
11. Sometimes if you help someone, they will help you in return, but not always. Sometimes they’re not capable of it. Sometimes they won’t realize it. Sometimes they can’t accept that they needed help so they ignore it. Your help has to come with no strings attached, or it’s not help – it’s just blackmail.
12. People will disagree with you. People will dislike you. But people will also like you and agree with you. Be sure to have a lot of contact with the group that likes you, and a moderate amount with the group that doesn’t, to keep your perspective accurate.
13. Many people your age have not learned these life lessons yet. That doesn’t release you from your obligations to behave like an adult. They may never learn these lessons, but you have.
14. Sometimes you can help someone learn one or more of these lessons. Sometimes that may end the friendship. People don’t like these lessons. They involve the truth, and change, and pain. Don’t force it, but be aware – you may be the lever that moves their world someday, just by understanding these lessons and acting on them. Sometimes, it is your job to be the doctor, no matter what Alanis Morrisette said.

15. Do not attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity or ignorance.

16. Sometimes you will be someone’s teachable moment, whether you like it or not. Handle it as gracefully as you can.

You may be the first X someone has ever met (where X is “person of color,” “autistic,” “Jew,” “gay person,” “rock star,” etc.), and they will want answers to questions that may seem stupid, pointless or even offensive to you. However, at that moment, you are their teachable moment. You have the opportunity to make a difference by educating them about something where they lack knowledge that you already have.

17. Trust is a context-dependent thing, not an absolute.
I might trust you to hold my house keys for me while I go on vacation, but not trust you alone with my kids, because I know you get angry with kids and I don’t want my kids put in danger. I might trust you to show up on time for the party, but not to remember to bring what I asked you to bring, because I know you’re good at being on time but not good at remembering what you’re asked to do beyond that.
18. Try to remember to have compassion. It’s hard sometimes, but it helps, and too many people forget.
19. You cannot solve other people’s problems for them. The most you can do is to point them in the right direction, hand them tools to help, and hand them the medicine they need. You cannot, however, make them use those tools or take that medicine. Know the boundaries of your responsibility to others.
20. Unless another person’s values are actively, directly harming you, you have no business demanding that they give them up and substitute yours. Let it go and move on. Both of you will be better for it.
This means, essentially, “pick your battles.” Certainly, if a person’s beliefs are harming others, go to it. But if they’re not actually harming you (but only making you uncomfortable), and if nobody else is actually being harmed, then let it go.

Love Everyone Blindly

I used to think that life would make more sense when I “grew up.” (Here’s a secret – it doesn’t.)

Ten years ago, after an exceptionally cold and rainy track practice, the news reached me. Just another day turned into one that would rattle me, an entire youth group, a church, a school and a community. It wasn’t pretty. People were confused. Hurt. Angry. Sad. There were tears. There were blank stares from people who didn’t know what to do or say. There were people who tried to hide and people tried to help. And there was a question:

“WHY?”
Why didn’t we see it coming?
Why didn’t she tell anyone how much pain she was in?’
Why would God let this happen?
Why would she do it?
And the reality? We don’t really know those answers. And they haven’t come with time. I spent years speculating, thinking, “what if” and “what could I have done?” I knew her. We were friends. I didn’t think we had a deep connection – but we did. We were both outsiders in a world that thought we were happy. People loved us, but we didn’t fully love what others saw. We just wanted to be different from the person we were. We looked in the mirror, or looked inward at ourselves, and saw things we wished were different. There was this idea that we were flawed. That something was wrong with us.
She called me a few weeks before to ask me to prom. I was a freshman and she was a junior. I didn’t really know what say. Sure, I could go – I guess? But wouldn’t she have more fun with friends of her own age – I mean, I couldn’t even drive! Is a girl even allowed to ask a guy to prom? What should I say? Everything seemed backwards. And my secret knew I’d never want more than friendship.
In that moment I didn’t understand friendship comes in different forms I didn’t understand loving people could mean so many things. I had fixed ideas of how the world should work. I was just another young and confused freshman who was figuring things out about myself. We all were. And that’s okay. Because for the rest of your life, you’re going to be figuring things out. There will be twists. And turns. You’ll be hurt. You’ll be confused. And some days it’ll seem your world is crashing down. But you’ll make it through.
Eventually I would find out she was going to prom with a group of friends. She had even picked out a dress. There was hope for a brighter future; I wish she could have seen that. Everyone has secrets and thoughts they want to keep locked away. But if they’re hurting you, let them out. Tell someone. The ones who really love you won’t run away. You might feel ashamed or guilty, but love is blind to those feelings. Love sees you as the beautiful person you are – even when you can’t see it.

This Is What I Call Deep-Sea Dating

So she is gone. She is not coming back. And my heart is still resting fragilely in its chest cavity like a vase that’s been broken and carefully glued back together. A vase just waiting for someone to bump against the end table on which it has been placed, sending it tumbling to the floor where it will once again shatter into a million pieces.

With this in mind, I decide it is a good idea to give this whole Internet dating thing a go, yes, totally a good idea, what possibly could go wrong, because if at first you don’t succeed, pick yourself up and cry, cry again. Because the best way to get over somebody is to get under someone else, they say, and they say this much too often for it to be untrue. Right?

Right.
I make a profile on one of those dating websites.
The website asks me a series of questions about myself, which I half-heartedly answer as succinctly as possible. I’m the Hemingway of online dating.
Interests: films, books.
Six things you could never live without: never is a big word.
What I’m doing with my life: This one is tricky, because I’m not sure if the website is either A) getting a bit passive aggressive or B) run by my mother. I leave it blank.
Instead, I upload a couple of pictures, trolling the depths of my social media profiles, my hard drive, my camera for the photographs that highlight, in vivid color, the best parts of my physical appearance and wishing I had turned to the left just a little, or hadn’t spilled that ketchup on my shirt or had opened my eyes because that one would have been perfect.
Now, apparently, I will be “matched” with females based on the approximately 150 words I have typed into small white boxes. And let’s not forget, of course, the website’s top-secret compatibility formula. It is totally legitimate. Millions of happy couples, grins all around, butterflies in your stomach, that sort of thing.

I begin to send out messages – Hi, I’m Adam, hyuck, hyuck, hyuck, nice to meet you, you look friendly, do you like me, please, I beg you, you must like me, we both The Shawshank Redemption, what do you know — with the desperation of a sailor trapped in a crippled submarine. Messages like distress signals, pinging off into the depths, in desperate hopes that someone, please, for the love of God, anyone, will respond – a 37-year-old Malaysian, a 25-year-old Californian, a septuagenarian nun, a cocker spaniel.

I sit back and really think about the ramifications of digital love, about these people with whom I’m voluntarily communicating, about how my standards have fallen, immediately, upon the creation of an online dating profile. This is minor league stuff, for players who can’t handle the world of real-life, professional dating. This is pathetic. This is creepy. This is borderline predation. This is me. I am one of them. I have literally joined the club.
A few days later I hit a target, somehow, through something or other I said, and I meet Miss America, who, based on her pictures, is pretty enough, and doesn’t seem to be an axe murderer or a man in disguise. I hope. We meet. She looks like her pictures. She does not carry a butcher’s knife. She has dimples (wrinkles?) that form little parentheses around her mouth and mousy brown hair, and a slender, former cheerleader’s frame.
Now, here’s where this gets tricky.

Miss America is lovely, really, she is. But it’s about fourteen seconds into this date when I realize she’s not for me – that moment, I think, occurs when she starts lip-synching a popular Top 40 pop song while simultaneously maintaining eye contact in a Japanese restaurant. Not that there’s anything wrong with lip-synching, or singing, or music, or even Top 40 (though this is debatable), I find it genuinely unnerving, and my skin is crawling a bit, and what have I done, don’t you know, Adam, that you have so much more you could be doing right now, like watching a movie by yourself, or reading a book, or bonking yourself on the head with a ball-peen hammer.

We are now at my apartment. First it was more drinks, maybe one too many. Then it was a kiss in a crowded bar. Then it was the back of a taxi and now we are here.
So she turns to me, casually, like she’s known me for years, like we’re an old couple who knows how one another take their coffee, and says, “What’s on your mind, babe?”
You might not have meant anything by it, Miss America, surely you didn’t, but when you said this, the only thing on my mind was to make sure you were never in the position to call me “babe” again, because I am most definitely not your “babe” and did not intend to ever be your “babe”, much less anyone’s “babe,” and it was just an entirely inappropriate comment, which, much like your lip-synching, sent shivers down my spine and made me want to run, which I definitely could not have done, because we were in my apartment, and I did not know you very well, and, had you been left to your own devices might have stolen my television.
That was last time I saw Miss America.
About a week later, I meet Manchester.
Manchester (from England) is also a very nice girl. She is pretty, and she talks my ear off during dinner (which is not necessarily a good or a bad thing).
Now, before things get out of hand, I am a man of average A) height B) weight and C) looks. I am over-privileged and falsely entitled. I deserve much, much less than anything I have ever received. I believe women and men and races and sexualities are equal. I believe no one is better than another. I am not a misogynist nor self-loathing nor an overtly good or bad person. I think I confidently float in the purgatorial neutral zone of humanity.
I do, however, have the tendency to be overly judgmental, critical, and slightly mean-spirited (especially so if I am hungry.)
But this doesn’t stop me from noticing things. And once I’ve noticed something, even a small something, I am oftentimes able to process this small something into a much larger something, and sometimes that something is much too large to look past.
Additionally, I have never once denied the fact that I am a raving lunatic.
Anyway, Manchester and I watch a popular television comedy. During the course of the program’s twenty-odd minutes, she incessantly points out absurdities as though she’s catching typos in a newspaper.
“There’s no way a doctor would do that!” for example.
And of course there’s no way a doctor would do that (he’s, like, making crude comments or something, no bedside manner at all, that rascally doctor) but that’s the way comedy works, sweetheart, it’s about the absurd, the irrational, the illogic, and though I’m not trying to be condescending or supercilious or anything like that – and although I definitely am coming across as such – I just think it’s better if you head home now, because I’m feeling very tired.
So I’m back at the computer, awash in the screen’s blue glow, the lights out, alone, scrolling through faces, faces, endless faces, their pouted lips, smirks, and dentist-whitened smiles.
A message lights up my inbox. She is Dutch. I have never met a Dutch person. This is like interacting with an endangered species. The elusive Northern hairy-nosed wombat sends its greetings!
Dinner plans ensue.
Will she wear wooden shoes? Will she have braids? Will I have to kiss her on the cheek in strange European greeting? Please, Dutch Girl, don’t make me do that. I will just die if I have to do that. Will there be that in-and-out tango of do we hug or not?
Maybe I should just gently pat her on the head.
Or you know, now that I think about it, even better idea — I should just turn around. I could go home, get some dinner, forget all about the date that was, the date that would have, in all likelihood, ended in disaster – shame and rejection and sleep lost in labyrinthine mental scenarios of I-should-have-said-should-have-done.
But no, I keep going, and there is Dutch Girl, copper hair and a nice smile, and she sticks out her hand, which is of regular size, to shake, and I almost faint from the relief. She is not frightening, and she does not call me pet names, nor does she question the nature of fiction.
Dutch Girl smokes cigarettes and she curses, and is very, refreshingly human, as we sit on little plastic stools and drink bottles of beer.
She has crinkles around her eyes. Her shoes are not wooden.
I leave later that night, happy enough. Not in love. Not full of hope for the future. Not really thinking anything. This is no love story. That isn’t the point.
Because for now I go home. I go back to the computer, to the faceless faces of unknown women, to their self-portraits taken in bathroom mirrors; their exposed, flat stomachs; their long, tan legs; their contact lenses that turn brown eyes blue and seem to mimic the symptoms of Graves’ disease; their perfectly applied make-up. And I click through them, imagining potential futures – conversations and laughter and arguments and love.
I click and I click and I click.
I wade through the muck and the mire, without even really known what I’m searching for. It would be ridiculous to look for love. And marriage? There are easier ways (and different websites) on which to go wife shopping.
I suppose if I’m honest with myself I know what I seek. But these are strangers. And you know what comes out of sex with strangers. AIDS. Herpes. Long visits to doctor’s offices. Tearful conversations with therapists. Regrets. Pain. Unfulfillment.
But for now, it’s enough. And Ashley flits by, replaced by Naomi, replaced by Sarah, replaced by Aeoy (who inexplicably goes by Jessica).
Messages sent, cast into the abyss.
Nothing to do but sit back, put your feet up, relax, and wait for a bite.
Now isn’t this fun?

How To Break Up When You’re Traveling Abroad

I leave her on a crowded train platform early on a Tuesday morning, tears brimming in her wide, blue eyes as she watches me go. The humidity of the day settles down like a wet blanket, oppressive, weighty. The weather a fetus inside the womb must experience every day for nine solid months.

Just five months, the relationship, beginning in China, ending in Thailand, with a ten-day visit from her to set me on my way and send her on hers. An ending and a beginning wrapped up tight in one little package.

I buy coffee and walk, my mind blank. I’m numb. I go to work. I drift through the day. I go home, go to the gym, go to sleep. It takes a few days for the shock to wear off and reality to set in. When it finally does, it is like a scalding hot frying pan to the face.

I wake up and colors are muted, like a television show in Technicolor. Drab and dull, an Instagram photo with the “misery” filter activated. I’m sad, yes, but I’m also angry. Angry with her for leaving. Angry with myself for letting her go. Most of all, I’m angry with others simply for being happy. I see couples holding hands, smiling. I hate them. I hate them so much. I hope they are run over by a train. Three times. And then maybe it could hit me, as well, if it’s feeling extra generous. There’s the feeling of coming home to an empty apartment, dark and silent, the curtains drawn. Lonely and desolate. There’s the realization that all those clichés about heartache are true. How your heart actually, physically hurts. This shouldn’t be surprising, but it is. It’s like watching a movie for the fiftieth time only to still be surprised by the ending, a different twist to the same plot with each viewing.

I should have seen it coming.

I knew our paths would diverge, of course I knew. It was a matter of timing, not of incompatibility, but timing is such an important factor — as much so as the balance of values and interests, or the ability to compromise, to fight and make up.

But for now, we need different things, and we go different ways.

We loved each other. We truly loved each other. I am sure of that. But there’s no solace in the past tense. There’s no solace anywhere at the moment. She is the only thing that can make it better, and she is gone. And I’m alone.
I meet my friend Claire for lunch. I’m not hungry, but I force the food down. It’s unappetizing. It’s just there, food sitting on a plate. I’d rather smash it into tiny bits with a hammer. But I take a forkful. I stuff it into my mouth. I chew. And I move on to the next bite.
On the restaurant’s sound system (and I swear I am not making this up), the following songs play:
Chris DeBurgh’s “Lady in Red.”
She had red hair.
It’s coincidence. Anyway, the song’s about her dress, not her hair. I think. But still, red, you know?
“My Heart Will Go On” by Celine Dion.
Christ Almighty.
“Right Here Waiting,” a ballad by Richard Marx.
Then Westlife’s “My Love,” a song about lost love.

It’s too much. Somehow, halfway through a bowl of carrot soup — which I didn’t even know existed until this moment, because who makes soup out of a carrot; it’s like making a chicken broth cake — I’ve become the subject of some sort of horrible cosmic practical joke.

I contemplate peeling off my face with a can opener.

“What if this was it?” I ask Claire. “What if there’s no one else?”
“Then it will work out,” she says.
“I don’t believe in fate.”
“It’s not fate,” says Claire. “That’s just how love works.”
“What if it’s not? What if she finds someone better?”
“There is no ‘better,’” she says. “There’s different, but that doesn’t mean ‘better.’ It’s not a contest. She loves you for you. I know she does. I saw you two together. She’s never going to meet someone and say ‘Oh, he’s so much better than Adam.’ She might think someone else is better for her, but that’s not nearly the same thing. And if she does find someone, then you know it’s time to really, fully move on.”
I imagine a stranger pulling her in for a first kiss — and worse, her wanting it — and I feel like I might vomit. I picture myself murdering that man. Slowly. Methodically. The thought of myself meeting someone new is equally horrifying. Right now, it doesn’t even seem attractive. People look the same, like walking, disfigured blobs of molten clay: men, women, supermodels, limbless beggars. Everyone is equally revolting.
I eat another spoonful of this ridiculous carrot soup.
I walk home; I unlock the door, greetings empty apartment. I open the curtains, and the darkness fades and sunbeams drift across the floor and creep up the walls. They hurt my eyes. The sun causes sunburns and melanoma. The sun never did anybody any good. Who ever thought the sun was a good idea? I hate photosynthesis. I hate solar power. I pull the curtains closed.
A knock on the door.
It’s Holley. I met Holley three weeks ago, so it is a good idea to pour my heart out to her. Definitely a good idea. It’s the beginning of another relationship abroad – platonic or not – a magnesium flash, burning hot and bright, intense from the start, right up until the end when it suddenly, bitterly, immediately burns out. You’ve found each other floating in a strange ocean and you cling, desperately, to one another until you drift apart. The kind of relationship between foreigners that usually begins, in certain countries at least, with something like, “Hello, we’re best friends now because we’re foreigners.”
You get used to that intimacy, that closeness, seeing each other every day, becoming the center of someone’s universe as you orbit around them yourself. You begin to take it for granted. You’re in a cocoon. A bubble. Then you hatch. You pop. You go back home, and it’s gone for good.
“I just can’t think of anything else,” I tell Holley. “It’s horrible.” I swallow around the lump in my throat.
“But you’re lucky,” she says. “You’re so lucky. You had this great relationship and it ended on good terms and it could still work out in the future.”
Yes, lucky, I think. It’s like I won cancer.
I am thankful for her, because otherwise I would very likely be confronting other foreigners who happen to be wandering Bangkok’s streets. “Listen, I’m having a really hard time these past few days, can I talk to you?” Like a woebegone Jehovah’s Witness. “Excuse me sir, do you have a moment to talk about my broken heart?”
There is a 12-hour time difference between Bangkok and Texas. I call my mother at three in the morning, her time. And she picks up. Wonderful, blessed mothers. She listens. She commiserates. Then she tells me this:
“Honey, there are so many things you are good at. You are so talented. I was just at a Taylor Swift concert with your niece, and my God, she’s such a performer, but I hear those songs, Adam, and you could write those songs.”
So there’s that, I guess. A relationship ends, but I’m on my way to pop stardom. This will happen right after I submit my application to play power forward-cum-astronaut for the NBA’s international space squad.
She tells me almost the same thing that Claire said during lunch.
“If it’s meant to be, it will work itself out.”
If it’s meant to be.
The phrase implies some sort of a predetermined path, which runs completely against the grade of my life’s philosophy, which, admittedly, at age twenty-six, is frail and meager, because I don’t know anything about anything. Except how to play Playstation games. I can really play Playstation games.
There’s some truth to it, though, “meant to be.” Love isn’t something you trap and keep locked up. It’s not a dog on a leash or a bunch of plants in a greenhouse, or fireflies in a bottle. Love is something that travels time zones and oceans. It’s not panicky or afraid. You don’t hold on to love for dear life in a desperate attempt to keep it stationary. Love is calm and comfortable and peaceful. It waits when it needs to wait. And that’s important to remember. Fate might not be real, but I’m very convinced that love is real. I know it is, because I’ve felt it. And love — or at least the people behind that love — makes things happen. Not fate.
But sometimes love escapes.
Or you lose it.
Or you let it go.
You give it up, on purpose, because it’s the right thing to do at that moment in time. It’s the whole “if you love someone, set them free” college of thought. Another cliché, probably thought up by the same guy who coined “heartache” and “lovesick” and “meant to be.” Hitler, I think it was.
And then there’s the saying that goes, “love is a drug.” It is. Love is a high, and every time you get high, there’s the inevitable comedown that follows. For every action, an equal and opposite reaction. Newton’s Law of Emotion.
So I push myself through work and weekends, telling myself it was the right thing. Not the easy thing. The right thing. Maybe. I hope. You just keep going, immune to laughter and smiles and happiness, a big dose of Novocain on the part of the brain that allows anything but hopelessness and despair and grief. And nothing will fix it, not drugs, not sex, not food. Nothing, no matter how hard you try, except time. And time drags by with a weighted tread. But time does go on, and so does the world, and she is not dead, and neither am I, even though it sometimes feels like it would be easier if one of us were.
Memories of us, together – once fresh, stinging, and ripe — will slowly fade away until the gap between us is no longer purely physical, and is no longer a gap at all, for that matter, having become — suddenly, seemingly overnight — a chasm. She’ll have her life in New York. I’ll live mine in. We’ll sleep when the other is awake, eat different foods, and meet different people. We’ll grow apart. Our joined memories will become old and worn and fondly, if not a little sadly, remembered, like an old letterman’s jacket or a baseball mitt kept in a box, high in the attic above the real house where new memories are actively being manufactured.
The world, my life, will come back into focus; will become high definition, full color, resuming its original appearance. Things always do. They continue to roll forward until that one day, in the near future, when this won’t hurt anymore. And that might be the most tragic part of it all.
The wound will scab over and slowly heal — until a new one is ready to take its place and the big cosmic joke of it all starts all over again.

This Is How You Live

You could die in a hot-air balloon accident.

You could wake, one morning, to find your loved one cold and stiff in bed next to you, their lips thundercloud blue.

You might suffer a fatal infection from a rabid bat bite.

You might become locked in a battle — one you will eventually lose — against an invisible murderer, one who perches upon your shoulder, whispers in your ear, tells you to gobble the contents of that bottle of pills, to tie that rope around your own neck, to swan dive out that 19th-story window.
Your child, whom you will raise and breastfeed and teach to speak and walk and love, she could be ripped from this world in ways too myriad to list, almost as soon as your begin to cradle her frail, pink, soft, baby-scented body to your chest.

The cruel, gnarled roots of twisted fate that corkscrew and entangle and strangle and stifle, they’re more than enough to keep you awake at night, your eyes wide, rigor-mortised, plastered to the odd bumps and cracks and subtle shifts of your ceiling, which might have mold growing, seeping, brackish and vile, infecting its way down the yellowing plaster of the wall.
Your plane, while gliding along at a merry 3,000m, could be blown away by a not-so-rogue missile. Perhaps you were on page 217 of James Patterson’s latest novel, Alex Cross 44: In Space! Does it matter? Ha ha! Oh, you! You will not finish that book, never will — it was literally disintegrated in the resulting explosive shock wave that pulverized Rows 1-34, seats A-E, which, unfortunately, included yours, B19, a ticket you purchased on standby, and, in a stroke of uncharacteristic good fortune, were allowed to use after a woman, a would-be passenger, came down with a nasty case of strep throat. Or maybe that person, the one who bought the ticket and who didn’t finish that book; could’ve been, it was your wife, with that little faded scar on her upper lip and that slightly crooked nose you found so endearing, rendered to a fine bloody mist. Better her than anyone.

Pretty horrifying.

If you think, really think, toss aside religion and afterlives, peer through the lens of realism and pragmatism and through the filmy rheum of soft-boiled nihilism, well, there doesn’t seem to be much to live for.

But you do; you live. You do not spend the day coiled in cold-sweated bed sheets, clutching your precious sons and daughters, fiancées and fiancés, boyfriends and girlfriends and husbands and wives, brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and aunts and grandparents and uncles — clutching yourself — to your chest, terrified of an errant motorist or an assault rifle-toting psychopath or the looming wraith-hordes of fatal diseases.

More likely than not, you don’t give any of it a second thought.
You pack those fears in an infinity-ton bindle, shoulder it and promptly forget it. And then you trudge, walk, sometimes race onward, and not once, not for the love of God, no thank you sir, do you pause and wonder and open that sack of horrors, not even for the slightest peek. For even a glance would mean to be sucked, immediately and forever, black hole, into the deep, viscous tar pit that is bubbling despair and sadistic fantasies of grief and sorrow and angst and loss and darkness.
No, you keep on hiking, hill after trail bend after rocky gorge after mountain vista, having acknowledged those fears and rejected them, not in terms of their potentiality, their titanium, bomb shelter-proof truths, but because it is the only way to defeat that against which you are Lilliputian, powerless, faceless and meaningless.

You lead a happy, full life in the face of prospective, all too often inherent future misery. And when that midnight blackness does bear down, wraps it razor blade-studded tentacles around your throat, you take your beating and you towel off and bandage up and you keep on truckin’. If you can.

You live in the eye of the hurricane, and it’s only a matter of time before that sucker brings the house down, tears apart the very foundation of all you’ve ever known. But there you stand, outside, rain-drenched, lightning rod raised skyward, screaming for that puppy to come on, to give you all it’s got.

The best, most admirable part of being human, that spite, the ability to, consciously or not, ignore the warning bells, the howling alarms, the crimson wind-torn flags pleading with you to stop, to listen, begging you to take notice, to understand that something is irrevocably, intrinsically wrong.
Instead you continue, uninterrupted, your search for — and sometimes discovery of — joy, love, excitement. You dig it up, suck it out from whatever crevices or crannies in which it may hide, gulp it down and grin, find it delicious and ask, please, for another taste.

A Guide To The Most Niche Dating Websites You Could Ever Sign Up For

Trying to find the right dating website has become a lot like dating itself. Search “dating” on the app store on any given phone, and you get 2,200 results, which means a lot of duds to find the right website for you.

In honor of love and playing Cupid, I went through the over 400 would-be dating sites at AngelList, a site for start up companies, to find the right place for you to to, well, start up your love life.

If you want to avoid the unwashed masses that use OkCupid, try Ivy Date, where members are chosen “based on their intellectual curiosity and outstanding character”, or Sparkology, “a curated dating site for young professionals” that verifies that all men are “graduates of top universities” and offers “white-glove concierge services.”

For those who don’t care where their dates went to college, there’s Truffle, which only bothers to check to make sure that a would-be date actually has a job (freelance writers need not apply).
Men who are disappointed with how infrequently they are treated like pieces of meat should try Supermanket, a dating marketplace “where women are the clients and men are the products.”
TheJmom.com is the “Jewish online dating site where moms do the matchmaking.” MyLovelyParent.com, in turn, is for children who don’t want their single parent to die a lonely death.
For South Asians exasperated with the long match-making process, there’s Simply Match Me.
At YourCauseorMine.com, you will only find people who will go to the same protests as you.
For those who’d rather protest the idea of all things romantic and just want a friend or two, try itsplatonic.com.
Cuddleup, for its part, is looking for investors into its “Lyft for cuddling” app, filling the hole for all those people who want a quick no-strings-attached cuddle and can’t afford a professional cuddler.
There was also an attempt to start a site for those mourning a recent break-up. According to AngelList, Wotwentwrong.com was to feature crowd-sourced relationship advice. Sadly, the site never seems to have gotten off the ground. Wotwentwrong indeed.

How To Fall In Love

Love is one of those things that finds you when you least expect it. You can’t really go hunting for it and you can’t predict it. What you can do is help facilitate not-expecting it.

Start by telling yourself that you’ll never fall in love. Look in the mirror every morning at your stupid ugly face and make a mental note that nobody could ever love someone who looks like you. Take a shower and let water pour over you, down the length of your mediocre body. There’s no way another human being could ever find that attractive. Dry yourself off and repeat your mantra to yourself. “I can do anything.” That’s a stupid fucking mantra. You are a dumb fuck. You will never amount to anything and nobody could ever love such a sad waste of space. Get dressed in anything, it doesn’t matter because all your clothes aren’t cool enough.

With your expectations sufficiently lowered (“none”), you can now proceed through life. Go to class, go to work, see your friends, see your family. Have a coffee, have a sandwich, have a beer. Life is pretty awesome! You have a lot of good stuff, and since you’ll never fall in love, that’s just one less thing to worry about. Enjoy each day the way you would regularly, watching your friends couple up and strangers embrace. That’s so nice for them! Go home and watch your favorite TV show, update your blog, go to bed, repeat.

Proceed like this for as long as necessary. It might be forever, but chances are it won’t be. Love will slowly creep up on you in the form of a new friend, a stranger, a one night stand that you can’t get out of your head, whatever. This is where your training comes in. Don’t be fooled by this new feeling! You are worthless, you are ugly, you are stupid and nobody will ever care about you. Ignore any advances. Perpetuate your worst traits to further solidify your unloveable persona. Love might be real, but not for you.

Eventually someone will figure you out. They’ll see through your exterior and decide you are wonderful. They’ll love the things you don’t like about yourself and they’ll inspire confidence. They’ll
resuscitate feelings you forgot you had, or maybe never considered before. Don’t fall for this. They can’t possibly love you. The feelings are false. This person is probably delusional. They have been mislead. It’s those new shoes you wore, it’s that funny joke you told, that honesty you showed, the way you looked at them that night. Fuck fuck fuck.

A person is starting to really care about you. You’ve tried to rationalize it away but you can’t anymore. You can literally feel them loving you. They might be crazy but they’re really convinced! Consider this instead of sleeping. Write it down in your private journal. Realize that love might actually be real for you too, against all odds. Try to fight this feeling because it goes against everything you’ve worked so hard for. “My mantra sucks and so do I.” Say it three times. Look in the mirror and try to hate your reflection. Stop smiling. Stop fucking smiling.
Turn on the radio. Pop songs are starting to make sense. Every song is real. Fuck! Turn off the radio. Go outside. The sun is shining and there’s a breeze. Something smells wonderful. Everything reminds you of the new feelings. Your brain starts making new connections between things and ideas. Snap, snap, snap snap snap. Everything leads back to them. New socks, scrambled eggs, polka dots, anything. This is too real. You are not built for this.
Wonder what else is real. Question everything. Predict several potential futures. Predict every potential future. Worry that this feeling might end somehow. Imagine yourself dying too soon. Wonder if you will ever feel like this again. Imagine your heart breaking. Imagine their heart breaking and feel like your heart is actually breaking as a result. Wonder if “soulmates” are a real thing. Worry that you will never sufficiently be able to thank them for everything. Wonder if they can tell you’re freaking out. Don’t say anything. Say literally everything. Fuck.
Look at yourself in the mirror. You’re still a little ugly but it doesn’t matter anymore. You’re still an idiot but it’s different now. Sit on the floor of the shower and let the water pour over your mediocre body and laugh. Everything is hilarious. Life is your mantra now. Everything is reaffirming. Love is real. Love is real even for you.