How To Escape A Drama-Filled Society

Living in a drama-filled society can be exhausting and draining for anyone. It’s no secret that drama often causes unnecessary stress, anxiety, confusion, distraction and it can be difficult to escape. But not impossible. There are a few steps you can take to remove yourself from the morass of drama and create a more peaceful, stress-free life.

1. Identify the sources of drama:
   The first step in escaping the drama of your society is to identify its sources. It may be certain friends, family members, or co-workers who create drama. Alternatively, it could be social media or news outlets that stir up emotions and create angst. When you identify the causes of drama, it’s easier to avoid them.
2. Limit your exposure to drama:
   Now that you’ve identified the sources of drama, take steps to limit your exposure to them. For example, if you have a mentally unstable sister who constantly involves herself in your drama thus creating even more drama for yourself, you may need to distance yourself from her or set solid boundaries. Similarly, if social media causes negative emotions or triggers drama, delete the app or take a few days off.
3. Surround yourself with positivity:
   To counteract the negativity and drama of your society, focus on surrounding yourself with positive people who bring you joy and make you feel good about yourself. I realize that positive people can be superficial and dull. This may mean eliminating friends who don’t share your values and interests or making time for self-care activities that lift your mood and counteract all the soul-destroying drama.
4. Practice mindfulness and self-care:
   Mindfulness practices such as meditation and deep breathing can be helpful in reducing stress and anxiety. Self-care activities like taking a hot bath, reading a book, journaling, stretching, cleaning, listening to music, being naked with another human, hanging-out/doing nothing or going for a ponderous walk can also help reduce the impact of deadening drama on your life.
5. Focus on what you can control:
   Finally, remember that while you can’t control the drama in your society, you can control your reactions to it. You may feel like being distracted from everything but focus on the things you can control, such as how much time and energy you devote to drama, and let go of things you cannot control. By taking ownership of your own life, you’ll reduce the impact of drama and create a more peaceful and interesting existence.

Escaping the drama of society takes effort, diligence and discipline but it’s worth it to create a more fulfilling and stress-free existence. By identifying the sources of drama, limiting your exposure to them, surrounding yourself with positivity (that is not superficial or dull), practicing mindfulness and self-care, and focusing on what you can control, you can escape the drama and create a more relaxed living situation for yourself.

The Man Who Discovered Happiness

The entire world knows of him. The most popular name since Einstein. It is miraculous how he could do what he did. All discoveries and inventions are minor in comparison, since he was able to make just about the entire world happy.

It didn’t take long either since once he announced his discoveries and traveled the world speaking about what he discovered, everyone’s brain lit up. The darkness was forever lifted. People got it.

The unifying thing about humans is not a single one does not want to be happy. The singular shared goal of all human life is happiness. We seek it out in so many different ways. It is what every human being aspires towards so once he was able to figure out how people could actually be happy all the time, it caught like a fire in a dry forest.

 

His name was Joe Ollman. Obviously he has been dead for some time now, but his discovery has still to this day changed the lives of everyone on planet earth. Even though we all live indoors now and are continually on-line, we have all found a happiness that is far greater than any kind of happiness experienced by humans who were off-line and went outdoors. Psychotherapy, psychiatry, life-coaches, self-help gurus, spiritual gurus, all of these professions are a thing of the past. No longer needed. In school I read about how many, many, many years ago, these were the most popular professions. They were everywhere and bookstores were filled with self-help and psychology books written by these people. Not any more. None of them exits today, since everyone is happy.

Joe Ollman. This is a name which will never be forgotten as long as humans are around. You can ask anyone, even children who Joe Ollman was and they will tell you the man who discovered happiness. And his discovery was not even that difficult. It is strange that authentic happiness eluded humans for so long. Joe Ollman just made it very easy for everyone to understand and implement it.

 

For those of you who are interested, Ollman’s Theory of Happiness is: To be happy is the absence of negative thought. Pretty simple, right? That as long as a person has negative thoughts they will not be able to be happy. In order to be happy a person must be able to eradicate all negative thinking. Sounds simple but not so easy. The genius of Joe Ollman was that he made it easy.

When Joe Ollman was alive he lived in a society that created deep unhappiness. The society that Ollman lived in was so dysfunctional that the vast majority of citizens had to take pills to make them feel better and more functional in what he called “The Sick Society.” Can you believe that? Society was at one time so dysfunctional and unhealthy that people had to take a pill, which generated more serotonin in their brain chemistry so that they could function better in that society. Even though it was over sixty years ago since things have really changed it still surprises me that this is how things once were.

People were continually worried about having enough money and what other people thought of them. People distracted themselves with things that caused them to feel even more empty inside. The routine and monotony in people’s lives caused them to live with this empty feeling inside, which drove them into states of deep anger and depression. Wow. Everyone was stressed out since surviving in The Sick Society caused a person to have to do a lot of things that they did not want to do. People had to pretend to be happy about working at jobs that they did not feel happy at. Everyone was disconnected from one another. No real relationships were able to be sustained in this harsh climate of anger, addiction, worry and depression. People pursued happiness but could never find it because their heads were filled with negative thoughts and people spent most of their time lost inside their heads. Fear prevented almost everyone from living the life that they wanted to really live. People were committing suicide and violent crimes everywhere. Men interested in power and money ran the world and the masses were much too afraid to rise up against the state. The people were powerless. They had no choice but to submit. It was pure madness. The only thing that could help this situation were psychiatric pills. It was the real Dark Age.

 

Joe Ollamn is a global hero because he is single-handedly responsible for bringing people out of these dark ages. He basically rescued everyone from the darkness and brought almost everyone out into the light. All with his very simple Theory Of Happiness. Joe Ollman was also once a very depressed and negative man. He admitted to often thinking about suicide and then he realized that there could be an alternative way. He did not have to physically die as much as he needed to psychologically change. Ollman realized that he needed to eradicate negative thoughts.

Ollman started practicing Mindfulness meditation intensively so that he could develop the awareness needed to know when he was starting to have negative thoughts and feelings. “When the emptiness and darkness was starting to creep in,” he often said. Once he was able to have this awareness he could catch it and turn the thoughts and feelings into something positive before the negativity snowballed into a miserable state. The importance of awareness in being a happy person was not discovered by Ollman but it was really brought into the mainstream by him. Today most people practice mindfulness meditation and it is because humans are much more aware that they are able to subvert negativity the moment it arises.

Ollman’s Theory Of Happiness stresses that if a person wants to be happy they must be able to not dwell in their heads. That dwelling or ruminating in thought is unhappiness. In order to avoid this a person must engage in distractions that allow them to feel engaged, focused and better about themselves when finished with the distractions. People just needed to become better able at choosing more quality distractions for themselves rather than just taking what is being offered by the highest bidder. It is because of Ollman’s discovery that Hollywood, Netflix, HBO, social media, cable television, most forms of advertising, Amazon Prime are now things of the past. Corporations that created and profited off of human misery are now gone! People now actually live quality lives. Who would have ever thought? All because of one man.

 

Ollman once said in a YouTube interview, “If human beings want to be happy they must be able to remain present and aware. It is so crucial that people are present and engaged in their lives in a carefree kind of way. If a person wants to be happy they must be carefree because if they are not stress and worry and depression will quickly rise up. The Sick Society did not allow people to be carefree. Everyone was worried and stressed out all the time and this is why unhappiness was such an epidemic. If people really want happiness it is so important that they are able to live in  a carefree way. Moment by moment, day by day without worrying about the future or thinking about the past. When a person is truly happy they are fully in the moment. They are fully content and engaged in the moment without a care in the world. The moment a person is no longer carefree, unhappiness sets in. The thing about humans is that we do have the ability to be carefree. We just need to exercise this ability or potential more regularly through mindfulness meditation practice.”

This was once of the most viewed videos in YouTube history and it is where Ollamn’s Theory of Happiness was presented to the world. Einstein wrote books and papers but it is interesting how things change. Ollman wrote no books or papers but presented his discoveries through YouTube videos. No one reads books anymore. Everyone just watches YouTube videos and Ollman was visionary enough to know that this would be the case one day. Ollman was such a genius and I am so grateful for his presence on planet earth. I do not know what the hell anyone would do without his Theory Of Happiness. We would all be taking pills and living in that dark and very sick society that almost caused Ollman to take his own life.

I am so happy the dark ages are now behind us.

*This is an essay written by a young girl for her online eighth grade Sociology class.

Clamming Up!

I made clams for dinner. When I was at the market I decided to buy seven innocent looking little-rock clams. I would take them home and cook them up into a nutritious meal. I new that clams were high in copper and lately I have been feeling like I need to eat more copper. It would be healthy, simple and hassle free.

I had never cooked clams before. I recalled what my father once told me years ago about cooking clams. “Wash, scrub, brine and boil until the little suckers snap right open!” When I began preparations cooking the clams I noticed that one of the clams suddenly opened and then shut. I was startled because I had forgotten that clams are living creatures until they are killed by the boiling water. Suddenly eating clams for dinner seemed a little less appetizing to me.

There is almost no boundary between my sensitivity to the mystery of life and my phobic terror of it. In my greatest moments of pleasure I always feel that at any second something can go terribly wrong. I was excited about the idea of eating clams for dinner until I realized that they were alive. I live in a culture where I am very removed from the process of having to kill the food I eat. Suddenly, I was the one who had to do the killing- and this felt strange. As I washed the clams under cold running water I could swear that I felt them moving inside their tightly clamped shells. My initial reaction to this sensation was to drop the clam into the sink like one does when they are suddenly repulsed by something (in Hebrew the same word is used to connote both “awe” and “fear”). I became so discouraged about the idea of cooking/killing the clams that I wanted to take them and set them free in the river beside my house. But I had spent eleven dollars on them- and that felt like to much money to just throw away.

I added a small amount of white wine and lemon juice to a pot. I put the pot on the stove and turned on the burner. I could feel my heart beating in my neck as I imagined myself suffering a terrible sickness or worse, dying from eating the clams. I recalled the horror stories that I had heard about various people who had become stricken with terrible sicknesses after eating clams. I added some butter to the broth which was beginning to boil.

With one hand shaking and my head filled with uncontrollable thoughts of impending doom- I added the clams one by one to the boiling broth. In the back round I could hear a Beatles song playing on my radio. “Hey!! you got to hide your love away,” the lyrics said. I covered the pot with a lid and went to the sink and obsessively washed my hands which I was concerned were covered in a deadly bacteria that I had once read about people contracting from touching clams. As I washed my hands I could swear that I heard the dying screams of clams. Sounded like a high pitched cry. I opened the lid to the boiling pot and noticed that all the little suckers had snapped open their shells except one. This one hung on to life, unwilling to surrender. I meditated upon the clam for a moment as I waited for it to snap open its shell. It did not. It remained shut unwilling to let go and be at peace. This clam reminded me a lot of myself.

I put the clams in a bowl along with the broth and squeezed fresh lemon on top. I set my dinner table for one and put salt and pepper beside my spoon and fork. The smell of clams reminded me of my youth. I sat down at the dinner table with my bowl of steaming clams and with my fork I grabbed one of the clams out from its shell. I held it up to my nose to make sure it did not have a rancid smell. It smelled like the sea in winter time so I put the clam into my mouth and chewed. And chewed. And chewed. And chewed. And then swallowed. It was delicious but I was nervous. Negative thoughts ran laps around the inside of my mind. What if the clam that I had just swallowed was bad? What if I get sick? I started to have visions of myself dying alone on my living room hardwood floor. My body began to shake like one who has crossed the point of no return. I took a sedative pill and drank a beer straight down. In times of anxiety- beer is the only substance that can calm me down.

I was frustrated because I could not eat the clams in peace. I wanted to enjoy my meal which smelled so good. Instead, I was in panic and already beginning to feel nauseous. My nervous system was turned upside down and would not allow me to sit still. Was I feeling guilty because I killed clams? Was I uncomfortable about cooking clams because I knew nothing about how to do it? Why was I clamming up? I searched for clues to my anxiety but I was able to come up with only one answer. Ditch the clams. I stood up from my dinner table and took the bowl of clams outside with me. I looked up at the moon which was full and then walked over to my neighbors house. I poured the bowl of eleven dollar clams into my neighbors cat food dish. She has seven cats and I figured that at least the cats could enjoy them. I ended up eating raw carrots and nuts for dinner and then going to bed early.

True Love Waits?

Before the age of twelve I was already sticking my small penis inside various objects with holes in them. Toilet paper rolls, hoses, wine bottles, ketchup bottles and the onion bagels my mother would bring home every Sunday morning. I fashioned my own holes out of hamburger meat from the freezer, potatoes and the watermelons that my father grew in our backyard. By the age of fifteen I was a fiend who utilized everything that I could get my hands on for sexual gratification. I gave myself blow jobs with my sisters hair dryer. I stole my mothers diaphragm and stuck it up my rear end. I masturbated habitually to my fathers pornography magazines and I wondered when the time would come that I would have the opportunity to act out my fantasies on a member of the opposite sex.

When I was sixteen I tried to sneak into strip clubs with a fake ID but was rejected every time. I tried to convince a prostitute to let me stick my penis in her for fifteen dollars but she refused because she did not want to live with the guilt that she had corrupted a minor. I continued to have sex with holes and even found a way to place my penis inside of my bathroom sink drain. Desperation is the mother of all ingenuity.

When I was seventeen I had a babysitter who dressed me up like Tarzan. She stripped me down naked and tied one of my fathers belts around my waist. She then covered my crotch with a small kitchen cloth and my butt was covered with one of my fathers dress socks- both hanging from the belt. I wore my mothers tennis head band over my long hair and put my sisters red lipstick on. She would then chase me all over the house until she would tackle me on the ground and order me to “scream like the little jungle pervert you are” over and over as she tickled me relentlessly. Sometimes the cloth that covered my crotch would come off and reveal the erection that I would get when she was sitting on top of me. Her only response to this natural human phenomena was “look.. little Tarzan’s pee pee wants to say hi.” I was humiliated and immediately covered myself back up. She was never sexual with me but was rather what I would call a tease. After we were finished with our games I would sit outside on the front door steps with her and watch her smoke and blow smoke rings with big holes. I always fantasized about sticking my penis inside one of those hole but I never was able to ask her if I could.

It was not until I was eighteen that I was finally able to stick my penis inside a member of the opposite sex. I remember my mother lecturing me upon the virtues of waiting for true love until I gave away my virginity. In fact a lot of people that I knew at that time were talking about waiting until they found true love, the person that they were going to marry before they had sex. I never judged them for this decision that they seemed committed to upholding but for me the idea was insane. I was not concerned about true love, nor did I care about giving away my virginity. I wanted to fuck and if I did not do so soon I was going to be a danger to myself, my family and society. I had already started contemplating ways to stick my penis inside the beautiful white horse that lived down the street from my house. I contemplated having sex with cats and cows. When I orgasmed my semen shot ten feet into the distance because of all the pent up pressure. No, I was not concerned with true love, I needed to get laid. Like I said to my mother on my way out the front door the night that I would have sex for the first time….”mom, true love can wait.”

My Sister The Slut

My sister is a 37 year old slut. I have not always been aware of this- but recently it has caught my attention that this is the case. On several occasions I have spent time with her in parks on nice sunny afternoons. We lay out a blanket and I am always surprised because she suddenly takes of her clothes and wears a very skimpy bikini. I am surprised because we usually spend time together in popular parks where there are men all around playing bongo drums, doing yoga, playing frisbee or just hanging out “surfing for chicks.” I myself have always been a bit uncomfortable hanging out with my sister when she is wearing a bikini. I see more of her than I want to and I am also unsettled by the amount of men that become fixated upon her bare body. Often, I would just chalk her modesty up to a desire to receive a tan- but lately I have realized that there is more behind her bikini wearing motivations.

My sister is a medical doctor and spends most of her weekdays dressed in nice suits usually covered by the traditional white Doctors smock. She is an attractive lady with long brown hair and golden brown gypsy skin. She is well educated and has a tendency to drink and smoke a little too much. She lives alone in a lavish city apartment with her cat who is on heart medication. My sister is often going on dates with strange men who she meets on-line and in the park.

My sister recently told me that she has met at least twenty men in the park that we like to go to, over the past two months. When I asked her how many of these men she has gone on dates with she told me “all.” I was shocked since I have always considered my sister a rather conservative sexually repressed professional. When she told me that her idea of a date was getting a bottle of red wine, some weed and staying in and watching a movie- I knew something strange was going on. My sister was seducing these men and then having her way with them in the privacy of her own bed.

I do not know why I am surprised that my sister is a slut. I come from a family that has a long lineage of sexual perversion. My grandparents and parents were swingers. I myself was addicted to prostitution and pornography for many years. Now that I am married my sex life has become more non existent but I am able to maintain some sexual relevance by a masturbation habit that never gets boring. After all the afternoons spent sitting with my sister in parks it never occurred to me that she to was acting out her deep and genetically acquired sexual perversions. I was naive not to see the motivations behind her bikini and body oil. I was also naive to distrust my own feelings of discomfort that I felt when ever she was dressed in a bikini.

I recently found out that on warm sunny days my sister goes to a particular park in the city and sits in the sun wearing nothing but her bikini. She smokes cigarettes and does all the paper work that has accumulated from her day job as a doctor. Her office has become the park and she is always trying to get me to meet her there when I am done with work. But recently I have been staying away. I do not want to face my discomfort around the fact that my sister is wearing a bikini because she is trying to hook and reel in men like a fisherman awaiting some stupid fish to bite the bait. I do not want to face the fact that my sister is a slut and possibly using me as bait to capture the jealous attention of other men. After all I am an usually handsome man and the two of us together have often been mistaken for super models. So I am staying away from her and the park for a time. I am trying to make due with this knew realization about my sister and find out if there is some sort of way that I can convince her that she is traveling down to wrong path.

The Bush Lover

I am a serious lover of vagina. Not in a misogynistic way but rather I adore vagina. At times it is almost as if vagina and I are kindred spirits. Lately I have been contemplating where this odd bond comes from. I have been trying to re-live my mothers relationship with her own vagina and my fathers relations with my mother’s vagina. Nothing imparticular stands out in my mind other than a few muddied memories.

When I was born my mother told me that my head was stuck between the lips of her vagina and the outside world. It took hours to get me through what by then had become and enlarged mass of pulsating tissue. Doctors had to work diligently to get me through my mother’s vagina and then said that I demonstrated unusual resistance for an infant my size. My birth was not traumatic but rather more like the experience of getting out of bed when you desperately want to stay in it. All day long you long for a time later that day when you can return.

My mother always used to laugh about how when she would try and breast feed me I would immediately head down into the vicinity of her crotch. I did not want to be kept away and when she would return my suckling head to her breast I would break out in terrible cries. When my mom would rest with me in a chair or on the couch I would always keep my head planted in between her legs. “It is as if you wanted to go back in to where you had come from,” my mother often tells me when I talk to her about my love of vagina’s.

My therapist helped me to see how vagina’s for me are a symbol of returning to the womb. The womb for me was a pleasant place, a place of warmth and safety. The world for me is a place of fear and chronic anxiety intermixed with moments of over whelming beauty and heart felt emotion. At times it all feels like to much….and it is during these times that I most heavily long for vagina.

I don’t necessarily like the taste of vagina nor do I enjoy the act of licking around in it with my tongue. Most of the time when I am in close proximity to my wife’s vagina I will delicately use my fingers to gently pull apart the flesh and see if there is a big enough hole there for me to slip back in through. The hole is seldom big enough to fit anything larger than a bottle cork into so I usually end up resting my head upon the warmth of her naked crotch.

I often stare at other women’s vagina’s before I even look at them in the face. This is a habit that I believe I developed at birth. I am not looking at the vagina like a pervert would but rather every time I look at the area where the vagina is located I am filled with a warmth that I am at a loss to describe. It is like a feeling that one gets when they are returning home after years and years away. Sometimes I will sit on a park bench that is close to my home and spend the entire day watching vagina’s pass by. I am a 36 year old married man and I am still searching around in the bush.

When I was a younger man my friends and I all referred to vagina’s as “bush.” “Hey man did you get some bush last night?” we would always ask one another and of course the answers were almost always “well, almost but she didn’t want to put out.” I on the other hand was fortunate. One of my first girlfriends in high school loved to let me travel around in her bush. Her name was Emily Jolly and by the time she was 15 she had already been around the bases a few times. One of my friends informed me that she had also hit several grand slams (orgies).

By the age of 15 I was already obsessed with vagina’s. My school locker was filled with cut out photographs of vagina’s. When Emily Jolly told me that I could “mess with her bush” when we had not even kissed yet I became overwhelmed with a mixture of excitement and terrible anxiety. After a few weeks of waiting to get the nerve up I finally asked her if I could “see it.” We snuck behind the gym and there she lifted up her skirt and showed me what was the most magnificent thing I had ever seen. Her vagina was huge, and was covered with so much hair and vibrant pulsation that I knew it was the place I was supposed to be.

I tried several times to fit my head into her vagina but I was never able to climb all the way in. Emily loved it when I would fit my hole fist inside her- but when I proceeded to try and fit the top of my head into her she said it hurt to much. I grew jealous of my fist and often asked it what it was like inside. After the fourth or fifth time of trying to get inside her I gave up and slowly there after our relationship began to fall apart.

My wife has always been generous with my pre-occupation with vagina. She allows no jealousy to creep in when I look at other women’s vagina’s and she lets me rest my head upon her vagina for as long as I need. Some days my desire to be inside the vagina is so strong that I will cry about never ever again being able to get back in again. My tears lubricate my wife’s vagina as I lament over and over that I feel like a man who has been cruelly locked out from the very place he belongs. My wife pats my head and tells me to not worry, that every thing will be all right, but I know the truth- I know that I am a stranger in this land.

The Birthday From Hell.

I’ll be honest- my birthday sucked. It was not anything in particular that took place but rather an over all mood. Their was languor or torpor in the air- the kind of feeling that you get when you are in the room with a group of people that you would rather not be around. Even though my entire family gathered together, I felt under appreciated, un- loved, uncomfortable and annoyed. My family is a group of people who suffer deeply. My 97 year old grandfather drank a good amount of red wine and kept telling me that no matter how “crummy” my father was- he loved me. My father tried to smile as he stuck expensive pasta in his mouth but I could see through that smile as if I was staring through glass. He does not like me, nor does he care for my wife- but he gave me $500.00 for my birthday. It is as if he is saying “go buy your self something nice so that I don’t have to feel bad.” He buys off most things in his life- including his son.

All through dinner I felt tense and suffered from chest pain. I dropped my pizza in my lap and drank much to much red wine. My mother kept making sure that my wife was going to take me home and put me to bed. I swore that I was not drunk and that I would go home and do meditation to recover from my birthday, which was filled with a pain so deep that I feel like I could scream. My mother and my wife did the best they can to smile and look appeased but no body talked to me about my life but rather it seemed as if we were all pretending that we live in a pretty world where appearance counts for every thing.

I do not know what I am going to do. If I could explain with words the feelings that I have within me I would have mastered the art of writing. But I am no master. On the outside the birthday was beautiful. Wine and cheese at my house with the family before dinner. My grandparents, parents, sister and wife all present. Then off to the restaurant for a six o’clock reservation where I met friends who would join us for a beautiful feast. We are alive and this is what matters most- I kept telling myself- but deep down I felt like I was stuck in the birthday from hell. Like I was on a ride that no body wanted to be on. I stuffed my face to take away my sorrow but I tried my hardest to smile, say cheers with every sip of wine and make sure the entire gathering was enjoying their time. Now I am home where I will now take a shower in my tears.

An Invitation To A Beheading.

I used to love sitting alone in a chair and reading a good book. Nothing brought me greater pleasure. I would read a novel a day while enjoying the background sounds of birds chirping and cats meowing. Nothing was as effective in diminishing my stress and anxiety as a good book. No matter how bad the conditions of the world or my life- the printed words on a page could lift me out from my psychological squalor and re-plant me in a space of wonderment. I look back upon these times with utter envy. I even become emotionally enraged towards the man I was in my twenties. I am not only jealous of the large chunks of time that he had to drift of into the pursuit of knowledge but I am furious that it has all gone away.

Now I cannot read a book without having to get up and do something after twenty minutes. I become aggravated, nervous and I am distracted by these demons that seem to be hovering over me and disrupting my concentration. My thoughts begin to race and I struggle to stay focused upon what ever story or non-fiction work I have chosen to read. But no sooner than I can get past a few pages is there the loud voices of little demons that whisper scary things into my ears and poke sharp objects into my chest making me fearful what might happen next. I try to tune them out and push them away with positive visualizations or a smile- but they are ferocious and do not easily relent.

I know nothing good lasts forever, but there are still so many books left that I want to read. I want to return to that time when I could read peacefully for hours, day upon day- without the little brats whispering in my ear: “is your heart beating irregularly?” or “shouldn’t you be doing something more constructive.” Some times these little demons keep shouting things at me like “watch out, watch out- your head might explode!!” or “run, run, run for your life…death is coming, ha ha!!” My own inner monologue is not loud enough to silence these intruding voices and rather than continuing to read I give up and go do something else.

I have not been able to read a book from front to back for months. These little intrusive demons are getting the best of me. They also sneak into my head when I go for walks and drive my car. If I am not constantly reciting a mantra in my mind or singing a song- they will sneak into my silence and cause me great anxiety and grief. The little demons are wearing me down, forcing me to drink more wine and taking me away from the one thing that has always been of great importance to me- my intellectual life.

Without my practice of diligent daily reading my intellectual acumen has become as watered down as a cheap cocktail. I have not been able to think or write upon the great themes of philosophical dialectics or cultural theory like I had once planned upon doing. I have not been able to write great novels that compare with the best of works by Tolstoy, Kafka or Bernhard. I have not been able to go into my career as an honorable college professor who specializes in Ontology and Samuel Beckett. Rather- to defend myself against these little demons and attempt to save my own life I have had to go towards the New Age. I have had to practice meditation, do Yoga, recite mantras and start wearing beads and stones to defend myself against negative energy. I have had to seek out healers and been told by many that I must get out of my mind and start to become more grounded in my body. The very thing that I put so much work into cultivating has become my demise. My intellect has become the very portal from which these demons can access my nervous brain causing me such scary afflictions as to make me consider taking medication. These voices and disruptions get louder and louder every day- if it continues I may send out invitations to my own beheading.

photograph by Keith Purdy.

Squeezed.

I am a man who is being squeezed from the inside out or maybe the outside in. I do not know which comes first- the outside pressure or the inside pressure, but if Karl Marx was right when he said that society determines the behavior and health of man/woman kind- then it is the the world that is squeezing me. Between the pressure that the earth is placing upon human beings to change or be eliminated and the pressure that government is placing up the individual to pay up or go broke- the outside is squeezing me like a balloon which might just burst. Between rising gas prices, food shortages, recessions, depressions, wars, deficits, unequal distribution of wealth, rising costs and poor environmental conditions, my chest feels as if there is a large leather belt buckled tight around it. My fingers and and toes pulsate and I have noticed that my face has grown pale. My vision is clouded and I can constantly feel my heart beating. The stress of the world seems to have nested upon my skinny left shoulder.

I have noticed that I am not alone. I have noticed many suffering from similar ailments and running around desperately searching for relief (yoga, meditation, eating, drinking, consuming). People do not seem to be getting along, wherever I look another relationship has ended, another person is struggling to survive and another person is experiencing some kind of transformational event that is threatening the sanity they seem to be slowly loosing. All around me people seem squeezed. I can see it in their eyes. I can hear it in their voices and I can certainly feel it in my gut. Human beings are fighting for their lives.

I have heard it said that 2012 marks a monumental time in the history of our planet. Thousands of years ago Mayans have predicted that this will be a time of great transformation that will result in change that our human minds can not currently fathom. Physics believes that the closer time gets to an end the faster it gets- time speeds up. Along with the sppeed up of time comes a kind of constriction and anxiety within all those who are subject to this elevated blood pressure of time. Animals (humans) become more frantic and stressed, things start to break down and people feel squeezed. Like there is not enough minutes in the day. Chaos can ensue.

It is my belief that the earth is experiencing symptoms of this larger breakdown. The sky is literaly falling and some see it and others have managed to distract themselves enough so as not to have to deal with it (but they still feel it). Others feel the squeeze. There is a pressure upon us that seems to be forcing us into submission, to the transformation that needs to occur within ourselves and upon this planet. Maybe being squeezed is not so bad. Maybe I can look upon my pulsating toes and finger tips as a gift from the universe in which I have accidentally found myself living. Maybe I am being forced to awaken to what is going on around me, outside of me- and change what is taking place within me. After all, physics tells me that I am just a microcosmic reflection of a larger macrocosm…if I can un-squeeze myself- than maybe I can un-squeeze the world.

A SENSE OF HUMOR FOR SALE!

I noticed a sign in the window that said “sense of humors for sale.” I thought that this was a rather awkward thing to be selling and my interests were aroused. I went into the small store that was poorly lit and had many shelves without anything upon them. The walls were bare and no one stood behind the counter. There was an eery feeling that ran through the vacant shop and as I turned around to leave I was startled by a voice from the back that said, “good afternoon young man, can I be of some assistance.” I turned around and noticed a tall skinny man who looked similar to me standing behind the counter holding an unsmoked cigarette in his hand. “Yes,” I said- “I am curious about the sense of humors that you have for sale.” “Oh yes, I believe we have one left,” he replied looking up at a shelf that had nothing upon it but dust. “Would you like to try it on,” he asked?

The dressing room was illuminated by a yellow neon light and there were no mirrors on the walls. I commented upon this to the salesman who continued to smoke his un-lit cigarette and said “we do not sell anything that you would need to see on, so why have mirrors I ask you?” He seemed a little defensive so I asked him another question. “What kinds of things do you sell in this store?” he looked at me with an expression of annoyance and replied, “why don’t you try on the sense of humor and then we will talk.”

I put the sense of humor on by rubbing a very cold cream into my chest. He wanted me to take off my pants as well and rub the cream into my legs but I felt uncomfortable getting naked in this strange environment. I rubbed the cream all over my chest and arms and then was given a cloth to wipe off the residual cream. “Give it a few moments and then you will notice a change. The cream that I gave you was a starter cream. The effects only last a few minutes. If you decide that you would like to purchase a sense of humor, we have a permanent cream,” the salesman said to me as he motioned me over towards a chair where I was supposed to sit and experience the sense of humor.

Within seconds of applying the cream I started to notice a chuckle in the back of my thought. The salesman put up various pictures on the shelves and asked me to observe these photographs. There were photographs of Hillary Clinton, villages destroyed by bombs, a soldier in Iraq carrying a very large gun and of George Bush and John MacCain. There were also photographs of prisoners being tortured, the atomic bomb, people suffering from starvation, animals stuck in small cages, two men having sex with a woman, hospitals, ghettos, a man begging for money, and a dead body that seemed to be so violated that I could not tell if the body was a man or a woman. The salesman also placed white pieces of cardboard on the shelves that had words like CANCER, DEATH, POVERTY, UNEMPLOYMENT, GREED, GLOBAL WARMING, CORRUPTION and INJUSTICE written on them. The salesman said something like “now feel free to take your new sense of humor for a test drive,” and then he walked away. I sat there alone in the cold room and observed all many photographs and words for a few seconds- and then it happened.

The laughter was so intense that I was unable to control it. I laughed like I had never laughed before in my life. There was a feeling of great release that caused all of my stress to dissipate into thin air. All things that normally were causes of stress and despair for me seemed to no longer cause me any aggravation. I looked at the photos of George Bush, Hillary Clinton, the soldier and the dead body and my normal feeling of constriction and anger seemed to vanish. All I could do was laugh. I could see the humor in the ridiculousness of human behavior and I was able to laugh at all the ways that we take ourselves SO SERIOUSLY. I saw the ignorance that most human beings seem to suffer from and all I could do was find this ignorance very funny. When I looked at the words my laughter increased because I was able to see how funny it is that human beings create the very things that they fear and do not want the most. I could not believe how funny all these realizations were to me. I saw the whole divine human comedy in which we are the actors on a stage creating our own tragedy. How fucking funny is that!! We do it all to ourselves and then think that we are free!!!

Finally, after my allotted period of time was up, the salesman returned into the room and began taking the photographs and words off the shelves. “You can take off your sense of humor now,” he said as he still held the un-lit cigarette in his hand. The moment he said this to me my laughter halted as if someone had suddenly applied brakes. I wiped the tears from my face and tried to compose myself. “When you are ready please meet me back at the counter and we can talk,” he replied as he walked into the back room. I sat in the chair and tried to assess what had just taken place. I felt what turned out to be a pulled muscle in my upper back (from laughing so hard). I took a few deep breaths and decided that I wanted to purchase a sense of humor.

“We sell all sorts of potions and creams. Not only do we sell sense of humors but we also sell, happiness, IQ’s, ambition, sex drives, maturity, wisdom, feeling successful and we just ran out of love. We sell what we can to make life more worth living or should I say to make life more enjoyable. That is our intention- however, not many seem to want to purchase what we have for sale. It is almost as if people have become so attached to their suffering that they fear change. They are addicted to the way things are because that is how they think things are supposed to be. Little do they realize that we human beings have it all wrong. We have been conditioned to suffer and we do not even know it,” the salesman said to me as he sat on a stool with his arms crossed. “How much does a sense of humor cost,” I asked? “I can sell you the cream for $75.00 and it also comes with a one month warranty. If for some reason you find that it is not working for you- you are welcome to return it and I will give you your money back. I think this is a good deal because after all a good sense of humor is priceless.”

The Man With A Moving Nipple

I know this may seem strange but I am suffering from a moving nipple. It is my left nipple and it gesticulates and twitches like a firecracker. At the moment, the uncomfortable movements of my nipple have become chronic with little intermission in-between. This discomfort has become a part of my life, another bewildering ailment that I must learn to live with.

My nipple began to move after I was in a very upsetting argument with my father. He was in a hospital bed recovering from a surgery and we managed to fight with one another about what, I cannot remember. Consumed with guilt for upsetting my father during his darkest of hours- I left the hospital in a terrible state of mind. The stress was causing my chest to constrict and I remember having difficulty breathing. It was when I turned on my car engine that I noticed my left nipple beginning to twitch. I placed my right palm upon it, as if I was trying to comfort my broken heart. I drove off into the night trying not to think about my moving nipple. Little did I know then that this was the beginning of what would become a full-blown dis- ease.

As the days passed my nipple picked up speed. The twitches would come in unpredictable spurts and I was often forced to have to sit down and try and relax when the episodes would begin. The twitches turned into strange gesticulations that would wake me up at night and force me to place an ice pack on my chest. The moments that my nipple would not be moving became like tropical vacations for my weary mind, which was being over worked by the torment of my moving nipple. The sensations were like aggravating tickles combined with what felt like pinpricks that seemed to leave me feeling like I was a man being slowly crucified from the inside out.

As the weeks passed my moving nipple became more chronic. It rested little and began to control my every waking hour. I had read some where in Greek mythology of a character that had suffered from a very similar ailment as I was. His moving nipple became so violent that it slowly began to make its way onto his forehead and announce all of his private thoughts to whomever was around. Not only did this character suffer the humiliation of having a talking nipple on the center of his forehead but also he was unable to think without the nipple revealing his every thought! Of course it is not difficult to understand why this character took his life by forcing his lover to cut off his head. Once he was decapitated the nipple did not stop talking for over an hour- it told his lover of all his previous affairs!! Ever since I have read this tale I have been terribly worried that my chronic gesticulating nipple is going to break free from its root and make its way onto my forehead!! If the world were able to hear my every thought I would certainly loose everything that I love!!!

Last week I visited a Doctor who knew not what to make of my condition. He told me that he had never seen anything like this before. He recalled reading in a medical journal many month back about someone who had suffered from a similar ailment for most of his life- but he could not remember which medical journal it was in. The Doctor wanted to put me on some medication to see if he could relax the tissue but the side effects for the medication seemed to great to take the risk. My Doctors conclusion was that I was suffering from a stress-induced ailment that was causing calcium build up around the nerves of my nipple tissue-, which is putting pressure upon my nipple. The ensuing twitching and gesticulation is the result of this pressure. If it did not go away in a month he recommends surgery.

In the mean time I still have to live in this world. I have to make a living so that I can continue to have a roof over my head. As much as I want to hide away in my closet and write poetic lamentations all day- I cannot. I have a mouth to feed.

It is not difficult for you to see my ailment, or what I have come to call my crucifixion. There is what appears to be a constant vibration and rotation under my left shirt pocket. When people notice this they immediately ask me if I am okay. I tell them that I am fine, that what they are witnessing is an annoying muscle spasm. My high school students make fun of me and refer to me as a freak. They all want to touch my nipple and when I let them there are loud uproars of “EEEEEEWWWW,” or “That’s so disgusting!!!!” Whenever I go out into public people stare at my nipple as if they had never seen anything like this before. I feel like an aberration, like all eyes are condemning me to constant judgment. Now I know what it must feel like to be a big-breasted woman.

The only thing that I can do is learn to live with my ailment. Every night before bed I put a chamomile cream upon my nipple, which seems to relax it a bit. I also wrap my chest in a towel before bed, which seems to reduce the annoying vibrations of my moving nipple, allowing me to get some sleep. There is nothing that I can really do (besides having my nipple surgically removed) other than accept my current situation. I see this condition as an opportunity for me to deal with the various causes in my life rather than the effects. If I can learn to change the stressors that have caused my moving nipple than maybe over time my nipple will stop moving. I believe it was Pascal, Socrates or Emerson or maybe Nietzsche- who said that an unexamined life is a life not worth living, so I am examining my self- trying to understand the various ways that I have caused my own dis-ease. Maybe, through this process of self-examination, I will eventually become the only man who can set myself free.

No More Awards, Please!!

I just received notification for an award that I received today. The award is for ” Blog With Least Amount Of Weekly Readers” and I must say that I am surprised. I have always thought that having ten to twelve readers or “hits” a day was fairly decent. I was proud of my weekly rating of around seventy hits. But when I received this award for “Blog With The Least Amount Of Weekly Readers,” I did some research. I found that successful blogs receive over 10,000 hits a day and mediocre ones receive at least 500. 500!!!!! Since I have started this blog I have gained many awards for things like “Most Ridiculous Content,” “Most Depraved Blogger,” “Blogger In Need Of Most Psychological Assistance,” “Least Commented Upon Blog,” and so forth- but this most recent award has really opened my eyes! I mean I have been writing, laboring and living in the dark thinking that ten or so hits a day was decent!

All I had to do to receive the reward for “Blog With Least Amount Of Readers” was push a button and what I won was three private phone consultation with a blogging service that could help me acquire more readers. It is a pity prize, a reward that is intended to patronize the awardee. So I will not follow through with receiving the free consultations but I will ask one final time to Please….stop giving me these humiliating rewards!! I write not to be awarded but rather to release my numerous thoughts and emotions into the digital void hoping that some semblance of a life form will answer with various solutions for my existence here on earth. Some days, I stay away from this blog because I am afraid of what I might say and instead decide to keep it all in. Now that I know that 10 or so hits a day is nothing to be proud of I may change my strategy…but like I wrote in the awardee comment box when I accepted this last award “It is not about quantity…but rather quality. If I can affect only one reader with the things I write than I would rather have one reader than 10,000.” But Please….to whomever this may concern- NO MORE AWARDS, please! These awards are causing me to question why I spend my time blogging and taking a toll upon what little self confidence I have left (please read my last post entitled “The Trappings Of My Mind” for more information upon my psychological state at the moment).

The Trappings Of My Mind

My mind has been doing things without my permission for the past few years. It began with very subtle thoughts such as “you should steal this,” “you are a failure, “you can’t breath,” or “you might have this disease.” I tried not to pay much attention to the workings of my own mind by smoking weed and drinking two bottles of red wine every day. Whatever it took to put these mischievous thoughts out of my mind- I did with a passion. But life went along as it normally tends to do and everything changed including the thoughts in my mind.

Now I realize that all human beings suffer from the condition of negative thinking but I believe there are variations of effect. Some people are able to immediately transform their negative thoughts into positive ones and others are able to ignore the thoughts that enter the confines of their own mind. Others, who are not so fortunate- may be dominated, overcome by the negative thoughts that their minds generate. They look towards food, drink, chemical substances, television, film or novels to distract themselves from the negative thoughts that have a tendency to colonize their minds. These distractions work for an allotted period of time but the negative thoughts seem to return with a fervor and force that no amount of inoculation can put down.

This is where I have found myself these days. I have met with nueroscientists, psychiatrists, chiropractors, and healers all to try and garner some support around gaining some control of my own mind. I have done daily exercises to turn down the left side of my brain and turn up the right side. I stand on my head every day for twenty minutes and I eat alot of fish which has been said to balance out the right and left hemispheres of the brain. But still at different times of the day the negative thoughts come at me like a wave which is determined to drag me under. What is a man to do when his own mind is working against him?

The past two years I have made many changes in my lifestyle. I no longer steal, cheat , lie or act without a motivation to be loving (most of the time). I exercise every day and I make every attempt that I can to sing or hum when I walk and to meditate when I sit. My hope has been that by using my mind in positive ways the negative thoughts would start to fade away like fog around noon time. Instead, the better and more hole I become- the more intense is the volume of my negative thoughts. It is like there is a devil in between my brain cells.

Nowadays, my negative thoughts seem to have been mainly centered around death. Every time I get comfortable or relaxed there appears in my mind an agitating thought about my own death. I see myself dying in various fashions and the thoughts are so vivid that the ensuing apprehension and fright stimulates my heart to beat rapidly. My body constricts and I have to fight against the impulse towards flight. The negative thoughts have become so frequent and strong that I have almost rendered myself powerless in controlling them. When a negative thought comes in which I see myself having a heart attack or being hit by a car, all I can do is take deep breaths and tell myself to relax. What is a man to do when the most dangerous place on earth is within his own mind?

When I sit in meditation, drive my car, go for walks or do just about anything- I am filled up with these intrusive negative thoughts. They scare me out of being ambitious in my life and instead I feel pity for the man I have become. I have grown depressed and conquered by these thoughts which have invoked a silent fear which resides just beneath my chest. There is really no place that is safe for me so I have taken up prayer (I am still trying to figure out to whom I am speaking). I eat less and take foot baths before I go to bed in the hopes that this mini baptism will perform the miracle of eliminating these negative thoughts. But instead my mind is a living entity that has its own set of rules which I am to weak to defend against. It is like the nueroscientist told me “as a result of many years of suffering from anxiety, worry and hypochondria-sis your left brain is at war with your right brain.” “What can I do about this?” I asked him. “The only thing that I know of is prayer,” he sternly replied.

So I pray, I sing, I stand on my head and I try to act with an intention towards love rather than hate (most of the time). I am doing all that I can to gain control of the workings of my own mind without giving myself over to medication, surgery or a Buddhist monastery. I work hard not to manifest the fears that I carry around inside my head and I have even started volunteering some of my time (to keep my mind off my thoughts) to help suicidal illiterate soldiers who have lost limbs in the war learn how to normally function in society. Sometimes when I talk to these veterans about the war which is raging in my own terrified mind they seem to be the only people who understand what is going on. “Ya, it is like a kind of post traumatic stress disorder that you are suffering from,” one soldier told me who had lost both legs in Iraq. ” “Rather than fighting in an actual war you are suffering from the terror that your own mind is generating…you are in a perpetual trap,” the soldier said. I could not have agreed more with his comment and to this day all I think about is how I can survive the trappings of my own mind. “What can I do?” I always ask but no one seems to know. “If only there were more answers, I would not be in the situation I am,” one suicidal soldier replied.

“Beat It”

“Do you like to sing in the shower?” one of my students asked me in the middle of class. It was an innocent question and little did I know that my reply might cost me my job. The class was being observed by three education bureaucrats, who sat in the corner of the classroom with laptops on their legs, into which they took notes about my class and my teaching abilities. The school I work at is trying to receive more funding from the state so the bureaucrats came to evaluate the school and see if it was worthy of extra funding.

“Of course I do,” I said. “What song?” she asked. “Beat It,” I innocently replied with out thinking first how my response would be interpreted. It was an honest reply after all- I have been singing “Beat It” in the shower for most of my adult life. I did not realize that I may have made a fatal mistake until I noticed the hanging jaws and the looks of dismay on all three of the state bureaucrat’s faces. They looked like three people who had just seen a ghost.

“The song by Micheal Jackson, you know beat it, beat it…no one wants to be defeated,” I sang as the class laughed and made all kinds of comments like “I’ll bet you beat it it in the shower” and “do you have a thriller after you beat it?” Trying to silence the class while digging myself out of the hole that I had unintentionally dug for myself I continued to explain that it gave me great pleasure to sing Micheal Jackson songs in the shower. ”They are just songs!!!” I said trying to imply that the thought of masturbation in the shower never occurred to me. One of my students, of course had to shout out- “I’ll bet it brings you great pleasure…… Teacher.”

For the rest of the class period I was terribly uncomfortable. The three bureaucrats in the corner did not look at me once and seemed to be no longer writing things in their laptop computers. I tried every which I knew how to prove that I was an exemplary Teacher- rather than some perverted pedophile- but I am afraid that the hole was to deep to dig my way out of. Students continued to heckle me about beating it in the shower while I lectured about the bad luck that seemed to bring about Romeo and Juliet’s death. Little did I know that I was also talking about the bad luck which might just cost me my job.

After school I was called into the Principle’s office where he sat me down with an abrupt and angry gesture of his hand. Immediately he looked into my eyes and said, “the state administrators told me about the sexually suggestive remark you made in class today and the ensuing inappropriate remarks that your comments provoked in the students. The administrators are very concerned about the level of Teachers that I hire at this school because of your suggestive comment. Now we may not receive the money that we need from the state unless you are willing to be subjected to investigation by the state to guarantee that you are suitable to be teaching our children.” I tried to explain to him that Micheal Jackson was one of my favorite performers and that I really did sing Micheal Jackson songs in the shower. I tried to tell him that my reply had nothing to do with masturbation- which was the farthest thing from my mind. He replied, “as a Teacher I expect you to be able to draw the boundaries between appropriate things to say and inappropriate things to say. You are a role model for the students and I trust that you have the skill to think before you speak.” I wanted to say that we should be able to be open and honest about everything rather than walking around on egg shells and deciding what is appropriate or inappropriate for others- instead I put my head down and apologized for my lack of tact.

While walking to my car I could hear students singing “beat it, just beat it,” while they made suggestive sexual motions with their bodies. One of my students yelled at me, “hey Teacher don’t beat it in the shower too much- you might grow hair on your palms.” And then there was a loud sound of group laughter. I got into my car and wanted to get away from the school as soon as possible. In my head were the final words of the principle who said, “Myself and the board of directors are going to re-evaluate whether or not you are going to be kept on as a Teacher or given a suspension until the investigation. I know that you are a good man but I question your ability to be a role model.” As I left the school property and turned onto the main road heading in the direction of my house- I started to cry. “Why was I always the one???” I repeated over and over as if I was seeking an answer from the universe. Then to calm my nerves I turned on the radio, which ironically enough was playing a cover version of Micheal Jackson’s “Beat It.” It was being performed by a high school choir from Nebraska.

Teaching Naked.

For those of you who know who David Sedaris is, I thought you might want to know that I have been reading his short stories to my ninth and tenth grade English classes. The response that I have recieved from the students is one that I could have never for seen. Not in my most wide-eyed imagination could I have imagined the effects that David Sedaris’s various short stories could have upon a very simple and conservative high school in Richmond, California. I am inclined to think that the worst is yet to come.

After I read my students the first short story from David Sedaris’s collection of short stories that is entitled “Naked,” the response was one of disbelief. The students thought that David was a “weirdo,” but for some reason they wanted to hear more. We discussed the nature of repression and the daily prohibitions that are set up to restrict their youthful minds from traveling into certain “inappropriate” terrains. After I read them a second short story the feelings shared by all the students were mutual- David Sedaris was writing about things that they thought about but were not allowed to talk about- or else they would get grounded or kicked out of school. After I read my students the short story entitled “Cyclops”- the students were hooked. The forces of liberation were spun into action and there was money being placed into my hands by students who begged me to buy them a copy of this book.

I was apprehensive. I did not mind reading these stories out loud in class, but I felt that buying them copies which they would own, might be taking to great of a risk. Not only could this action set in motion the early corruption of young conditioned minds but also if the administration found out that I was buying students David Sedaris books I may loose my job. So I photo copied various stories for students and soon these photo copies were selling for ten dollars a piece on the underground high school black market. Students tried every which way to steal the copy of the original book from my bag and a couple of times they were successful and I had to chase them down. A fever had become full blown and the cause of it was David Sedaris.

I have had to stop reading these stories to students. I feel my job may be in jeopardy. Since I started reading the stories more students have been expelled from school than in the entire history of the school. Students have started smoking and drinking booze while at school. They have also been running around the school with various articles of clothing taken off while screaming ridiculous things at the top of their young lungs. Students have started swearing at Teachers more and one Teacher quit because students would not stop asking her what her vagina smelled and looked like. I am afraid that every thing that these young minds have had to repress in order to stay in school and not get into trouble at home has come out with such passionate force because of David Sedaris’s short stories. These stories have unlocked something primordial in these students that has even caused one of my best students to rip off her shirt in the middle of class and scream, “Teacher, lets get naked!”

Like my students, I am also subjected to a good dose of unhealthy repression. In order to maintain a legitimate position in society one has little choice unless they are wealthy and or famous. So I keep my sins mostly to myself and hope that my lusts and desires will simply drown under the mass of cerebral tissue that keep them hidden beneath. But when my student ripped off her shirt and yelled out “lets get naked,” something primordial within me exploded and I to experienced a coming out that had a force and volition that not even I could apprehend. “What the hell, why not!!” I screamed out with a feeling of freedom that I had not felt since I was young. I then proceeded to rip off my clothes as my entire tenth grade English class joined me and got naked.