The Brownies of My Life

Do you guys know about avoidance tactics?  You know, the things you do (consciously and subconsciously) to help you get out of a situation that causes your brain anguish and discomfort.  Usually used when people are experiencing disgust, fear, anxiety, depression, etc.

WELL GUESS FREAKIN' WHAT?!

This is one, right now.  This very second.  This second too.  And this one.  Aaaaaaaaand--ok I'll stop.

You guys know that I'm supposed to be studying for my motivation and emotion test tomorrow so I'm using justification by using vocabulary and actual approaches to emotion while writing this.  See how I earlier explained avoidance with different approaches to emotion?  Gah haha, I'm so sneaky.  I'm secretly making you more learn-ed in the psychology field.  Kind of like how I make baked goods and give them to all my friends to make them fat  really really happy. Golly, I'm the best.

So since I'm avoiding more emotion jargon (and I will be throwing more into here), I obviously have something I'd like to spew out onto my laptop.  No, no more vomit on the laptop tonight, just finger taps.

Just yesterday afternoon, I had the chance to attend a homecoming of one of my good friends as he returned from his LDS mission.  Now, I often find these gatherings (apart from the religious aspect) to basically be big high school reunions.  Which got me thinking about how grown up I am.  Or the complete opposite.  Yeah, that one, definitely that one.

You know, I often look at myself and say, "Damn Ryan, you're lookin' mighty fine in that sweater vest today."

"Why thank you me, but you really need to learn some boundaries and stop stroking my knee."

 "Also, Ryan, look at how mature you are, you're the epitome of maturity with your well organized life and such."

"...Please stop talking to me like that, me."

Sometimes, I find that I put myself on some sort of snobbish pedestal and everything underneath it are the things deemed "too immature."  Things like going streaking in a cemetery, telling poop jokes, eating a whole bag of chips, and laughing at a kid falling down  (Think about it, you know it's a little funny. I heard you do a silent guffah.).

How did I get to this point? Thinking about it, I guess it would be the environment in which I am currently residing in.  Telling a poop joke in class is usually deemed inappropriate by my peers, especially if my mouth is full of a bag of Garden Salsa Sun Chips.  But are they really as distinguished as I think they are?

Which brings us back to Sunday.  Surrounded by my old friends, I found myself giggling at a kid falling on a trampoline and telling dirty jokes.  I FIT GYNECOLOGIST INTO A SENTENCE. Now tell me when that happens without awkward tones and a lot of use of the word "it" and "it's" involved.

I'm adding it to the list of accomplishments I have by my bed. The other two are knit a scarf and not slap a kid in class yet.  Shooting for the stars you guys.

I enjoyed all of this as well.  This wasn't some pained activity like watching a Kristen Stewart movie, but an more along the lines of baking a pan of brownies, waiting approximately three seconds for it to cool, and pouring the entire thing down my esophageal tract.

Ryan, doesn't that hurt?

Well yes, it does.  But here's the thing: As much as I love eating an entire pan of brownies, I can't do it everyday.  Along with the obvious obesity/diabetes problems I would probably incur (along with my burned throat), I would have to have a brownie fund as to not go into serious brownie debt.  Then the brownie mafia would come after me and bake me to a gooey perfection before breaking my legs.

...so I got a little off track there, but I think I understand myself.  Being goofy for a little bit is fun, even beneficial, but I can't do it forever. Where would I get if I didn't take any situation seriously? I would start to have diabetes of the life.

But these guys brought me back to that dirty 15 year old I was.  Or wasn't, I guess I get to be him now, I can't really remember.  We all got to join together and soak up each other's immaturity and realize how grown-up we aren't.  All of us were figuring out how our lives were going to play out and YOU KNOW WHAT? Our slight immaturity helped us to downplay life's oncoming shits.  Grad school applications are less daunting, job choices seem endless, and I can still eat anything I want. We all got to be Peter Pan for a time.

Until we had to return to reality.

I guess I'm just trying to illustrate how moderation is key.  We need to appraise the situation, deem it appropriate for whatever behavior we would like to exhibit, and then exhibit that behavior.  Paraphrasing Magna Arnold, we can appraise the situation or object, and assess what costs and benefits we can personally get from it.*

 Me every Friday night. Victory.

But knowing myself, I have a nasty sweet tooth that I haven't outgrown yet. So you know I'm going to down a pan of social "brownies" whenever I get the chance. Then I'm going to rub my chocolate stained face all over you and laugh like a kid seeing a dog poop on a baby.

Haha. Poop.




*BAM.  Look at me keep sneaking my test material into this post.  Like. A. Psychology. Boss (But-not-licensed-in-any-way-or-affiliated-with-the-APA-kind-of-boss).

Well, I'm Not Dead Yet: Part 3

Hey Ryan, I'm getting really sick of reading your story, when are you going to write something not pre-written?

 Really?  Well that's too bad and probably not for a little while.  I'll be honest and say that currently I'm a little stressed from over-reflecting on my mind (a rather scary place similar to Mordor/Dante's Inferno/7th level of hell) so at least I'm giving you something.

 The least I can say is it proves that I'm not just wasting away on my couch watching Star Trek and spooning peanut butter from the jar.  I'm doing all that WITH my laptop typing this.  Eventually I'll go to the store as well, NOT in sweatpants.  Wow Ryan, you're setting such high goals for yourself.  I know guys, next thing you know I'll be curing cancer/saving whales/learning to longboard.

Ugh, that all made my fingers exhausted.  If only I can reach ctrl+v....

Part 3:

Chapter 7: Coming to Terms with Coming Out

            Not that my sexuality is a secret by now, but why wouldn’t I want to explain how it happened?

            Picture this, a green Subaru speeding along a freeway with two passengers.  It’s probably about 5 o’clock and the sky is slowly starting to turn orange.  One passenger is severely stressed.

            Yes, that passenger is me.  You see, a couple days prior I had agreed with my friends Sara and Austin that I’d tell my mother I was gay while we traveled to Cedar City.  The thoughts that entered my mind were something like these:

·         We’re going to crash when I tell her, she’ll swerve the car and we’re going to die

·         I think I’m going to pee my pants

·         Shit, then I’m going to be stuck in the car in awkward silence, I know it

·         I could always just open the door and roll out, that’s a better alternative

·         What if I just stayed quiet, she’ll figure it out eventually

·         We’re going to crash, I know it

·         Death, I’m dead, I’m dead.

·         She has to know, I played with My Little Pony’s

·         What’s the worst that could happen? Oh right, car crash.

·         Pull it together

Fortunately for me, I opened my big mouth and some words came out.  Namely three words that took about a half hour to say.

            “Mom…I’m gay…”

Well, I'm Not Dead Yet: Part 2

Just a quick note about my "book."  I wrote it really incoherently and acted like there were chapters before some chapters so that's why it might sound strange.*  So here we go ya'll, on to part 2.

Chapter 1: You Have to Start Somewhere

            We’d all like to say that we grew up as the kid down the street.  You know, the one who was good at sports, attractive, good in school, and volunteered at the animal shelter in their spare time.  You obviously must think that this fine description of a human being must have been me.  No?  Yeah, I don’t either. 

            Instead of Adonis child picture a gangly, lanky, glasses-wearing, recluse who was rather good at Pokémon in his basement, who also enjoyed sewing and cooking.  Now we’re getting somewhere in the ballpark.

            Try as my father did, I never excelled in sports (soccer mainly due to my Bolivian heritage) and was that nerdy quiet kid in school who the teachers loved and other kids associated with.  It definitely wasn’t much to start from, but at least it was something.

            Despite my obvious street cred, there were others who didn’t express joy in my general company which takes us to a warm spring day in 5^th grade.

            Even though I had had my best friend move at least a state away from my city consecutively for the past five years (yes, five friends moved away from me in elementary school, can you say popular?) I had started to break out my hermit-like shell and try and make a new friend.  Like me, Joe** was gangly and awkward and generally speaking, it doesn’t take much to constitute friendship for 11 year olds.  We spent many a day looking at clouds or him playing basketball while I did the best I could to fake it.  What more could I ask for?  A trust fund, but at this time I wasn’t concerned with such things.  What I got instead was the baggage that came along with my new friend. 

            Since I was now at a New Elementary school (the previous had been closed and turned into a deaf and blind school) I was easy prey for those with low self-esteem.  Joseph had been attending this school from the beginning of his education meaning he the other kids and had previous friends.  One in particular was Sam.  Maybe it was my large Harry Potter-like glasses or my obvious disinterest and lack of talent at sports that enticed him to choose me as his personal entertainment, I’ll really never know.  What I did know was that Sam did not like me and due to some cosmic joke, he and Joe were rather good friends.

            Well one day as I usually did on a lot of school days, I invited Joe over to my house to “hang-out” since cool kids “hung-out,” they didn’t “play.” 

“Hey is it all right if Sam comes with me?” He said on the phone when I called.

“Oh…yeah sure, why not?” I replied, probably some small twinge of terror/death in my voice.

How could my best friend be bringing my worst enemy to my house?  I’d just have to deal with it I figured. 

Some minutes passed as I awaited their arrival until I finally heard the doorbell ring.  I turned the door, saw both their faces, pushed the screen door open and was then suddenly pelted in the face.  I sat there confused as I saw a little piece of my paper fall to the ground and my friend and nemesis running away laughing.  “What just happened?” I thought to myself and then decided to open the paper on the ground.  In crude 11 year old writing was one word scribbled hastily:

LOSER

*To clarify: I jump around with the chapter numbers since I felt like that's where they'd be in the book if I actually wrote a book.  This is chapter 1.  I felt like it should have been first, so it is.  One thing that frustrated one reader of my story was also how it abruptly ended a lot.  Explanation for that: It's more like a preview of a book than an actual book.  I couldn't just keep writing forever people, loosen your choker necklaces.  What?  No one wears those anymore?  Oh, that was the 90's you say... *rolls into the street*

**I've changed the names from my original story just in case you might actually know these people.  I think it's a common courtesy.

Well, I'm Not Dead Yet

I recently had the pleasure in psychology of pretending that I had written a book based on my life story.  Now, the original instructions were to pick a title and four of the chapter titles and then explain each.  So, doing what I do, I pretended to start writing a book where I'd write a small portion of each chapter and then move onto another one.  To me it described everything much better than saying, "I picked this title for my book because blah blah blah."  It's just what I do people...

So here we start with the explanation for my book title, or I guess the foreword you'd find inside the little cover jacket if you happened to be looking in there.  I bet there's also a nice little picture of me posing with my head resting on both my hands looking serenely off into the distance...majestic.

Well, I'm Not Dead Yet:
A Collection of Short Stories

What Have You Just Opened?

Some may say that the title of this book is morbid and sad.  I’m going to try and convince you otherwise. 

“Oh, he must be such a tortured soul to only be contemplating about his imminent death in his writing,” some might say as they glance by the cover on their weekly Barnes and Noble coffee run (we all know you’re just pretending to read).  “People need to write more about happy things, like the return of the Confederate states,” one Southern Jehovah’s witness might say.  “I heard she’s really tall,” could be the thoughts of Cindy, mother of 5, soccer mom, and driver of a mini-van.  Maybe the only reason you bought this book is because the shiny cover embossed on the front caught your eye and you just happened to open it.  I’m assuming your thoughts were something along the lines of, “If the insides are as good as the outside, then at least I won’t be reading shit about a vampire.”  Heaven forbid someone referred you to this book—Lord knows my mother didn’t. 

          

  “Why is this book about your death then?”  Well see, that’s the thing, it’s not; It’s about my life and the fact that I’m not dead.  Throughout my life I found myself repeating this phrase through most situations and time and time again, it’s fitting.  Can this apply to only bad situations?  Of course not.  This phrase is as ambiguous as that slutty girl you knew in high school, it just goes either way.  Through all the times, light and dark, I could always remind myself that my body was still breathing, whether I liked it or not.  Overall, it really means that if I’m going to still be alive, then I’m going to do something with it.  Through all the narcissism, pleasure, pride, guilt, fear, stress, and pain, I survived.

        

So here we go, down into the abyss, as to why I’m (surprisingly) not dead yet.