ba-roke

I’ve been a little self conscious about reviving the text portion of my tumblr account in recent months, but after seeing Iron Man III, I realized that I, too,  should be allowed to ramble on freely without consequence. 

It occurs to me to contact e-life right now as I basically use an artichoke to thumb mayonaise into my mouth and wash it down with whatever “Crabbles Alcoholic Ginger Beer” actually is. As I near the heart of my artichoke, which I dread because this means I have to get up and find a knife and actually participate in some sort of plant dissection to receive more food, I’m thinking about happiness.

I have an interesting experience with the value of and display of happiness being a bi-costal american. On the east hand, we have the clinical and perpetual state of dissatisfaction which drives the population suicidally along their career paths. On the west hand, we have the seemingly blissfully unaware group that, to me, seem the to float happily on the wings of altruism and good vibes. So, what do I do as a born and raised cynic who just now is learning about positivity? 

So far I’ve been doing that whole “fake it ‘til I make it” philosophy which, frankly, only goes so far. Not redeemable for the following occasions:

- acting like you’ve seen Girls if you haven’t

- marriage

- not over cooking meat

- enjoying Iron Man III

The point being, what does “make it” even mean after you fake through these nonsense situations?

So, there’s that theory. And, frankly, people know when you’re faking it, too. It’s almost like you faked sex if you fake a conversation. They look at you like, “that was hardly believable, I could have been eating food by now”.

At least that’s how I feel. Fakers guilt.

So what else is there to do?

There’s always overcompensation.

For example. Issues of all different varieties have been rearing their ugly heads these days for me, and instead of stopping to acknowledge “my feelings” I end up over-sharing, or over-caring. 

Since I work with children it’s really easy to over-care and have that be a good thing. I can just pick them up and hug them and pat their little heads until I feel like I’ve really accomplished something. Lately, I’ve sort of clung onto their dependence on me for dear life. I pick them up on the playground and they go along with it for a second and then say, “Ok Miss Caroline, put me down” and I’m all, “NO I”M NOT DONE DROWNING OUT MY CHILDHOOD YET”. 

Overcompensating like that.

Then there’s alcohol. Oh wait, no there isn’t; a warning on the label of some popular SSRI’s being, “AVOID ALCOHOL”.

Eh. I avoid it in the same way that I avoid over indulging.

I’m now licking mayonaise off of my fingers and realizing that, after unsuccessfully dissecting that artichoke, I have lost interest in cooking dinner or figuring out where the cap to the mayonaise jar is. (This one time, when I was little and living in South Carolina, I watched one of my cousins eat a mayonaise sandwich and I was like, “whathafa…” but now…I guess I get it.)

Happiness is received through all sorts of different exciting outlets for me; familial harmony, romantic stuff, spicy-but-not-too-spicy-foods, handcrafted cocktails, the lingering promise of a puppy someday, and New Yorker articles featuring now dead paranoid schizophrenic radical feminists. Wait, what? 

The last article I read, “Death of a Revolutionary” about now dead Shulasmith Firestone, was a relative non-experience for me until I read a quoted passage of one of Firestone’s books in regards to family which states the following, “Unless revolution uproots the basic social organization, the biological family-the inculum through which psychology of power can always been smuggled-the tapeworm of exploitation will never be annihilated….Pregnancy is barbaric…like shitting a pumpkin” Then the New Yorker goes on to paraphrase one of her hypothetical new family models in which “She envisioned a world in which women might be liberated by artificial reproduction outside the womb; in which collectives took the place of families; and in which children were granted “the right of immediate transfer” from abusive adults….though many of Firestone’s ideas altered through a “cybernetic” computer revolution-have proved prescient” 

She was schizophrenic? Huh.

Well, at least I know that good ol’ Shulie was probably failing at happiness way more flamboyantly than I am.

And so is that where I am in my deeply philosophical understanding of happiness? Comparing myself to dead people to prove that I’m not so unhappy with my life choices?

Yes. For now yes. Until that blessed day when I have to “shit a pumpkin”. But until then, I can sit in my e-tower, licking very real food condiments off of my digits, and enjoy the fact that I’m okay with that whole sentence I am just now finishing.