We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.

by Samantha Irby

The Bachelorette proves that men are as petty and vapid and ridiculous as women are made to seem. They’re just better at hiding it, because they get to be Real Men and sulk and brood and bottle everything up. These dudes are backstabbing drama queens

Maybe in this life you get all kinds of soulmates, multiple people who vibrate at the same level you do.

Every time I would get close enough to watch that little succubus stumble around her cage and search blindly for some unsuspecting food source to latch on to, she would sense my presence and stop cold, turning her thimble-size head and sightless eyes in my direction before emitting a tiny hiss.

A lot of us are living like this, right? Taking cabs and ordering takeout Thai on payday, then walking the three blocks to work from the train with a bologna sandwich in our bags a week or so later? How does anyone do anything? Or, better than that, how does anyone do both the shit they want to do with their money at the same time they’re doing the shit they need to?

I want to be one of those people who feels satisfied when I pay my bills rather than cheated out of whatever frivolity was sacrificed in their place.

I don’t know how you can possibly have joy in your life when you do shit like “balance your checkbook” or “pay your minimum balance on time,” and if doing those awful-sounding things means I can’t see four movies in one weekend, then I don’t ever want to do them. I can’t go to the library. I mean, first of all, what if someone else checked out the book I want? I’m not the only one reading the book reviews in the Times, so now I gotta put my name on a list after your aunt Karen and my elementary school principal, then just, like, wait for them to be finished? I would rather be dead.

The thing about fucking dirtbags is that no matter how much cologne you splash on them, they’re always going to be fucking dirtbags.

This is a luxury, you know, being spared the day-to-day deterioration of someone you love. I really wish I could’ve hugged that nurse.

That’s the thing about being an inside person who enjoys the occasional wardrobe splurge; you gotta be cool with modeling it for the cat and hoping the delivery dude from Apart Pizza Company assumes you just got home from work.

Not being able to deal with your life is humiliating. It makes you feel weak.

Sitting in that hospital bed, talking with a dude who was fresh out of medical school and looked like he was playing doctor with his father’s stethoscope looped around his neck, I was so fucking embarrassed, ashamed to be talking to him about being so mad and so sad most of the time. Letting Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman down by talking about my silly little feelings.

When you’re a kid it’s sometimes just easier to go along with other people’s definitions of who you are. They’re adults, right? So they’re smarter?

I would like to meet the person who gets a medication to fix a for-real fucking problem and is like, “Hold up, appetite changes?! Unacceptable, doctor dude.” And then, like, dramatically flushes all the pills down the toilet before collapsing into an anxiety-ridden stress puddle. I will take anything, at any time, if a doctor tells me it will repair whatever is wrong with me in that instant.

All this might be easier if I could punch something, but I’m not a punch-something person. I’m a “sit in the dark in the bathroom with a package of sharp cheddar cheese slices” person. Except I don’t even really eat cheese anymore. Plus I can’t fight. I’m soft, man. And I don’t have any answers. The world is scary and terrible and people out here don’t want Obamacare to fix a paper cut let alone offer some discounted mental health care, so what is left for us to do? Talk about it? Stop being afraid of it? Shut down those who want to dismiss us as fragile or crazy?!

Oh, here’s something fun—I don’t care what diet you’re on or what herbal supplements you take. If they work for you, I’m happy. I don’t know if it’s something about me, or if people walk around just dispensing unfounded medical advice to everyone they’ve ever met with a health issue, but more often than I’m comfortable with, some asshole with a high school diploma wants to sit me down and talk at me about how they can cure my wretched-gut disease. There’s always some bag of dicks with a beer in his hand, a triple cheeseburger on his plate, and a cigarette in his mouth trying to talk to me about healthy eating. And with zero trace of irony! I appreciate the effort, I really do, but this shit is autoimmune and I have a gastroenterologist. If all I had to do was put down this taco and take those herbs your grandma swears by, I’d already be cured. Thanks, though.

Our family tree is so goddamn sparse that if you shake it you’d probably start a fire.

This feels safe and steadfast and predictable and secure. It’s boring as shit. And it’s easily the best thing I’ve ever felt.

Helen lived at the hospital for a few weeks while our decaying apartment was torn apart and put back together again. She loved it, man. The techs would just leave the cage door open and let her walk around like a queen, one who occasionally let her subjects pet her lustrous fur. Helen didn’t give a fuck about dogs and would just sit there, daring them, as they were brought back for shots or treatment.

I spent too much time trying to mold myself to fit the romantic ideals of humans who proved themselves unworthy of that effort, and I regret it. Never again will I be with someone who is unwilling to accept me as I am, or who has any desire to mold me into something that makes me uncomfortable.

My mind is a never-ending series of shame spirals. Do I have to go to that? And if I do agree to go to that, who else is going? In what capacity do these people know me?