We're All Damaged

by Matthew Norman

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a snob. I don’t have a problem with Applebee’s per se. But I think we can all agree, as a civilized society, that lives shouldn’t change there. Significant things shouldn’t begin or end at Applebee’s. You shouldn’t walk into Applebee’s as one thing and then leave as something else entirely.

Never trust someone who isn’t miserable at least half of the time. That’s my motto.”

We hold on to the shitty things the tightest, for some reason. And this is the shittiest thing ever.

As my boyfriend Kurt Vonnegut used to say, ‘If this isn’t nice, what is?’”

She’s like a password that I haven’t totally memorized yet.

Maybe this is how Catholics do it. We accept a certain level of unhappiness—like we have an unhappiness equilibrium built into our brains—and then, one day, we drop dead.

I suspect scotch is something you have to convince yourself to enjoy, like sushi or the last few Radiohead albums, but I can’t deny the result is nice.

Mixed in with all of its silly bullshit, Facebook is the literal manifestation of all our regrets, looping and looping, for free, on our computers and phones. People who should be gone and safely out of our lives forever are there again, one cryptic little glimpse at a time, reminding us of all the things we should or shouldn’t have done.