Quietly Hostile

by Samantha Irby

Have compassion for myself ? But I’m a dumbass who sucks at everything and is unworthy of love.

It was my first-ever everyone-in-attendance-is-at-least-thirty-nine-years-old concert, and can I say I never want to see a young-people show again? Dude started right on time at 7:00 p.m. and played for two and a half solid hours and then everyone quietly filed out to their minivans in an orderly fashion. I mean, it might’ve still been light out. That is the ideal concertgoing experience! I wore soft pants with an elastic waistband and an official DMB sweatshirt I ordered from the merch website, and I didn’t feel underdressed or out of place for even a minute. Your dad drank three twenty-seven-dollar lite beers and danced to “What Would You Say” with every ounce of energy in his body, his L.L.Bean fleece jumping and gyrating as if it had a life of its own, and I sat behind him with tears in my eyes, overwhelmed to be at a show with hundreds of people who were likely on the same arthritis medication I am.

I was talking to a man (first mistake), reminiscing about old shit (that’s a trap, never do it),

QUIETLY HOSTILE is how I would describe my public personality; I am mild-mannered and super polite, but just beneath the surface of my skin, my blood is electrified and I am one inconsiderate driver away from a full Falling Down–style emotional collapse. I don’t know how to teach a child not to seethe and instead to develop a healthy coping and communication style, because I do not know how to do that for myself.

I’m so embarrassed by everything all the time, humiliated even by the need to breathe air where other people can see me.

I’ve never dashed anywhere a day in my life.

I like knowing that other people have the same shit I do, it makes me feel validated. Every time I see another Honda Pilot on the road (with or without the dented, scratched-up passenger side from when I slid into the garage wall because the brakes went out and it was icy), I’m like “Okay, I’m not a dumbass,” and I feel better about my life. What mental disorder is that?

The internet is so gross, I wish I never had to look at anything scary or weird or mean on there, but my sincerest wish is that one day it will evolve to the point where none of its more brain-poisoned, terminally online denizens could talk to me without having to first upload their verified state-issued identification so I know exactly who I’m out here dealing with. I’ll do mine! I would love to!!!!! You know why? Because I don’t threaten to murder strangers online, and if the FBI needed to trace a meme I’d reposted of a repost of a repost without proper attribution back to me, that’s cool and I’d happily pay the fine to Sad Kermit for my crimes.

I had to deactivate my Twitter for my sanity’s sake because everyone has incurable fucking brain worms,

Everything is so embarrassing all the time,

This is some stoner shit, for real, but have you ever just sat and thought about how there is an animal as big as a city bus and we’re alive at the same time as them, and we can look at videos of them doing things? Yes, I am absolutely out of my fucking mind, but also, while you’re on land reading this, there’s a hundred-foot-long, 400,000-pound blue whale in the ocean right now about to eat forty million krill and migrate from Antarctica to the tropics probably! Isn’t that amazing?

every single one of my high school classmates who I’d run into while they were home from college to passively remind me of my ongoing failure to fully realize my potential.

It feels like when you’re desperately in love with someone who says, “YOU’RE AMAZING, YOU ARE WONDERFUL, SO WITTY AND CHARMING AND A JOY TO BE AROUND, I CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF YOU,” and then you’re like, “Okay, can we kiss, then?” and they hit you with the “No <3.” And, as you melt into the floor, your brain’s helpful response is to replay every interaction you’ve ever had with them, searching for clues you might have missed or overtures you misunderstood, over and over again until you die.

I usually never have the tools I need to do the thing I decided to undertake on a whim in the middle of the night!

“Why do I care what this stranger thinks?” spiral that I am still spiraling through because I do, inexplicably, care!)

and say, “Thanks…?” in a way that will devastate your ego.

I live every single day in fear that a stranger might yell at me for some normal community thing I am doing wrong, like pulling up to the gas pump at a weird angle or exiting out of the wrong door.