No Sleeves

[It's 2:15 right now and I can't sleep. Brace yourself.]

Sometimes it doesn’t seem possible, the effect that your “home” can have on your frame of mind for days, weeks, even months at a time, when those little nagging tendencies of roommates light up just the right axon in the cerebrum to move you from “acceptably cheery” to “gruffly irritable” to “incendiary.”

Those poor souls destined for abuse are far too many in number, and almost assuredly, none of the victims are deserving of their fates. The elderly gentleman standing in the door of the subway who gets a rough bump on the shoulder when he won’t move instead of a polite request. The girl who deserves much better than the pathetic lies told to soothe your own cowardice. The barista who broke up with her boyfriend last night and sucked it up to make it into work and GODDAMMIT, I SAID NO WHIP ON THAT MOCHA– is just trying to make it through the day.

Go ahead and blame the roommate whose grand contribution to intellectual discourse is an annoyed grunt, the piece-of-shit refrigerator that lets the milk go bad in 3 days, the nu-metal blaring out and that stupid uncomfortable sofa that consumes the entire room with its useless bulk.

Excuses are–wait for it–like assholes. And yours are no better and certainly far, far worse than all the others, even in this town of decadence and emotional disruption. When the roommates and the fridge and the hated trek home are all finally left behind, it’ll be your own weakness of character that anchors you down.

I’m moving out of my apartment soon, and I can’t wait to leave the negative vibes behind–but if that’s all it takes to steel my mindset here in the city, then I’m fucked.
Because it’s still far too easy right now to blame my own failings on furniture and spoiled milk.