A lot of what grownups say is bullshit. You figure this out in your
teens, and wind up just tuning it all out. By 15 I got to where every
time I was offered advice, I just nodded in mock agreement and then
laughed at them behind their back. "Can you believe that pompous
douchebag tried to tell me
that? Christ, I'm not 14 anymore!"
So
it winds up taking years to filter out the bad advice ("Son, don't ever
loan your car to a negro") from the good ("That Def Leppard tattoo
isn't gonna be relevant five years from now, John.") I think I heard all
of the below at some point, but it would be five or ten (or more) years
before I'd realize it belonged in the good advice pile.
#5. Butterflies in the Stomach is Not Love
When
I was in school, I lost track of the number of couples I knew who got
engaged at age 16, and went right into wedding planning after
graduation. And why not? Try to talk a 17 year-old out of it, and
they'll tell you that of
course you don't understand --
you've
never felt love like this. No human has. What they and their guy or
girl has is the kind of love that freaking changes the orbits of
planets. In all of the universe, there has never been a love like this,
so back off,
old man.
And you sure as hell
can't point out to the couple that their hormones will never be at
these levels again. They'll think you're dismissing what they have as
teenage horniness, not realizing that those hormones also mean that
every emotional impulse is piped into stadium-ready stack amplifiers and
cranked to Woodstock levels. You will feel that burst of adrenaline and
stomach flutters when you touch their hand or just glance at them from
across the room, and think, holy shit, if this isn't love,
nothing is.
God knows I thought that. Over and over. The songs talk about your
"heart" but the feeling kind of radiates from the gut. Close enough.
Look, love is clearly located somewhere in the torso area, that's what matters.
Photos.comYep. This is exactly what love looks like.
That
feeling is as addictive as any drug, and once you experience it for the
first time, you'll start to crave it, or think that a relationship is
dead without it. The problem is that a lot of the fluttery feeling you
get is
a physical reaction to anxiety
and the physical reaction goes away as you adjust -- that's part of the
mechanism. So the longer you're in the relationship, the more
comfortable you become around that person, and that rush disappears. And
if you're anything like me at all, you'll mistake that for "falling out
of love." It's most likely the reason only
14% of high school sweethearts make it to the marriage stage.
The
difference between that rush and actual love is the difference between
seeing a picture of an adorable puppy and actually owning a dog. Yes,
part of the experience is its adorable brown eyes and soft fur, but it's
also about you carrying its poop around in a little plastic bag. The
teenager in love thinks that's cynicism from a boring old man ("He says
our love is just dog shit!") but that's not it at all. The point is that
love is the whole package. It's not a single emotion that can be
identified and distinctively felt like anger or happiness. It's a series
of connections that exists above and beyond day to day emotion or
circumstance, something you feel even after you wake up to find she has
grown a third arm shaped like Randy Quaid.
Why You Won't Believe it for Years:
I
can harp about it all I want but the truth is, the next time those
butterflies gut shot you into a drooling stupor, all of the text I just
typed will evaporate. Because
this relationship is the one you've been waiting for. You can
feel it.
"The
one." That's the key, because every single love song or romantic movie
insists that you only get "one true love," one "soulmate." So you get
used to the idea of a supernatural King of Emotions that bestows "true"
love upon you exactly once in your life... and if you don't latch onto
it when it arrives, that's it. That was your only chance. So when you're
hit with that tide of emotions the first time, you think, "Well, I'm
one of the lucky few to have found my 'one' on my first try. All the
more proof that it was meant to be!"
Then, about the sixth
or seventh time in your life that you feel this emotion, you'll realize
that the idea of "one true love" is bullshit. Unfortunately, the only
way to
truly learn this is to experience it for yourself, to
feel it come and go and come again. Just ask the dozen or so of my old
classmates who had to drop out of high school to take care of a baby. Or
the ones who married right after graduation and now can't say more than
two sentences to each other without breaking down into a violent fit of
screaming and crying.
Photos.comEvery. Fucking. Day.
Don't
misunderstand the message, I'm not saying the feelings you have for
your partner are just side effects of an unruly burrito. But... hold off
on the wedding and the babies for a while.
#4. Learn How to do Stuff Around the House, You'll Need It
"Chores."
That's the word they use to mean the tedious, bullshit tasks Mom and
Dad make you do around the house before you're allowed to have fun.
Chores
suck seven shapes of dick. And most of you do them, begrudgingly. Or
you split them with a sibling, or whatever the system is to make sure
they interfere with what you really want to do as little as possible.
But much, much sooner than you think, you're going to be responsible for
all of that shit, from top to bottom. And if I could go back in time,
I'd grab my teenage self by the shoulders and say, "Go learn how to do
all of that shit Mom is doing. And I mean
all of it."
Bed,
clothes, food, dishes, floors, bathroom... everything. Pretend that
you're the only one living there, and just completely take over the
things your parents normally do for you, for a week, or a month. Because
in just a few short years, you're going to be living on your own, you
will be fucking shocked at how fast your living space turns into an
unlivable shithole. God help you if you get stuck with roommates who
treated "chores" the same way. Hey, did you know if you leave dirty
dishes out long enough, flies lay eggs on them and then you have maggots
on your dishes? You will! Ever wonder how those people on
Hoarders
can live with garbage piled on every piece of furniture? Just live with
some dudes who refuse to take out the trash, you'll see -- that shit
piles up in the blink of an eye.
Photos.comThe scratch 'n sniff version would make you vomit your own soul.
For
several years after moving out on my own, I treated doing dishes as a
task on the same level as painting a house. So I found the majority of
my sustenance coming from The Dollar Menu and little frozen boxes that
are prepared with a microwave and the ability to push "4," "0," "0,"
(which is not only an expensive way to eat, but will kill your ass
eventually).
If you haven't already, learn to use the
washer and dryer. There's nothing sadder than sitting in a laundromat
and watching a newly divorced husband stare at a washing machine like it
was a nuclear reactor. And I'm telling you, go to a laundromat right
now and you'll see this guy, with every single piece of clothing packed
up in trash bags because he wore literally everything he owned over and
over until his neighbors sniffed the air and asked him if he was cooking
mushrooms.
Photos.com"Mom, I've bought a new outfit every day for a month. I need help."
Why You Won't Believe it for Years:
Because you can put this shit off for
years
without being judged for it. You can haul a bunch of laundry home over
Labor Day weekend and Mom will do it. And let's face it, when you're in
college, you're not going to be rejected for sex because your bathroom
is dirty. All dorm bathrooms are dirty. But after you're out in the
"real world," with your own job and apartment, the rules change. If
you're 25 and your date smells the stagnant rot of week old dishes and
strewn garbage, she's thinking, "What a lazy fucking slob. I'm not doing
the whole 'date a teenager' thing again. Just tell him you're on your
period and then change your phone number."
Photos.com"No, Rob, it's disgusting because it hasn't been cooked yet.
I
know guys who are older than me who still can't take care of their
place, and every one of them is alone. Their houses are so bad that I
can't visit because the smell gives me a headache. I helped one of them
clean once, and we found dead birds and mice under the garbage
on his living room floor.
And the frightening part is that it's easy to get into that mode
because if you live in it long enough, it becomes normal. And they can't
break out of that idea of basic cleaning and maintenance are just lame
"chores."
#3. Pay Attention in Writing Classes, It Turns Out You Need Them
Several
years ago, when I was working at a low-level manual labor job, I was
tasked with picking out a few applications for potential hires. Keep in
mind, we weren't hiring fucking lawyers here. We just needed people who
could do a job without somebody standing over their shoulder every
second of the shift.
I came across an application from a
21 year-old man who had a high school diploma and two years of college.
Half of the application was filled out in blue ink -- large, loopy,
pretty writing. His girlfriend's writing, in other words. The other half
(personal information -- the stuff that his co-author didn't know) was
in black ink, and written in a way that suggested he may have been
filling it out while being attacked by bees during a gang related
drive-by. Nothing was in the disability section, so we assumed it was
not a physical or mental problem.
But what made me put the
application in the "Not a Chance in Hell" pile was when I saw his
response to, "Why would you like to work for our company?"
2 C some $$$ 4 a chng!!!
Getty"ME WANT JOB GOOD FOR PLAY ON FUN BALL!"
I don't have to tell you that this is an online world, and I've touched on this subject before
in a past column.
So I won't repeat the same point beyond stressing how important it is
that you learn to type in your native language better than the average
12 year old.
I swear that some schools still treat the
subject of writing the way they did in 1911, when only a select few
people would actually need to be able to write eloquently and all the
rest just needed to know how to fill out a check at the feed store.
Hell, when I was in high school, typing class was
optional -- and that was in the 90s. Today, you can't function without a PC and
every job makes you write.
If
you're working in the warehouse at Cockrings International, odds are
that every day, you have to send out at least one email -- maybe you
have to file some kind of report, or send a request for forklift
repairs, or maybe you'll be in charge of ordering, whatever. And I don't
care how uneducated the guys in the buttplug department may be, if your
messages are full of typos and jumbled words, they are going to make
assumptions about your intelligence.
Getty"Ok, let's all point and laugh at Bob's rampant fucking idiocy!"
Don't
get me wrong -- I'm not saying you have to be Hemingway by any means.
You don't need to know how to write descriptions that touch the human
soul. But you need to learn to be concise and
clear in print, or it will be coming back to bite you in the ass over and over.
Why You Won't Believe it for Years:
I'm
not going to bullshit you -- if you're still in school, a significant
portion of what you're learning right now will be absolutely useless
once you settle into your adult life. No, I don't use my Algebra, and
I've yet to encounter a decision that hinged on me knowing what year the
Battle of Crunchfist Fuck-Knuckle took place.
Getty"Fuck you, we use Algebra all the time and we live under a mountain of panties."
Writing
is one of those that gets thrown into the "useless bullshit" pile
because so much of English class is spent on obscure grammar rules and
categorizing words. It comes off like another boring, arcane and
ultimately useless subject. "Why do I need to know what a dangling
participle is?" You don't, but you do need to learn how to not
accidentally type the opposite of what you meant. In an online world,
your writing is going to form a shell around you, and most of the people
who interact with you will only see the shell.
But again, until
you're in the break room and you overhear a coworker talking about how
unfixably stupid you are and questioning whose dick you sucked to get
your job, it's not going to hit home. No amount of intelligence or
degrees or life experience can make up for the fact that the majority of
her contact with you is in the form of emails and memos -- so the
person she knows isn't the educated, loyal employee and cool guy. She
pictures you as a slobbering four year old, slamming his palms across a
keyboard and hoping it forms a thought. Because to her, this is shit
that should have been learned in elementary school.
Getty"Screw you, I'm going to be a princess when I grow up!"
#2. Going to a Counselor Doesn't Mean You're Crazy
I
tend to harp on this a lot,
and I'm about to do it again -- your teens and early 20s are one of the
most dangerous periods of your life. Those same hormones I mentioned
earlier don't just amplify the "feel good" emotions -- they also work
for the Dark Side. This means it's also harder to tell the difference
between what the grownups dismiss as being a "moody teenager" and a
life-threatening problem.
For many, many years, I found myself
getting irritable, sad, tired, angry, and even suicidal for no
discernible reason, without provocation or warning. I'd lay in bed for
hours, fantasizing about ways to just end it all because nobody
understood, and there was nothing anyone could do to help me. If I was
gone, the world would be a better place.
I pictured my funeral full of these things.
I had heard of depression, and I knew the definition, but I didn't
really
know what it was. It wasn't until years later when I started taking
psychology classes that I began to get a deeper insight as to what was
making me involuntarily goth out for most of my life. And as it turned
out, it's pretty hard to fight a monster if you don't know that one is
there in the first place. Recognizing depression when it hits is half
the battle.
Luckily, the Internet now exists, so access to that information doesn't require any other action than
clicking this link.
Why You Won't Believe it for Years:
Unfortunately,
even if I had the internet back then, and the link was handed to me,
and someone was there to click it, and another person held my eyes open,
and another read the page to me through a megaphone, I still wouldn't
have absorbed the information. Depression has a way of doing that to a
person, it tricks you into defending it against all attacks. You will
feed and protect your misery like it's your first born baby.
But
the odds are that nobody would have given me the link anyway. Society
was -- and still is -- in the dark ages when it comes to any kind of
mental or emotional problems. Practical advice on dealing with your own
emotional swings is not a subject you'll find being taught at schools or
home or... pretty much anywhere. To this day, if you need physical
therapy on a knee you sprained playing football, you're a badass. But if
you need mental therapy, even simple counseling, you're crazy. Damaged.
All talk of it is awkward, the subject of jokes to be made when they're
well out of earshot. So the stigma keeps us at home, quietly accepting
that there's something wrong with us. Something
shameful.
The
reality is that seeing somebody about depression (or anxiety, or
anything else) is no harder than going to see a doctor about that rash
on your ass. Yeah, it's awkward and intrusive but you get over it, you
don't just fucking let it spread until you're bedridden. You call, you
make an appointment, you see what needs done. Shake off that shame you
feel about needing help before it fucking murders you.
Photos.comWanna know a secret? You are completely normal. It happens to all of us.
But
understand this (and if you're in the age group I'm talking about, I
hope to God that I'm wrong about you not getting this for years): You
have more people who care about you than you think. Back when I was
fighting that demon (I like to picture myself using a giant anime sword
that's on fire), I swore on my soul that not a single person in the
world gave a shit whether I lived or died. As I got older and that
smothering black veil lifted, I realized how incredibly wrong I was.
There were dozens of people who would have been negatively affected by
my early check-out.
You'll find the same. Even if it turns out
that number is two, that should mean something to you because it
translates to this: Those two people live in a better world simply
because you draw breath.
GettyEven if those two people are complete douchebags.
#1. Stop and Figure Out How Much Partying You Can Handle
Statistically,
almost every teenager reading this article will try booze or drugs before they graduate.
I'm the last guy in the world who is going to burst through the doors
and break up the party -- I've drank enough alcohol and done enough
drugs in a single night to put any random four of you in a grave. And
this is the last thing you want to hear, because the whole point of
partying is that for one night you don't have to worry about a bunch of
shit. So I'm not going to be the asshole who starts preaching about
childhood obesity to trick-or-treaters on Halloween. I had my fun, you
should have yours.
But, there's a huge yet invisible difference
between innocent experimentation and addiction, and when it decides to
blindside you, it happens so hard and so fast that, in the words of
Warden Samuel Norton: "You'll think you've been fucked by a train". It's
important that you recognize it before that happens. And, just like
with the mental health example, society isn't great about giving you the
tools because parents prefer to just tell you to never touch the stuff
instead. You're probably not going to listen to that, so you wind up
with no help at all.
Photos.comIt never looks like an after school special. It looks more like a call to 911.
My
advice isn't complicated, and if you respect yourself or anyone you
know at all, I ask you this one simple favor that will take five minutes
per month. It's as
easy as reading a grocery list.
Bookmark that link, and once a month, visit it. Mentally check off any
of those things that apply to you. If you have even one, it's not a good
sign. But as you check things off, if you find that your mental pen is
starting to run out of ink, it's time to take some serious steps towards
finding an adult to talk to.
This wasn't a "find out five years later" case for me. It ate a third of my total lifespan, and
I let it.
As I always point out with this issue,
there are millions of people out there who can party with the best of
them and then walk away unscathed. They can forget about it the next day
and not come back to it for months or years at a time. Maybe you're one
of those people, and I won't be the guy who points a finger in your
face and tells you that you're wrong. All I'm asking is to visit that
site. Give it an honest read... and if you find yourself checking off
more and more of those points, come to terms with the idea that unless
you put a stop to it, it's going to hurt you and everyone you love.
Photos.comThere's no shame in saying, "This isn't where I want to be. Can you help me?"
Why You Won't Believe it for Years:
You
spend years in school listening to D.A.R.E. programs (or whatever
anti-drug stuff they do where you live) telling you that one hit off a
joint will put you in a coma. Then you actually try the stuff and
realize that's bullshit, so you immediately ignore all other warnings,
too. It's all the same shit -- puritanical adults clutching their pearls
at the thought of spending Friday night ingesting anything other than
Bible verses. Right? It's hard to imagine that your parents were in
college too, at one point, and may have owned more than one bong. So
trying to separate the anti-drug propaganda from the useful warnings
becomes next to impossible. Especially when you're young and healthy and
invincible, and your hangovers are over after breakfast.
And
hell, once you're in college, that's all about drinking, right? That's
the stereotype. The weird kids are the ones who aren't getting wasted.
And
in the years after, you don't take kindly to words like "alcoholic" and
"addict" because they're not a diagnosis - they're insults. They're
terms used to describe selfish, weak people who ruin families. Nobody
wants to be that. Even if you find that you
are addicted, you sure as fuck can't admit it.
So
you'll ignore it -- I ignored mine for 22 years before I finally
swallowed my pride and admitted that I had a problem. You'll make
excuses like, "I have a job. I'm a good mother/father. I pay my bills.
I'm not hurting a damn thing -- I'm an adult, and this is
my decision."
Photos.comTotally your decision.
via http://www.cracked.com/
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