08.01.2002 - Justify Your Existence

If forced to justify my existence, I'd be fairly hard pressed to find more reasons than I could count on one hand as to why I deserve to be here. I mean, I'm interminably lazy, I lie more often than is necessary and I continuously prove to be irresponsible. If someone were making a case against me, last Sunday would have been evidence enough to remove me from the planet.

After having a late night on Saturday, I slept in until about half past ten in the morning. Ask most college students, and this would most likely be considered early to normal for them. However, until I came to school here, I never slept past ten in the morning, and I secretly feel disgusted when I do.

What's worse is that after I had been awake for roughly two hours, I decided to take a nap. Worn out from about a hundred and twenty minutes of eating cereal and watching bad television, I decided I needed a break from all this hecticity (thank you Xtina Aguilera for the fake word) and commenced to snore loudly on my couch before moving to my bed.

Not wanting to take things to quickly, I awoke from my nap and decided to lay out in the Sun in what basically amounts to a game of Russian Cancer Roulette.

If you'll notice, I haven't done a single thing that requred removing myself from the sitting or laying down position for longer than a minute at a time. This isn't out of the ordinary.

After I worked myself up to a mild sunburn, I came back inside, ostensibly to read, but ended up taking yet another nap. While I had been out relatively late the night before, I couldn't think of anything that would justify two naps in a day. There was a time when I could only be caught napping if I were terminally ill or if someone were forcing me to slee. Attribute it to my old age or my lack of desire to get anything remotely constructive done, but I have suddenly become one of the top ten laziest bastards on the planet.

Once I awoke from nap numero dos, I thought to myself, "I should probably do something that would prove I've actually been alive today and used my day for something more useful than irritating my neighbors by sawing z's through my owpen window." As such, I decided to go to Mr. Bestfriendinthewholewideworld's house to make a mix CD.

Mr. Bestfriendinthewholewideworld left town in favor of our hometown shortly after finals and has been there ever since. Because he's a courteous gentleman, he gave me a key to his place to allow me to use his computer for CD burning purposes. However, because I'm a bad person, I've caused one of his locks to malfunction, accidentally caused damage to one of his chairs and, without any harm done by me that I can tell, his television has ceased to function properly. Who's a good friend? Not Jeffy.

Anyway, I've burned more than a few CDs since he's been gone, and I decided to make a mix for the girl I took out on Saturday night. She asked me to make a mix of my favorite songs. I declined in favor of making her a mix of her new favorite songs, so I felt obligated to follow through. Hell, at least it would give me something physical I could use to prove that actually did something worhtwhile with my day.

Two or so hours later, I finished up and headed back home. Jackson has been gone camping all week and has tasked me with taking care of his fish.

Now, I have had exactly two pets during my span as a human being. One was a dog, who, frankly, I had very little to do with. He lived to be eighteen human years old, which calculates roughly to the age of 128 dog years old, or approximately half the age of the half gallon of milk in your refrigerator. Obviously, I had nothing to do with this.

The other pet was a goldfish I won at an elementary school carnival, which I promptly overfed, killing him in less than a day.

As such, when Jackson asked me to take care of his fish while he was away, I agreed, only because I'd probably do anything for him at this point.

As my track record would indicate, I ended up overfeeding the fish. I've never been told how much to feed a fish, and, frankly, this sort of thing is difficult to gauge; especially when you're functionally retarded like I am.

When I got home from Mr. Bestfriendinthewholewideworld's apartment, I walked in and greeted the fishies with love like I always do (I was home alone, so I needed someone to talk to, anyway). The stench of the tank was horrible, and I found myself afraid to look in.

Of course, one of the two goldfish were dead. Five living, one down. I instantly felt horrible. I wasn't sure if I felt so bad because I killed another living thing or if it was because I knew I had let Jackson down or if it was because I had proven once and for all that I am the least responsible human being on the planet. I certainly didn't want to kill something. I love Jackson, and I don't want to hurt him at all, but ultimately, I just didn't want to come to grips with the fact that I can't take care of even the simplest of creatures.

I fished Mr. Tickles out of the water, held his tiny body in my palm and said a few words for him before giving him his proper burial at sea. For the first time in months, I wasn't in the mood for sushi.

For many reasons, I spent the rest of my Sunday and most of the rest of the week inconsolably sad. I let Jackson down, I killed a fish whose presence I enjoyed and that dead fish became evidence of the fact that I am completely irresponsible and, thus, unworthy of being alive.

It's not really like I'm worried about being a "good" human being. I don't kill my fellow man, and I tend to hold to a vague sense of morals. However, being a "good" human being does not mean that I deserve the right to continue on with my meager excuse for an existence. I'd like to think that I will learn from this experience and take some responsibility for my life and the beings my life affects, but I can be fairly certain I won't.

That doesn't mean I won't try.

I'm sorry, Jackson. I'm sorry, Mr. Tickles.