Issue 10.1 Fall 2014

issue 10.1 cover image

 

 

Accepting Average

 

Peter Zahparti

 


When I was a kid, I felt special. Not just your average every day special that most kids feel when their teachers give them a gold star or their parents tell them they can stay up for another hour. I felt it deep down in my bones; I was going to do something that mattered."I just have to wait until I'm old enough to change the world", I'd tell myself, "I've got time, the world's not going anywhere". I thought that I was some kind of next step in evolution for the human species. I thought I was going to do something amazing. I'm not.


I still remember the first time I realized that eventually, I was going to die. I must have been five or six years old and I was sitting in the bathtub taking a bath. My Mom had started to drain the tub and I, being a very private toddler, had asked her to leave so I could begin drying myself off. I was sitting on the edge of the bath and as I watched the last of the water flow out of the tub, I began to realize that life was exactly the same as a draining bathtub. The water just sits in the tub waiting to leave, serving no real purpose but making a grand show, full of noises and swirls and bubbles, as it escapes down the drain. When there is no water left in the tub, you can hardly tell that there ever was any in it to begin with. It was at that moment, for some reason, that I realized I was going to die and I became scared of the possibility that I would leave the world like water left the tub.


After that realization things got a little weird. I can only describe what I felt then, and feel now, as a severe existential depression (which isn't something a small child, or anyone for that matter, should deal with. Because it's awful, all the time). There was a period of about four years after the bathtub incident where my anxiety about life became manifested by means of intense OCD. I would often count the four corners on square objects, like windows or bricks, four times, ( sounding like this: 1,2,3,4, 1,1,2,2,3,3,4,4, 1,1,1,2,2,2,3,3,3,4,4,4, 1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2,3,3,3,3,4,4,4,4) because if I didn't I, for some reason, thought either I or my family members would immediately die. I don't exactly remember when I was finally able to stop counting every square object I saw, but today I usually don't. Every once in a while there'll be a hard day, and I'll start counting the corners of windows in class; only realizing what I'm doing about six repetitions in.


My main goal in life became becoming unforgettable (that way, if I did die in a horrible fiery car crash because I didn't account for every single window on the station wagon, I'd be a little more okay with it). I worried constantly about amounting to average and being considered normal. I began to do things differently from everyone else because I was so concerned about accidentally fitting into the group that I so desperately wanted to avoid. I started listening to different music, reading different books, and spending most of my time playing video games and excluding myself from most forms of social involvement. This of course led me to feel isolated, and due to the isolation I would feel even more depressed. Constantly regretting what you messed up in the past while simultaneously worrying about what you'll fuck up in the future isn't the happiest way to live your life.

 

Now don't get me wrong, I love everything that I do. I enjoy what I immerse myself in and wouldn't change anything given the opportunity to do so. But as I get older (and I realize that this remark comes off as extremely annoying and arrogant. In no way do I think that I've learned the secrets to life by the age of eighteen nor do I think that I'm smarter, better, or have more life experience, I'm just trying to write down what I've noticed from my own life, and if it happens to click with someone else too, that's righteous.) I realize that I went about making myself different in the wrong way. Instead of distancing myself emotionally from my peers, attempting to appear mysterious or different, I should get involved with them; show them what I like and if they enjoy it too, then that's awesome. And if I do by some chance end up liking something that's in the status quo, no one is going to care in the slightest.

 

So now as I begin to settle into "adulthood", whatever that means, I find myself becoming more okay with doing my own thing, without checking first to make sure it won't label me as normal. I realize that the feeling I felt when I was younger is probably something that everyone has felt at some point; asking themselves what more is out there or why they're even here in the first place. I wasn't some amazing new scientific specimen, I am human, that is all. And the older I get, the more I become okay with that. I've begun to appreciate that everyone here is an amazing specimen of the human condition in their own right. I wasn't nor am I now any different than anyone else. We all have an interesting story to share.

 

 

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