Everything Is Awful #1: Hell Is Other People

I’ll take it from here, Sartre.

Other people are awful. Every one of them. You’re awful. I’m awful. We’re awful in our own little awful ways. What’s worse is that no one says they’re awful or even thinks it half the time.

I tried having fun with other people once. It wasn’t for me.

The worst is when we make the mistake of thinking we’re happy. We might even smile, we think we’re so happy. But no one’s happy. We can feel happiness but we can’t be happy. Anyone who says they’re happy is a liar and can’t be trusted. Happiness is a symptom of forgetting that you’ll be cosmic dust one day.

We spent billions of years evolving and this is the best we’ve got? Payless Shoes and lunch at Panera? Dating websites? If we stopped for a minute to realize we’re all headed down the same road to oblivion, we might then pause and help each other to make the journey a bit more comfortable, but as it stands we’re just trampling over one another like the fat ignorant mouth breathing dull hams we are. Humanity is an obese suburbanite demanding to speak to the manager of a Marshall’s while her child knocks over the display of ripoff third party iPhone chargers. That’s really all we’ve managed. Man on the moon? Big deal. It was so unspectacular he wound up coming back anyway.

People are awful. Their flaws are awful. Their prejudices are awful. Their thoughts are awful. When I was a kid I used to be afraid that one day someone would invent a helmet that could broadcast your thoughts in real time on the TV screen. I thought one day they’d use me as the test subject and broadcast it in front of the whole middle school. I was terrified because even when I was twelve I knew I was messed up. I was right. I just found out later that everyone else was also messed up. Everyone else was also taking the piss. Everyone else also had no idea what they were doing. Everyone else was full of it. We all have the same thoughts. We’re all horrible. We’re all pretending we aren’t. Some of us go our whole lives and we die thinking we were ever good. I don’t believe in all that.

We’re all so flawed. I’m sure an optimist can find some beauty in this, something about how it shows we’re really all connected. Walt Whitman probably could. Walt Whitman wasn’t so awful, but he’s dead and now it’s just us. We could be vulnerable and admit how awful we all are to each other and get to know people for who they really are — awfulness and all. Think how much better life would be if we didn’t spend the whole damn time hiding how awful we are. That’s when the connecting would start. Maybe even some people could be happy, content with being honest about their awfulness with someone else equally awful but who they love.

We won’t ever. We’ll keep our awfulness inside, the bad thoughts we know to keep hidden, and they’ll chew on us and we’ll pretend to be happy the whole time because everyone else is doing it. Because being unhappy seems wrong, defective, out of place. Everyone’s goddamn unhappy.

Until I find someone who’s okay with being just awful, I think I’m going to stick to myself with my own awful thoughts and everything else that’s awful about me.

Holden Caulfield is terrible but he was right — everyone’s a phony. Everyone’s a pretender and that makes them more awful than their inherent awfulness ever could.

I just think we could be happier if we all were honest with how awful we are. It’s all I’m saying.