Nighttime Thoughts
“What’s on your mind?” she texted coyly, her phone, laptop and TV playing as she wondered why she couldn’t fall asleep. Across town the flickering text notification snapped Brad to attention. He stared for a moment, then started to respond.
“What’s on my mind? A lot. Like, it’s 2 AM and I’m wide awake five hours before I need to be at work. Why? Why do I do this? Am I just staying up because I dread working or because I feel like I need to enjoy the time I get away from it after working so hard? It’s not like I’m having fun right now; I’m exhausted. I’m just going to make tomorrow worse. But what I hate is that the whole reason I work is to have times like this, right? To save money so I can retire and have time to myself to do whatever I want? So here I am, in a moment where I can do whatever I want and this is all I get? That’s not cool. Is this supposed to be as good as it gets? I mean, maybe I’d be more enthusiastic about things if I had more going on or if I had someone to do it for; I don’t know. And I know you like me, and I like you too, but I still don’t want to do this. Come on. What’s the point? If it weren’t 2 AM and I cared just a tiny bit more I wouldn’t be sending you this text. I’d be sending you whatever I assumed you wanted to hear so you’d be happy and then I’d supposedly be happy because you are. But it’s fake. Neither of us got what we wanted, we just avoided disaster. We don’t get to hang out and have fun and be ourselves, we just stay on edge, trying to perform, trying to be the “best version” of ourselves the whole time. Why? So we can continue to do so forever? It’s not even fun now. People don’t get together because they want to be together, they just do it because they hate being apart. I don’t think love is when someone makes your life better, I think it’s when not having them would make it a lot worse. But people do it anyways. They’re happy on their own but then they go out and find someone so they can risk it all. It’s because they’re bored. That’s just life. One time I saw a guy texting on a roller coaster and, honestly, I understood him. It’s like, what else is there to do? That sounded worse than it should’ve, maybe. I’m just saying, give me one good reason for any decision you’ve ever made. And I get that it’s easy for anyone to just say “why?” to everything and even the most intelligent person can’t provide an answer for everything, but, seriously, why? Why everything? We’re literally just animals tossed on this planet and of all the infinite combination of actions and desires I’m supposed to be sitting here typing words on a screen to try to impress you because you have symmetrical facial features or something? That’s absurd. But here I am nonetheless, sending you the longest text you’ve ever received, because somehow I think that’ll improve my life. Hope you enjoy.”
Brad paused and re-read his text. Then he read it again. It had been nearly 15 minutes since she’d first texted him and he knew she’d seen the text bubbles appear, indicating that he’d been working on a response. “This is why I need to type these responses in my notes,” he scolded himself before rereading his text. Maybe it was a little too much. After all, he was in a pretty good mood and had enjoyed a nice day, why question it? He erased his monologue and simply typed back “You :)”.
She received the delayed text and smiled. Too tired to think of anything else to say back, she responded “same” and finally fell asleep, blissfully unaware of Brad’s negativity towards her, their relationship, and their future.
Three habits you should begin in the new year to live a more fulfilling life:
1. Stop going to the gym. Life is a hamster wheel and if you don’t take some time off from self-improvement, you’ll never be satisfied. Take a year to set yourself back, decrease the improvements you’ve made over time and allow 2019 to be the year you move forward. This year, take that membership money, spend it at Arby’s, and avoid full-length mirrors.
2. Avoid self-reflection. Happiness, success, and peace-of-mind only matter if you take the time to realize you’ve attained such things. If you avoid spending time alone, none of that matters. You can live whatever life you want, be whoever you’d like to be and not have to deal with any of the consequences of being a terrible, selfish person. Personally, I recommend using social media and fake friends to stay distracted.
3. Save less money. Most people give cliché advice about saving for your future and putting money away for a rainy day, etc, but it’s nonsense. Why is your future self more deserving of your hard-earned money. If that money is worth saving so you can spend it later on, it’s worth spending now. After all, tomorrow isn’t guaranteed so neither should your financial security be. Lastly, there is no greater incentive to work hard than constantly being broke and living paycheck to paycheck, so saving money makes you lazy.