Piggies in Blankies: You remind me of me, that’s not a compliment
That’s a lyric from a fucking Atmosphere song. Remember that shit!
I used to listen to certifiably the wackest of raps. Everybody hated getting in my Camry. But I do love the stone-cold self-dragging of that lyric: You remind me of me/it’s not a compliment. It seems oddly prescient for something written in 2005. It’s perfectly fitting for our current era of #same #me #tagyourself meta self-loathing.
But it’s from the fucking Bush Administration!
I loved that lyric even back then. And I like to imagine I had self-esteem in that era. Yeah fucking right! I was stuffing all emotionality and vulnerability down a black hole of self-punishment and affected, pretentious New-Atheist rationality. I tried to seem like a robot at all times. I judged everyone else for seeming mentally unwell and illogical. I didn’t realize not eating all day and playing DDR Exercise Mode for two and a half hours a night instead of sleeping and sobbing all evening long and compulsively shoplifting was not rational.
Whoops. Another thing I related to, in a similarly sick way, was that scene in Silence of the Lambs where Clarice Starling drags Hannibal Lecter to hell and back for being a judgmental, omniscient lil shit while never examining what latent issues led him to eat tons of people. What’s the line?
You see a lot, Doctor. But are you strong enough to point that high-powered perception at yourself? What about it? Why don’t you — why don’t you look at yourself and write down what you see? Or maybe you’re afraid to.
I thought that was the frostiest shit ever. And I really loved and identified with Hannibal Lecter. Ever since I read the books in middle school. I went as him for Halloween in 7th grade, with a straight jacket and that iconic mask and everything. I just loved his cool, all-knowing demeanor and simmering sassy resentment.
So. Self-esteem issues: I got em. And maybe that’s why a bunch of dead pig sausages wrapped in pancakes reminds me of me.
— — — —
Hey guess what. I’m really selfish. Unfortunately my selfishness is not the happy, self-satisfied kind. I’m self-absorbed in a bent-over, cramping, gnarled-finger kind of way. I’m always curling up on myself like an overgrown finger nail that ends up in the record books.
I keep traveling inward, deeper and deeper, getting dirtier and more brittle, building up more weight that drags my hand down to the dirt. My whole inner life is like Shuichi’s dad in Uzumaki: I want to be a spiral, compelled to curl up even if it breaks my back.
My back does hurt, by the way. It started hurting at The Golden House, in a booth with Ida and Nick. I guess I ate these piggies and blankies too hard.
— — — —
I have always been Lecter-like, removed and observant enough to be precisely and tactically hurtful. I can detect what a person is insecure about. I can see what keeps a person hanging at the social edges. I certainly have enough experience mentally hurting myself.
When I was in elementary school, I deemed a table in the lunchroom the “reject table” because the unpopular kids sat at it. I declared this really loudly, from my perch in the popular kid table. The “reject kids” certainly heard. I felt ashamed as soon as I saw them, looking at me, but I didn’t take it back or apologize. I’m always saying the wrong things too loudly.
Like Hannibal Lecter, I was cruel to avoid my own pain. I was at the popular table but my position was insecure and I knew it. My best friend, Allie, was glamorous and popular; by virtue of her companionship, I had status as well. I mocked the “reject kids” to assert my separation from them, which was tenuous.
None of the other kids with social cache knew what to do with me. I wasn’t interested in the hairstyle-and-new-shoes-related drama the girls in the group were constantly kicking up; I couldn’t play sports; I wasn’t witty in a way that appealed to any of the class clown boys.
I was weird. I spent a lot of my recesses playing “Worm Funeral” with some of the girls from the reject table. We gathered by a mound of dirt behind the shed and buried dead worms we’d found on the blacktop. I eulogized the dried up shoestring of a worm while our toys cried and mourned. Sometimes the worm funeral was followed by a wedding between two of the toys. I liked that game, and the girls who played it deferred to me, let me decide what would happen next. Still I called them rejects. Because I was afraid.
When my popular friend Allie moved a town away, my social status eroded immediately. I stopped getting invited to sleepovers and mall hangouts with the popular crowd. I couldn’t hold my own at the lunch table conversations, which were mostly about make-up and crushes and clothes, none of which I gave a shit about or had any literacy in. Kids started dating one another, and I had no interest in it, and no one was interested in me. My banishment was silent, but sudden. Nobody ever insulted me or told me I needed to join my true home at the reject table. They didn’t need to.
Then I started hanging out with the weirdos from my Sunday school. I went as Hannibal Lecter for Halloween that year.
— — — —
My interiority sometimes breeds self-knowledge. I’m a real pro at processing my shit. I question basically everything about myself; who I am, what my life experiences mean, what I want, whether I deserve to live, if I need to change. I’m kind of too good at it. Much of the time it’s pretty tiresome.
I’m an Aries. One of the first descriptions of my sign that I ever read said that Aries are like a baby, forever self-fascinated and self-satisfied. An Aries can stare at their hands in front of them and be forever entertained and delighted, that’s what the profile said. They love themselves deeply, but in an infantile way.
I was deeply insulted when I read that shit. I was maybe 10 and definitely didn’t see myself as selfish. I cared about animals. I made sure everyone in my family always buckled their seat belts. I reused tissues to save trees, and tried to make everyone in the house let yellow mellow so we didn’t waste water. I cried about other people’s feelings. I tried to explain away and apologize for my dad’s rages. I didn’t see how I could be anything but a good person.
And I certainly hated hearing I was babyish. I was always fleeing from anything that implied childishness. When I was in third grade I put myself to bed without telling my family, because I decided it was now babyish for me to be tucked in. When I was too uncoordinated to learn to ride a bike at the appropriate age, I felt shameful and pathetic. I learned to drive as quickly as I could. I got a job as soon as it was possible. I graduated college a year ahead and sped along to graduate school.
— — — —
I used to bristle when people talked about the kind of man they wanted to be, the kind of woman they wanted to be. All I wanted to be was an adult, whatever that meant. I was sure it was a genderless category; that hanging too much emphasis on womanhood or manhood was missing the point. I just wanted to be grown.
I thought it had a lot to do with money and work. I never let myself be without money to make. I saved and saved. I found a thing to devote myself to: psychology, graduate school, getting a PhD. And I rushed headlong toward it.
It didn’t make a difference.
It didn’t make me love myself. No singular achievement can or ever will. It dissolves on your tongue the moment it hits. That’s just how it is. The faster you learn that, the sooner you burn out, I guess. I had a mid-life crisis at fucking 25. And I’ve been kind of an immature, weepy, listless creature ever since.
— — — —
I’m selfish and immature and I don’t know where I’m going. I’m not a ram, even if I do have that standard Aries rage. I am a piggy. A soft, bare, oinking thing. Pretty dang smart but with cloven hooves instead of fingers, so I can’t work any tools or do any real work. All I can do is muck about. Cover myself in something soft and comforting.
At least my namesake is a damn good breakfast food.
— — — —
This menu item is a once-in-a-blogtime opportunity. Look at the fucking image:
That is some fucking pig. Look at that fresh, round, beautific face. And hey, isn’t it weird how often we see drawings of animals at restaurants that are just plum overjoyed that we are about to eat them? There used to be a blog that documented all the advertisements and restaurant signs that feature a cartoonish livestock animal that appeared delighted at the prospect of their death. It was called Suicide Food, and though it hasn’t updated in six years, it’s still viewable here.
The piggie on the Golden House menu was right to want to die, I guess, because these sausages are dang fucking good. The outside is crisp and browned, blackened almost (which I love), with a mapley quality that complements the pancakes perfectly. The pancakes are fluffy and a bit tart from the baking soda, not too cakey or sweet. They come sprinkled with powdered sugar, and don’t need syrup. It’s already a delightful balance of savory and sweet, nourishing and frivolous, as is.
The proportions are perfect, as well: each piggie is flawlessly nestled within its blankie, like a plump breakfast taquito. There’s a bit of extra pancake on each end, just enough to give you an unadulterated, pure pancake bite; every other bite is filled with sausage and pancake in equal amounts. The meat is juicy and the cake is pillowy, but yielding. As a comfort food, you can do no better.
The coffee was better this time. I could actually taste the caffeine. The waitress brought a big plastic box of chilled creamers to us, and refilled our cups frequently. There was a feeling of bounty to it. I love being able to drink coffee without having any sense of how much I’ve had. There’s no guilt there. I only stop when my heart starts to race.
— — — -
At night, under blankets, I feel like a weeping, needful little baby. There’s this gaping hole of need in me — for comfort, for belonging, to be adored — that can never be satiated. It’s not even a real need. It makes no sense. It’s just an endless, inwardly tunneling gap, burrowing deep inside me. It makes me kind of frenzied with lonesome self-loathing when I’m trying to sleep. And there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it. I’ve had this problem since I was a teen.
At those moments, when I’m sobbing silently into the pillow and curling in on myself from under the fleece, I envy babies. I really do. All they have to do is be themselves, needy and messy and annoying, and they are seen as utterly lovable and perfect. It seems impossible, in those moments, that I am lovable. It seems disgusting for me to envy a mewling, helpless thing.
I worry what these feelings say about me. Maybe I’m doomed to forever be pathetic and desperate, a heaving, whimpering animal flopping about in its rut. Maybe it’s normal. I don’t know. I’ve never seen anybody else do it. And I’ve slept beside a fair amount of people. No matter who it is, my sister, my boyfriend, my mom, a friend visiting, an ex, I’ve always been the one awake last. I’m the one who gets crazy and weepy while the rest of the world sleeps. It seems like only my needs are boundless and disgusting. Everyone else is a human. I’m a baby pig.
— — — —
I want to be a good person, but only because I want to earn the right to live. I am still a brittle, self-absorbed, short-fused little Aries. I exhaust myself talking people off the literal or metaphorical ledge. I spend months or years encouraging someone or talking to them about their problems and trauma, slowly gathering resentments over the lack of balance in the relationship, all while refusing to be vulnerable, make demands, or put restrictions on my emotional giving. They have no way of knowing why I’m upset, but they can feel it mounting.
And then I get so tired and numb from giving while never asking or receiving that I begin to get that brutal, Hannibal-Lecter-esque urge to hurt and eviscerate again. And then I say something really witheringly rude to someone I love. I give and give, when I never really had to, when it was never really a good idea, and then I become furious that I am constantly being eaten up by other people. But who put me on that platter? I did.
I am the suicide food, but without the grin.
— — — —
I don’t know that I’m a good person, or that I will ever stop being selfish, but I do know that I am an adult. I know I am an adult because I don’t wonder if I am one anymore. It doesn’t feel like a triumph. I take no pride in it. It just is what it is. Being an adult is just being too stressed and weakened and openly vulnerable and sloppy to ever dare asking yourself if you’re grown up, yet. You learn at some point that you’re never gonna be somebody completely different, that maturity won’t arrive on a gilded horse and change you into someone with discipline and solve your problems.
Your flaws will always be there. You will always have needs, hungry and weeping like a baby’s open maw, and you will always dread the responsibilities that are flung in your lap. But they are in your lap, and there is no reason to wait for someone else, some better version of you, to handle them. That better you is not coming.
So you get up and get to it. And maybe you’re crying while you do it. Or maybe you’re just numb. Or maybe you’re an asshole about your self-sacrifice. It doesn’t matter. You’re there and you’re doing it, as best you can. You are an adult, and you have no hope that you’ll ever be more than that. Piggies are hairless and pink like a fetus their whole life long. That’s why they need the blankies.
