Scars Like Zebra Stripes

And it wasn’t that he always wanted to have sex or even that he was horny, it was that his brain was like a faucet with a broken handle and physical pleasure was the only way he knew to escape from that - Wait. I can’t think with my headphones out… Hang on… That’s better. - But it’s like I was saying before, that she and him had spent the night together and had already had sex a couple of times and now they were talking and she was going on about how her mom thinks she should wear more makeup and how it hurts her when she says stuff like that and he wants to be listening but he can’t so he excuses himself to the bathroom where he pulls out a little screen and proceeds to jag off. When he’s done he comes back and he can listen just fine, for a while, until it wears off, and then the faucet is running again, and he can’t listen to anything except his own thoughts. it’s a digital thing see, it's like - HOLD UP. THE BASS JUST DROPPED AND I CAN’T HEAR MY OWN VOICE… there we go. That’s better. - It’s like that little irrigation ditch behind the high school, the one with the path leading down to it, the one littered with used condoms and beer cans and the torn fragments of a prom dress. You can smell the urine from a couple yards away. Anyways, that's hell. Easy enough, anyone could understand why that would be hell, but the funny thing, the funny thing is this: Heaven is the exact same place, only difference is that you're standin there with your favorite song playing and a full pack of smokes in your hand and some HD porn downloading to your ipod. And - say you don’t happen to have any change on you, do ya? I’m riding the bus home tonight and I’m short about 50 cents… Thanks, I appreciate it - and the - hang on, I hate this song, let me find a better one - and the - GODDAMN IT THAT'S LOUD… okay, that’s better. Shit, I just dropped your change. - What was I saying again? Oh, right so the prick gets kicked out of the public library, for looking at porn on one of the public computers. He cracked his smartphone, and he needed to get his rocks off. So… yeah. But what gets me is that they sent him home. Those damn assholes at the library. They should have just let the guy be, it's not their business if he wants to ejaculate all over their keyboard. Of course she broke up with him as soon as she found out, but he’s not really missing out on anything. He’s gonna have a better time with the internet explorer app on his new smartphone anyways. - Hey by the way, do ya want to get some food? Burger King? great, I’m starving. Here, let me place our order through my phone so that we won’t have to wait in line, it will save some time. Hey, I just got a text from that hoe I work with… That's right, Zoey You’ve seen her before. Tall. With greasy black hair. She’s got scars running up and down her arms and legs. Like zebra stripes. She’s got four or five devices hooked up to her at all times. An ipod, a cell phone, a smartwatch, there's an ipad too, but sometimes she puts it into her backpack. She’s been in and out of the suicide hospital since the eighth grade and her family dropped her off the insurance about a year ago. The bills have been piling up and her credit score is screwed for the rest of her life, but she’s working a job, so I guess she’s trying. When she’s on a drug high and she’s feeling good she scours her friends apartment (where she’s been living) for sharp objects so that she won’t have anything to hurt herself with when the withdrawals kick in. Anyways I was gonna bang her, but she just texted me saying that she doesn’t think it’s a good idea. Whatever. She’s like an eight and I can’t get hard for a real live girl unless she’s a nine or a ten. God, she’s texting me about how she needs to work overtime instead so she can move to a different state in a couple months and start over. That hoe. I’ve heard her say that before. Five bucks says she’ll still be working the same job in a year. Besides, I know a girl who moved here from Tennessee. To start over. It’s not like anything was fixed by moving to a different state, she brought herself with her. - Just a sec, let me go get our food. - Hey, we ordered online. Through the app. What do you mean you didn’t receive it? I did it right here on my phone not five minutes ago. No, I didn’t save the confirmation email. Do you think I can afford to have an email box full of cruddy spam like that? I’m a busy man! WHAT DO YOU MEAN I’LL JUST HAVE TO REORDER? Jesus Christ… - Alright it looks like the food is gonna take about five minutes so we’ll just have to kill some time. What was I saying again? Oh right, the library dude. So he beats himself up for a while about being such a miserable porn addict (as if the rest of weren’t) and then after a couple months his ex comes back and says that she’s pregnant. The hoe wants someone to work a job for her so that she doesn't have too. And he says that he’s gonna man up and change and help her take care of the baby, so they get back together and for a while things are going good but then he relapses with the porn and she tells him that he has to quit or else this is never going to work. He says that he doesn’t want to be this way and he knows it's wrong, but he can’t help it, and he’s trying to change, but he keeps messing up, and he’s trying to change but he’s not strong enough and he’s trying to change but is it even possible? do people ever change? and screw it, he’ll try until it kills him, he’ll give everything to fix this, and goddamn it he messed up again. And she’s beating herself up cause she can’t understand why she isn’t good enough for him. Eventually she decides that she must be depressed. And she starts posting about it all the time on facebook. She goes on and on about how hard it is to be depressed, and how depressed people deserve more health benefits, how the rest of the world just doesn’t get it. But it’s all crap. Everybody’s depressed nowadays. And if they aren’t depressed they’re bipolar or they have extreme anxiety or an eating disorder or their a goddamn skitzo. They all post about it on the internet and they all use it as an excuse whenever they gotta do something they don’t want to. All except the skitzos. They usually keep it to themselves. But, Christ, I mean, you can’t even walk into a high school nowadays without going through a metal detector. It’s not like mental illness is the exception. It’s the norm. So quit whining about it all the time, I say. I mean, my doctor told me that he thinks I suffer from clinical depression, which I do, but I don’t go talking about it all the time. He offered me some medication but I turned him down. I figure, if I want to medicate I’ll shoot some heroin. It’s cheaper. (Some people try to feel better other ways, without drugs or porn or something normal, and they’re the ones who are really stupid. I know a kid, Andy, who decided to move out right after he graduated high school. He didn’t have money or anything so he ended up living out of his car. He thought it would be great. He got all excited about how romantic it would be to sleep somewhere new every night, to live freely. But you know what happened? His first week someone stole the radio out of his car. He couldn’t play his music anymore. He got so mad that he punched through a window. After he had calmed down he tried to go to sleep but the mosquitos came in through the broken window and made him itch all over. [Andy’s allergic to mosquitos.] The grocery stores were all closed at that time of night, so he had to break into his parent’s house and steal a bottle of benadryl to keep down the swelling. He could have called them or woke them, but he was too ashamed, or proud, or something. When morning came he buckled down and worked his ass off, to save enough money to buy new windows. But it didn’t matter. By the time that the windows were replaced there was another reason to punch one out. He says that nothing ever changes, nothing ever changes, nothing ever changes...) But what was I saying? I lost my train of thought. Oh right, so - Oh god, not this song. Crap, I’m out of skips. I’ll have to go to youtube instead. What song should I play? I can’t think without a song going. I know. Revenge the Oppressed. It’s by Monsterfucker. Ever listened to MonsterFucker? You should, they’re great. Ah, that's better. Songs like this keep me from shooting everyone. They let all the anger out, ya know? - Anyways, so they start fighting again and she asks why he doesn’t just lose the smartphone? And he says that the smartphone is necessary to modern life, that even if there wasn’t a smartphone there would be a computer, so no, he’s gonna fix this, he’s gonna learn to use technology responsibly, but of course he doesn’t and they end up repeating the same words over and over again. After a few months of this she moves out, says she’s had enough. He is completely alone now and he relapses big time. He manages to hold himself together for about a week and then he swallows a handful of pills, which doesn’t kill him. It only puts him in the hospital where a bunch of shrinks pat him on the back and let him cry on their shoulders and take all of the money from his wallet when he isn’t looking. - Thank god. Burgers are here. Took long enough. I can’t believe we had to wait like that. Five minutes of my life wasted. Next time I’m saving that confirmation email. - So anyways, to finish:

A few months later she has her baby, and she does it all by herself, without him, without her family, without anyone. And she ditches the smartphone and the cable and all kinds of stuff so that she can afford the baby.

And it’s the hardest thing she’s ever done, but do you know what she says? She says that the baby is the best thing that ever happened to her. She says that the baby CHANGED her.

She says that she used to expect everyone to do things for her, to fight all of her battles for her, but now she’s not like that.

She says that she used to have scars from hurting herself, from letting out the pain, but she says that they are fading.

She says that the only way that people change is if they put themselves in a situation where there’s no other option.

And she’s right I suppose, but I ask you, Is it worth it?