Post by Regan Voorhees on Dec 11, 2022 14:51:10 GMT -5
I dig a hole in my backyard.
Six feet deep, as mandated by a London plague in the 1600s. We might make it easier on the backs of all those gravediggers(still a profession, though not in the gaslight Victorian sense most of us think) if we made the standard a bit shallower, but tradition is tradition and America loves a tradition, however archaic and unnecessary it may be. But what if there’s a zombie apocalypse, Regan, I hear you ask, that would make it so much easier for them to claw out of the ground. You hurr-hurr-hurr to yourself as I square my feet, prepare to flex my knees and ankles, level my shoulders, steady my grip and swing my shovel squarely at your dense skull, shovel-head striking person-head. Hand placement is important, don’t forget to keep your elbows down. The thought of actually batting a person’s head from their shoulders is delightful, but improbable. The goal is a fatally scrambled brain from the impact, hopefully in one blow. Nothing more undignified than having to bludgeon a squirming mistake until you’re red in the face, sweating, your on-point smokey eye an utter ruin. Whatever the job may be, do it right the first time.
I’m as much an atheist as I am a nihilist, but it’s only appropriate to say a few words before sending one of mother earth’s children back to her dirt-womb.
“2022, fuck you. May flights of shit-demons sing thee to thy rest. Suck my dick, et cetera, love Regan. Postscript - Atticus always hated you. Post-postscript, that’s a lie, I’m not entirely sure how he conceptualizes time.”
Lightning crackles in my yard, illuminating me in my powder blue track jacket ever so exquisitely against the Alabama evening. Really should borrow one of Jill’s social media gremlins for snapshots under these dramatic conditions I always find myself in. I nudge the compostable bag with my sneaker, planting my heel firmly in the zero of the 2022 I’ve sharpied onto the side. Feels like the closest thing to a rib kick for this unpersonified bag. To lend the bag some weight, I loaded it with fertilizer and camellia seeds in an array of colors, a rainbow reminder to sprout after 2022 is long dead.
I roll the bag in with my foot, and into the grave it tumbles, tossing up a dirt cloud as it smacks against the wounded earth. It occurs to me that I may be burying it too deeply for the seeds to sprout, but oh well, I’m much too deep into my heavy-handed metaphorical therapy ritual to stop now. Tossing dirt back over it is easier than I expected. The thrill of seeing it completely covered spurs me on. Soon enough, I’m a sweaty mess, but pleasantly sweaty. More of a glisten, really.
After roughly an hour of shoveling I’m left with a rough rectangle of dirt disrupting the green of my otherwise picturesque yard. The evening is chilly, but I’m a gal who can appreciate a cold breeze blowing over a grave. I take a cross-legged seat on the grass and unpack the snack I brought for the excursion - a cucumber sandwich with a thermos full of beet-infused gin and tonic. Beet. Beat. Beaten. What an absolutely festering, swollen, maggoty corpse of a year. For me, at least. Sulking is something I prefer to do in private. When every second you’re on-screen is YouTube-able, best not to let your moments of weakness go on record.
I crunch on the cucumbers and drown them in a swirl of beet-gin. My weaknesses, unfortunately, have become glaring. Either my brain has created a mental barrier to actual, genuine, S-tier success… Or I’m just not as good as I thought I was… As good as everyone thought I was just one short year ago. Temptation to place blame abounds. The fans for overestimating me, psyching me out, making me crack under pressure. But even thinking that is so embarrassing that I want to vomit out literally all of my blood. If I was overestimated, psyched out, cracked under pressure… The blame falls squarely upon me.
A staggeringly unpleasant notion. Perhaps I’m the problem. Take out the perhaps, though. To paraphrase a big, if somewhat anti-climatic reveal - it was you, Regan. It was you, all along. Maybe you should make a new year’s resolution, you corny bitch.
“Ugh,” I say. I say it to myself, to the cold breeze, to 2022 and to my own unfulfilled sense of self-worth. Really should get back around to fulfilling it, but to that, maybe I should do things differently. I didn’t win Wrestler of the Year in 2022. I was voted Wrestler of the Year. By throngs of adoring fans who, if I ever made physical contact with, I would spend three hours in a boiling hot shower. People believed in me. I let them down. Should I feel responsible for that?
Oddly enough, I kinda do.
“Ugh.”
Six feet deep, as mandated by a London plague in the 1600s. We might make it easier on the backs of all those gravediggers(still a profession, though not in the gaslight Victorian sense most of us think) if we made the standard a bit shallower, but tradition is tradition and America loves a tradition, however archaic and unnecessary it may be. But what if there’s a zombie apocalypse, Regan, I hear you ask, that would make it so much easier for them to claw out of the ground. You hurr-hurr-hurr to yourself as I square my feet, prepare to flex my knees and ankles, level my shoulders, steady my grip and swing my shovel squarely at your dense skull, shovel-head striking person-head. Hand placement is important, don’t forget to keep your elbows down. The thought of actually batting a person’s head from their shoulders is delightful, but improbable. The goal is a fatally scrambled brain from the impact, hopefully in one blow. Nothing more undignified than having to bludgeon a squirming mistake until you’re red in the face, sweating, your on-point smokey eye an utter ruin. Whatever the job may be, do it right the first time.
I’m as much an atheist as I am a nihilist, but it’s only appropriate to say a few words before sending one of mother earth’s children back to her dirt-womb.
“2022, fuck you. May flights of shit-demons sing thee to thy rest. Suck my dick, et cetera, love Regan. Postscript - Atticus always hated you. Post-postscript, that’s a lie, I’m not entirely sure how he conceptualizes time.”
Lightning crackles in my yard, illuminating me in my powder blue track jacket ever so exquisitely against the Alabama evening. Really should borrow one of Jill’s social media gremlins for snapshots under these dramatic conditions I always find myself in. I nudge the compostable bag with my sneaker, planting my heel firmly in the zero of the 2022 I’ve sharpied onto the side. Feels like the closest thing to a rib kick for this unpersonified bag. To lend the bag some weight, I loaded it with fertilizer and camellia seeds in an array of colors, a rainbow reminder to sprout after 2022 is long dead.
I roll the bag in with my foot, and into the grave it tumbles, tossing up a dirt cloud as it smacks against the wounded earth. It occurs to me that I may be burying it too deeply for the seeds to sprout, but oh well, I’m much too deep into my heavy-handed metaphorical therapy ritual to stop now. Tossing dirt back over it is easier than I expected. The thrill of seeing it completely covered spurs me on. Soon enough, I’m a sweaty mess, but pleasantly sweaty. More of a glisten, really.
After roughly an hour of shoveling I’m left with a rough rectangle of dirt disrupting the green of my otherwise picturesque yard. The evening is chilly, but I’m a gal who can appreciate a cold breeze blowing over a grave. I take a cross-legged seat on the grass and unpack the snack I brought for the excursion - a cucumber sandwich with a thermos full of beet-infused gin and tonic. Beet. Beat. Beaten. What an absolutely festering, swollen, maggoty corpse of a year. For me, at least. Sulking is something I prefer to do in private. When every second you’re on-screen is YouTube-able, best not to let your moments of weakness go on record.
I crunch on the cucumbers and drown them in a swirl of beet-gin. My weaknesses, unfortunately, have become glaring. Either my brain has created a mental barrier to actual, genuine, S-tier success… Or I’m just not as good as I thought I was… As good as everyone thought I was just one short year ago. Temptation to place blame abounds. The fans for overestimating me, psyching me out, making me crack under pressure. But even thinking that is so embarrassing that I want to vomit out literally all of my blood. If I was overestimated, psyched out, cracked under pressure… The blame falls squarely upon me.
A staggeringly unpleasant notion. Perhaps I’m the problem. Take out the perhaps, though. To paraphrase a big, if somewhat anti-climatic reveal - it was you, Regan. It was you, all along. Maybe you should make a new year’s resolution, you corny bitch.
“Ugh,” I say. I say it to myself, to the cold breeze, to 2022 and to my own unfulfilled sense of self-worth. Really should get back around to fulfilling it, but to that, maybe I should do things differently. I didn’t win Wrestler of the Year in 2022. I was voted Wrestler of the Year. By throngs of adoring fans who, if I ever made physical contact with, I would spend three hours in a boiling hot shower. People believed in me. I let them down. Should I feel responsible for that?
Oddly enough, I kinda do.
“Ugh.”
