escapsim defined

escapsim defined

Point; Two weeks after I arrived in Japan the first time, I cried myself to sleep.

I guess this is what you would call your culture shock, your desperate and sad lonliness of someone alone in a foreign land with no comprehension of this that the other thing...blah blah blah. That wasn't it. The shock had nothing to do with the culture.

I missed my friends.

I cried for hours, softly, because I did not want my host family to know how I felt. It was no fault of their own, and when I am in America I miss them the same way. But then, I felt such a biting lonliness. There was not a chance in hell to visit them over a weekend. Ever. Not that I was crying out for a hug or anything so stupid as that- I've never really been one for physical contact. It's one of those things that makes me wonder if I ought to go out and get tested for asbergers or something like that. The biting painful lonliness was linked to the simple fact that I was restricted from doing things by factors beyond my control.

The next morning, I was fine. It was gone. Why? You become trained to any situation. If it catches you offguard, anything can become traumatic. But say you experience the same thing for a week. Say you experience it for months. For your entire life. You won't suffer long when you're out of control again.

They say people like me have a problem with authority. I have a problem with misplaced authority, and there is the difference. Age does not give you seniority anymore. If you are more experienced in making waffles, then you are a waffle authority and I will listen to you about waffles. However, if you try to lecture me on sewing and you are a waffle expert, I will think you are full of shit and probably not listen to you about anything.

Nobody knows everything anymore. Rephrase- Nobody knows anything anymore. In the information age, in the communication age, you'd expect communication and information to be easy to come by. Instead, you have a plethora of misinformation and miscommunication. Nothing said is ever what is meant to be said and nothing told is ever 100% true unless you know it for a fact yourself.

Enter a parental unit. The reason for misanthropy. This teenaged angst, this 'you can't understand me' mentallity should have faded sometime around the point where I came out on the other side of puberty. Instead, the convictions to it became stronger because I realized I really was on to something. A common rebuttle for my mother to any given plan would be 'that makes no sense.'

"I'm going to my friend's house this weekend. He will pick me up at 9, and drop me off at noon tuesday."
"That makes no sense!"

My father, who divorced her over ten years ago, calls this the 'ostrich approach.' It should also be noted I have lived longer with my mother than my father has, which has become a rather sore point between us since, as I said, I will not listen to a waffle expert about sewing. My father likes to give me advice on how to deal with my mother when I am the more qualified one for that department.

And my advice?

Get away.

People will tell you, love to tell you, that escapism is ultimately a failing practice. Hunter S. Thompsan blew out his brains of his own free will, and that is proof it fails. I suppose this all depends on your point of view. In my point of view, suicide would be the ultimate escape, failing all others. Only an idiot stays in a fight long after he knows he's not going to win. When you learn to walk away and accept defeat on your own terms, I wouldn't call that a failing practice. I'd call that a good life skill, myself.

Arm yourself with this good life skill and walk into battle against someone who at their own whim rearranges the past and future to fit her bizzare fantasy world. You suddenly have said things you never said, and agreed to things you never agreed to. Entire adventures are fabricated to support some bizzare ideal that you are irresponsable.

"Remember that time you went to Harlem, and got lost in the slums? I remember you came back so upset and wouldn't tell me what happened."
"No, because I've never been to Harlem."
"Yes you were, I remember when you went."

Perhaps it's genetic. But correct me if I'm wrong. This is the kind of things nightmares and psychological thrillers are made of. It's fun in the theatre, but bring it to your daily life. You get sick of playing a game you know you obviously will never be allowed to win.

Escape. It's your only solution.

Physical escape is harder than it looks. Now, friends can tell you to 'rebel, just walk out!' but anyone who has ever had to do just that knows it's not quite as simple. You need a ticket, and money for it. You need a plan. You need the strength to carry the things that are yours with you. You need to realize that sometimes, when you escape physically, it may be to a worse situation. You must also face the reality that not only might you have to call someone to rescue you, but you may be caught.

If someone denies all these factors and tells you to just cast caution to the winds and fly free, they've obviously never had the need to escape more than minor stress over their college midterms.

And so you face these stresses. Say you accomplish getting over all of those- you work out a system, you excersize your contacts. You get away, physically. Welcome again to the communcation and information age. You will be contacted.

Even in Japan, I had e-mails dotted with strange accusations and back-and-forth stories.

Perhaps this is why people call escapism a failing practice. Because if you rely soley on physical escape, you will get nowhere. The art is in the combination. Thompsan knew this. You mix the trip to Vegas with the rented car you owe no responsability for. Mix it with drugs. Throw yourself out the window and skate on feelings.

Skate on substance abuse. Arm yourself. That's the escapism.

Someone's going to be appauled here. Good for them, they're never going to need to escape. They're never going to know what it's like to have to hammer your head against a doorframe to keep from picking up a kitchen knife and running at someone screaming. They're not familiar with their own human nature, they're like a domesticated cow. It must be nice to be a cow, but some of us are still wild and instinctive. We're the ones who have to escape, so we don't mind the slaughter so much. It's a vicious circle, they must think. This is all so vicious and self-fueling, it must be you who breaks the chain.

It wasn't you who started the chain, though. Not that fire is a sentient thing but say it was. walk up to it. bend over. With the flames making the tips of your oh-so-domesticated hair sizzle off, ask it very politely to snuff itself out.

"Sure," the fire sarcasticly replies. "Just let me just vanish this here wood, and pump out the air. Throw a little water on myself, oh, and keep matches away from that wood again. I'll do that all by my lonesome. You fucking moron, wake up. I didn't light myself and I'm not what's keeping me going. I'm just HERE."

We're just here. And what's so vicious about the cycle?

Remove the escapism and therein is the viciousness. Therein you have someone helpless, unable to get away, unable to cope. There you have the crying to sleep, with not a chance in hell of things going the way you planned. Remove free will and you'll get rid of escapism, but that's a little bit like chopping off a hand to get rid of a splinter.

Up late at night, now, trapped back in America, I find I'm unable to escape through any means other than writing about it. Imprisioned again, I'm starting to wonder if this woman wouldn't force me back into her womb if it meant she could make up stories and have control over me. The room I am in here is smaller than my room in Japan. There is no room on the floor to walk, because the family is moving to a new house. I found this out from a friend, not from my family. You can escape the fact that you're forgotten, too.

Like hammering on a doorframe, my head is killing me slow and rythmic. Pound, pound, pound. I'd planned to leave here in two days, but it was stretched out to four. Pound, pound, pound. Escape through insomnia and venting the fact that a new car took presidence over your college tuition, that's why you're still here. That's why you've ravenously chewed through books- you're done, you've got nothing left to do.

Point, you're too old to be sneaking from the parent's liquor cabinet.
Point, you're too frantic to be watching television.
Point, it's too late to call someone.

So you sit, and you sit franticly, and you count the hours. You're no good with numbers. 22 left in this day. 21 and a half, really. Today is friday. You get out on Tuesday. Guess, noon on tuesday. That's 12. That leaves Monday, Saturday and Sunday. 72 hours? 72 plus 12 is 84. 84 plus 21 and one half. That's 105.50 hours.

You're going to die, or go crazy, because you can't escape.

Because it's like you're chained to a wall, you're going to go stir-crazy and snap like a wild dog. You're going to snarl and bite and get yourself into more trouble where more stories get fabricated. The only reason you're not crying now is because there's that silly little glimmer of a rescue. The escapist fabrication that is the rescue.

You talk, and you talk, and you talk. And you imagine. Imagination is escapism too, so please note, if you were offended by the above, your imagination is probably nonexistant. That, or maybe piggybacking someone else's.

What would a gun under your chin feel like right now? Would you hesitate a moment to pull the trigger?

If you found yourself trapped in a decaying body with fame you didn't want, in a world that hardly seemed fit for you, what would you do? Was this what Thompson thought?

If being trapped in a small room by people who don't want you in a world that thinks you have an authority problem, I think you'd do the same thing. If you had a gun.

If you had the balls.

I'm fairly sure balls are grown in direct preportion to the amount of escaping you do.

105 hours and 23 minutes.

I've been ready to die for 32 hours. Ready for the rescue. That's what keeps me here.

Remove the rules of society, and what do you end with? Viciousness. Remove the fact that were I to snap someone's neck I'd go to jail- do you think I'd hesitate a moment? Without repercussions, do you think I would wait half a second to administer my sense of justice? Do you think you'd be any better? If you do, you haven't evaluated yourself in the least. Maybe your brain is smooth and slightly bumpy, like a golf ball.

Point; Human beings are omnivores.
Point; Omnivores do not live in packs unless they are scavenging.
Point; What the hell are we doing here?

I reiterate.
What the hell are we doing here?