A person whose opinion (and blog) I admire a lot suggested I create a blog of my own about two weeks ago. Trust me when I say that I hadn't given it any thought, or even intended to do so until just now, at 6:03 in the morning.
On the verge of finally achieving sleep, the inspiration for this morning's post was electrically signaled into my brain like a healthy jolt of PTSD. Insomnia, much? Yeah - my mom just walked in the room and told me that I've lost my mind. I'm not going to contradict that because I have work at 11 AM, and haven't slept a wink.
Let's set sail by smashing the blog with a story in a bottle about the one thing that I was most hurt by in my entire life. I'm starting it this way in hopes that when you read future posts, you'll understand that my life really isn't that bad, no matter how shitty I may make it out to be, and how much my problems only apply to a lower-middle-class Caucasian male living in America.
The Melancholy of Josh Freakland
A few years back, in the middle of my senior year of high school, I was going out with a decent-looking, curvy blonde girl. Crazy, right? Out of the few girlfriends I have had, this girl would have to be the one I am most proud of. It lasted THREE months, which was definitely a new record for me, and still reigning champion.
In the third month that I was her boy-toy, I was signed up to go on my German class's Euro-trip. First stop? Amsterdam. At this point in her life, my girlfriend was an avid anti-druggie and anti-drinker, which incidentally made her an anti-me. By the time I was on my way back to America, I had drank and smoked more than I thought I was humanly possible, thrown up on the Strassenbahn, bought hash off Streetalians (street Italians), ripped bongs with my friend's mom, been tempted by hookers, and drunkenly danced down German streets like my name was John Jakob Jingleheimer Schmidt, while people actually shouted John Jakob Jingleheimer Schmidt!
It was the best of times, it was the BEST of times, but, through it all, I still had managed to think about my girlfriend when it mattered, and I don't just mean when the hooker said "$20 suck and fuck". Not only had I resisted fucking a surprisingly hot Aryan version of Roxanne, but I had chosen to buy my girl a gift. During the waiting time for a bus in Heidelberg, I had stumbled upon a curio shop. It mostly contained garbage for being a bunch of handmade stuff. In the middle of searching for the diamond in the rough, I'd finally found it: an aesthetically pleasing handcrafted miniature piano music box with a ballerina that spun around the interior of the piece when music played.
After conversion, it was around $110 for the piano, which I had loved so much, I had only assumed my girlfriend would just as well. And even if she didn't, she'd enjoy the sentiment.
Fast-forward : I'm sitting back at home in the US opening up the piano on the landing of my stairs, because screw going all the way up stairs. After fumbling around with the gift at home to see if it worked correctly, I noticed that it wasn't working correctly - the winding mechanism was acting funky, and it'd stop playing music unless you'd nudge it midway. It sucked, and while the piece still worked and looked pretty, trying to fix this small problem had been ruled out.
I text my girlfriend telling her I brought her a gift back from Germany. "What is it!? :)" she texts back excitedly.
"I got you a miniature piano music box with a ballerina that dances inside it! There's one itsy bitsy problem with it. The winding mechanism doesn't play correctly all the time, but I really think you're gonna like it because I thought of you when I bought it! :)"
Now that I think about it, this may have not been the best way of presenting someone a gift. But, in the end, gifts are free, right? The whole point of a gift is to let someone know that they're appreciated and thought about. Enjoy that foreshadowing, and then watch this:
"so you got me a broken gift?"
"Well, not exactly. It still works, it's just that sometimes you have to nudge the winding thingy to keep the music playing. Otherwise, it's really beautiful."
"it sounds broken"
This was the point in which I started to feel this horrible feeling in my chest, about the place where the heart should be. Once I read that message, every part of me knew what was coming and reacted accordingly. I could feel the hurt and the sadness growing inside me. I'm pretty sure I was in shock, and I seriously didn't intend to type it out in this dramatic way to her.
"....you... you don't want it?"
"not really"
Talk about crestfallen. I don't remember what I did the rest of that afternoon. All I know is that when I woke up for school the next morning, my pillow was still drying from the tears.
Josh Freakland cried himself to sleep for the first time at 18-years-old.
Well, boys and girls! That's it for story time. You've just read a tale that'd gone missing in some dusty drawer in my head for over two years and just now surfaced. Hope you enjoyed it.
This episode of The Life and Times of Josh Freakland has brought to you BAD TIMING.
Tune-in next week for more adventures!- Josh Freakland
Let's set sail by smashing the blog with a story in a bottle about the one thing that I was most hurt by in my entire life. I'm starting it this way in hopes that when you read future posts, you'll understand that my life really isn't that bad, no matter how shitty I may make it out to be, and how much my problems only apply to a lower-middle-class Caucasian male living in America.
The Melancholy of Josh Freakland
A few years back, in the middle of my senior year of high school, I was going out with a decent-looking, curvy blonde girl. Crazy, right? Out of the few girlfriends I have had, this girl would have to be the one I am most proud of. It lasted THREE months, which was definitely a new record for me, and still reigning champion.
In the third month that I was her boy-toy, I was signed up to go on my German class's Euro-trip. First stop? Amsterdam. At this point in her life, my girlfriend was an avid anti-druggie and anti-drinker, which incidentally made her an anti-me. By the time I was on my way back to America, I had drank and smoked more than I thought I was humanly possible, thrown up on the Strassenbahn, bought hash off Streetalians (street Italians), ripped bongs with my friend's mom, been tempted by hookers, and drunkenly danced down German streets like my name was John Jakob Jingleheimer Schmidt, while people actually shouted John Jakob Jingleheimer Schmidt!
It was the best of times, it was the BEST of times, but, through it all, I still had managed to think about my girlfriend when it mattered, and I don't just mean when the hooker said "$20 suck and fuck". Not only had I resisted fucking a surprisingly hot Aryan version of Roxanne, but I had chosen to buy my girl a gift. During the waiting time for a bus in Heidelberg, I had stumbled upon a curio shop. It mostly contained garbage for being a bunch of handmade stuff. In the middle of searching for the diamond in the rough, I'd finally found it: an aesthetically pleasing handcrafted miniature piano music box with a ballerina that spun around the interior of the piece when music played.
After conversion, it was around $110 for the piano, which I had loved so much, I had only assumed my girlfriend would just as well. And even if she didn't, she'd enjoy the sentiment.
Fast-forward : I'm sitting back at home in the US opening up the piano on the landing of my stairs, because screw going all the way up stairs. After fumbling around with the gift at home to see if it worked correctly, I noticed that it wasn't working correctly - the winding mechanism was acting funky, and it'd stop playing music unless you'd nudge it midway. It sucked, and while the piece still worked and looked pretty, trying to fix this small problem had been ruled out.
I text my girlfriend telling her I brought her a gift back from Germany. "What is it!? :)" she texts back excitedly.
"I got you a miniature piano music box with a ballerina that dances inside it! There's one itsy bitsy problem with it. The winding mechanism doesn't play correctly all the time, but I really think you're gonna like it because I thought of you when I bought it! :)"
Now that I think about it, this may have not been the best way of presenting someone a gift. But, in the end, gifts are free, right? The whole point of a gift is to let someone know that they're appreciated and thought about. Enjoy that foreshadowing, and then watch this:
"so you got me a broken gift?"
"Well, not exactly. It still works, it's just that sometimes you have to nudge the winding thingy to keep the music playing. Otherwise, it's really beautiful."
"it sounds broken"
This was the point in which I started to feel this horrible feeling in my chest, about the place where the heart should be. Once I read that message, every part of me knew what was coming and reacted accordingly. I could feel the hurt and the sadness growing inside me. I'm pretty sure I was in shock, and I seriously didn't intend to type it out in this dramatic way to her.
"....you... you don't want it?"
"not really"
Talk about crestfallen. I don't remember what I did the rest of that afternoon. All I know is that when I woke up for school the next morning, my pillow was still drying from the tears.
Josh Freakland cried himself to sleep for the first time at 18-years-old.
Well, boys and girls! That's it for story time. You've just read a tale that'd gone missing in some dusty drawer in my head for over two years and just now surfaced. Hope you enjoyed it.
This episode of The Life and Times of Josh Freakland has brought to you BAD TIMING.
Tune-in next week for more adventures!- Josh Freakland
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