Aiden Deis: My Subset of Reality

Tuesday, October 28th - 2014

Today I met Heather.

I've been in a slump lately. I find that for me to be happy is a rather tall order. Though I'm sure you still remember, I have found that the easiest way for me to become happy-- to achieve a sense of purpose-- is to make other people happy instead. Yes, I am that broken. So broken that instead of generating my own happiness, I have to encourage other people to generate happiness and just skim off whatever excess they might produce.

*I just looked up "how to become a monk", turns out you have to be religious. Disappointed.

Through 4 or 5 emails, I set-up a meeting with someone at some retirement home. Why a retirement home? Who really knows. I figured the old people might have interesting stories. Maybe there would be an old piano teacher, who I could teach me how to sing-- maybe I just chose something for the sense of autonomy that comes with choice.

I found the place easily enough - I drove there about 40 minutes after my last class - though I was very concerned about my fuel levels. I wasn't on empty yet, but I was getting close. Petrol usually isn't a concern, however I lost my wallet again and still haven't decided whether I'm holding out hope of finding it; or if I should cancel my cards and have them mailed again. The real concern is my drivers license.

I'm not quite sure what I was expecting-- maybe some dainty sophisticated lady, perhaps that stereotypical brute of a nurse that walks into the room to manhandle you-- right as the sexy nurse turns and leaves. Whatever I was expecting, I was not expecting Heather.

I had some trouble actually getting into the building, but eventually I triumphed and walked to the reception desk, satisfied with my victory. The two girls at the desk looked at me with, almost, pained faces. That was when I realized that an obnoxiously loud gonging sound was verberating through the entire building-- It occurred to me that one of the buttons I pressed while battling the door must have been - wait for it - the doorbell. Exactly why it was my fault that their doorbell made the windows shake and most assuredly woke any of their old ladies taking a nap-- I fail to understand.

I told the two girls that I was supposed to be meeting with "someone, I'm not sure who- about volunteering." They nodded, said "Yes, Heather," pointed to a room and said "wait there." The room was empty spare a table and four chairs. I considered taking a chair at one of the "heads" of the table, and thought better of it. After sitting there a while, I noticed a "Volunteer Application" was laying on the desk, and started filling it out. Right as I finished the first page of the application- in came Heather.

Heather was wearing a dress-- one that partially revealed the tattoos on her breasts. She was heavier-set woman so it wasn't that whole provocative deviant thing going on. It was more of a-- oh, I like tattoos kind of thing. She had Vegas-red lipstick and matching nails.

After talking to her for a while, it turns out-- Heather has a 7 year old son, loves to watch football on Sundays with one of the old men, hates playing bingo with the old people-- because they fight about it, and she is currently in the process of making biographies of all the residents and hanging them on the walls. She seemed to genuinely care about the 15 old people that stayed there. When she gave me a tour of the place, she stopped at the biographies that she'd already put up on the wall and started telling me stories about the old people and what they've been through. I forgot most of what she told me. I recall that one of the buildings on the university campus was named after an old man that lives there-- and one of the ladies was a 102 years old. Let me never grow so old that endurance be my claim to fame.

What struck me most about Heather was how real she was. Hear me out. She wasn't pretending to be anything other than Heather and although she made light jabs at some of her residents-- telling me how they bicker and act like children sometimes-- she was so unpretentious and bare in her manner that you could tell that if anyone else dared to take jabs at her residents-- she'd be out for blood. It's very rare that people are so bare that you can spare the energy usually needed to interpret their pretentious body language. When you don't have to spend energy compensating for who somebody wants you to think they are, it's much easier to actually appreciate who they really are.

Like I'm some saint-self-acceptance. I play more characters in a day than most career acters do. I spend so much energy trying to project who I think I want people to think I am-- that the result is just some unpersonable high-chin who can't hold a conversation. Maybe being around Heather might help me peel back some of my projections.

In other news. It's make or break time. I guess we're about to find out what you're made off. The day after tomorrow I have my second Math Common Exam. I need to make at least a high B to even start compensating for the D I made on the first. Having to actually work at something is difficult.