JIM #77

Jim was sick of being misunderstood. When he meant SICK, it meant more, much, much, than sick. It was more like the queasy, nauseaus feeling that you get from eating mayonaisse that's been left out too long, or a quick lancinating sensation from being whacked in the head with a 2 X 4 by somebody you hate, not that being smacked head-upside by somebody you like feels a whole lot better, but at least, after the lightning-bolt pain subsides, you can come to some kind of rapprochement as to why they hit you in the first place. With someone you hate, Jim dully reasoned, this kind of understanding can't be reached - you really have no desire to do so, and all you are left with is a wicked unempathetic ache. Every time Jim encountered a misunderstanding anew, it seemed like a fresh new problem; new, weird and unknown variables, the rules changed his mental carpet pulled psychopathically - cruelly - from under him, like a bully whose sole purpose in life was to make a complete, utter, shambling misery of his life, which, truth be told, was shambling enough without the tragic misconception that followed him continuously like some demonic hound from hell. Jim felt wantonly, cruelly and heedlessly, wantonly chucked out of his pipe-dream of eden like a drunk thrown out of a bar, scraped on the street, splashed by a taxi while splayed sprawingly on the curb, pants bouncer-ripped, cold, drunk, concussive, vomiting, a bad-ass hangover seething even through his drunkeness, his romantic life a torn tatter, and his tendrils of sanity asundered into a confused bleakness of reptilian malignancy. Perhaps I'm being a little bit rough on myself, Jim thought. There WAS Mary. Mary would listen to his pity-whine - or at least feign attention. Sometimes he thought she was more interested in American Idol than him. Hell, she probably was. After a day at the bank, I mean, could he blame her for being more interested in some jerk off-key warble "Just My Imagination" that be attentive to his crap? And in his moments of clarity, of self-reflection, he knew he had turned into a bottomless morass of crap. He hated this about himself, but there was nothing he could do, no way out. He had tried psychotherapy, but the very idea of paying someone to listen to his crap, of them having to listen to his pitying and driveling whine-rain because that was their job seemed pretty damn lame. And this was just Jim's bright side. It gets worse - much worse, he thought. .