Sometimes I feel like a freak for still being single.

I'm sick. In more ways than one, but currently I am physically sick. My head aches like never before and I can hardly move my legs without them screaming at me. My left shoulder feels as if there is no blood pumping through it. My upper neck and back smolder in agony, causing me to hunch over. I can't sleep. But that isn't too uncommon.

My shower is broken, not sure why. I don't really intend to find out either. Simple problem, simple solution. And there is always the temporary solution of using my neighbors shower. The shower head looks like someone hit it with a hammer. That isn't too hard to imagine, either, with the company I'm with.

But that's enough of me complaining. Everyone gets sick, bad things happen to shower heads, I'm nothing special. What is special, though, is the agonizing reality that I have finals tomorrow. And I can't control my mind. I can and will deal with it, though.

Every time I start to get down, feel depressed, or just get mentally messed up because of the people around me - when the things people do just don't make sense anymore, just seem illogical or irrational - I try and think of Charles Bukowski's poem, this is free, take it, and feel better:

bad-natured people are everywhere like flies upon a dead horse in a
hot summer
they are set upon objects, things, situations
in a rather congenial viciousness
that is most often mistaken for courage
but generally
(setting aside bad companionship, bad diet, bad breeding)
most acrimonious nerves (setting aside bad elimination of wastes and so
forth) are caused by
failure.
and they fail
first
because they are simply incompetent at what they try to do or
be
and second
because of an educational system
and a
national philosophy which
beckons them higher than they are
able.
in other words, they are not failures
but unrealistic forces and demands make them feel to be
failures
and so business is good for the
psychiatrists and psychologists
and the jails and the mental
institutions
(which are only dumping grounds for the overload
like unhappy homes, thieves, skid row and etc.)
there is no such thing as failure, there is only the
comparative grind, there is only the concept of
failure.
and a $175-an-hour shrink won't even tell you
this
because
he's been taught by the book
just like his victim.

so take this poem and keep it somewhere for
ready reference

because it might not only save you
money
it might also save your
sad and angry
ass.

...

Maybe I'm just a confused person and what I see and what I feel is what everyone sees and feels, and I'm just the only person who doesn't like it. I'm the only one who doesn't get it, or doesn't understand why no one talks about it.

... I can hardly handle it - how can others?

I know I am a strong person. I have very strong willpower because I know "that spiritual is stronger than any material force; that thoughts rule the world." I can contain myself better than others.

So it gets me thinking, if I'm on the verge of just wanting to seclude myself from society because of the people around me, how could other people handle it (if the thoughts I have are shared amongst all)? How can the people who are clearly brainless, the people you see on CNN who do the most ridiculously stupid things sometimes, how can they handle it? Why don't the criminals and murders go on a rampaging killing spree?

Since they don't do that, either I have a lot worse of an image of the common person, or no one (or not many) understand what I'm talking about when I say human actions are excruciatingly ridiculous.

Sometimes I start thinking about what kind of person I would be if I were 1% less me. If I were just a notch down, just a tad less keen, a bit less brilliant. If I wasn't just quite as smart. Not significantly, no. I'm saying one step down. If I were just a bit less of a person, what would I do? Would I be the same and the only difference would be my small choices on random occasions? Paper instead of plastic. Donate a penny instead of keeping it. Or would I be significantly different? Would I be the one going on a rampaging killing spree just because that one notch - that one grain - was the only thing keeping me from going insane? More insane? Is that one bit of me keeping me from falling off the edge?