Hate

I started this piece either back in 2005 or 2006, which ever was the last year I lived with a set of roommates. I completed it in 2007, getting the only good reaction from it through my dad. He shuddered. “Oo! Violent.” Dad’s always been good at saying things I like to hear and tend to make me feel better.

What went behind this piece? Hate. Pure and simple. And I’d like to think I’ve finally rationalize what’s behind that hate. People. But not just any people. There is specifically two types of people I would rather not associate myself with ever again, though I know that it would be impossible to do so: Those with incredibly high charisma, and those with documented mental disabilities. Please, before you start calling me prejudiced and bigoted and such, though I won’t deny it, let me explain.

I lived and worked with two different people with high charisma. They’re very outgoing, people want to be around them, and they never get in trouble for anything. My roommate and I had done so many similar things; it was the reason why we got along for as long as we did. However, when it came to good or bad, doing the right or wrong, whenever we both did something wrong on different occasions, such as cuss in front of our parents, or hand in something late, she would be praised while I would be punished. Same scenarios, different outcomes. Why? Because I don’t have the charisma to come up with a witty comeback. I simply don’t have it in me. I rejoiced when I found out she was fired from her job once. Rejoiced, despite it being such a crappy reason to be fired. It made me feel good that someone hadn’t fallen for this girl’s act. Karma kicked my ass about it later. ^_^

My co-worker was worse. You much understand, my manager at that time in my life was a very religious man. So much that he owns and ministers to his own church. His second in command at the hotel we worked at lived on church property. My co-worker, who nobody really could stand working with because he was lazy, didn’t answer the radio, the list goes on. This guy kicked a hole into the wall of the main entrance and took hotel property without asking or notifying anyone about it! What kind of property, you might ask? Try a carpet cleaner from house keeping. Yeah, like they aren’t going to miss that! But my co-worker, he could smooth talk his way out of anything. And let’s not forget that he’s practicing to become a preacher, so naturally my manager is going to take him under his wing despite the trouble he causes.

So when they’re about to go through and lay some people off, who gets booted? Me. Why? It gets a bit sketchy there. The day my manager fired me, he told me that it was because I wasn’t “Aggressive enough towards greeting the guests.” When I go to apply for Unemployment, the reason he gives them is because of something that happened two or three months before I got booted. Excuse me? But why did you wait so long to boot me? Oh, maybe because a week before you canned me I openly stated that I was sick of being preached to about how unhappy my spirit is for not worshipping everyone else’s god? No, we’ll ignore the fact that my manager canned another guy who he argued with through stating text of the bible itself. Yes, both grown men would argue with each other by spitting out random biblical text. IN THE WORK PLACE! Isn’t there some sort of law against this kind of crap!?

Happily, my co-worker got booted by another manager, when our holier than though manager wasn’t around to save him. My co-worker was caught in his uniform shorts, swimming around with someone’s kid in the indoor pool, by another manager. I think it was later found out that he’s on a known pedophile list. And I’m the one that got fired first for not being “Aggressive Enough.” HA!

Now, for the mentally disabilities. I’m not saying I hate all people with them. I live with one of them, and love him with all of my heart. But it’s the people that blame all of their problems and misfortunes on their disabilities, despite the fact that they knew that what they were doing was completely wrong. At my current job, I worked with a girl who has ADD, OCD, and every other mental disorder or disability she can think of, and she usually forgets to include CLD: Compulsive Lying Disorder. Granted, I doubt that there’s a drug to calm the effects of CLD yet, which is probably why they don’t have it on record as an actual disorder, but trust me it is. About a year or so ago, we found out that she was embezzling money from the store’s credit account onto her card. Then, we find out she’s done it again through the local college’s credit account. Naturally, she attempts to commit suicide, blames it all on her mental disorders, and our boss, being the wonderful and forgiving woman that she is, lets her off the hook agian. Ok, well, the girl’s parents had to pay for what we could figure out she stole, but there’s really no way to tell exactly how much the store has lost through this girl’s transactions. Once my boyfriend started working Sundays, and did some cleaning around his work space, we found that this girl was skipping out on working Sundays, but still clocked in and out to get paid for them, and that she probably took all the cash sales from them as well.

But, surely if she had been taken to court, she wouldn’t have gone to jail as she deserves. No, she’s got those mental disabilities and all those medications that mess with her head. Most likely, she’d be sent to an institute and have to get psychiatric help and such; which she needs, but doesn’t get. No, instead my boss let her off the hook, her parents won’t take full responsibility in seeing that the girl gets treatment she needs, and now she’s blaming my boss for not being able to go to her favorite shops around our neighborhood. Like it wasn’t this girl’s fault she went and stole a crap ton of money! Ugh. From what I’ve heard recently, she’s working as a babysitter and trying to support her lazy ass girlfriend, instead of pursuing a job for what she was able to get her degree in. And yes! She has a degree! Got it just after trying to commit suicide!

So, can you see why I’m bitter about these kinds of people? They can get away with anything they want, either through sweet talking their way out of it, or blaming it on a mental disability. What chance does an honest hard working person have against these people? None. I know that if I do something, be it on accident or with good intensions, I will be punished for it. I have before, and I know it will happen again.

Explanations

Naturally, you’re wondering about what I mean in the titles above. Let’s start with “The Memories of the Failed Storyteller”.

I love storytelling. But I love drawing more. You would think that drawing and writing comics would come naturally, right? My first college degree was in Illustration, the closest thing I could get to comic books at the community college I went to. With positive feedback from one of my favorite teachers, I transferred to a college that had a major in Sequential Art. It’s not animation, but there is a required class for storyboarding. No, the major dealt mostly with comic books.

My best classes were in conceptual design and in script writing, but I admittedly struggled in everything else. I was able to prove myself on two occasions to two of my toughest teachers. One was in the character design and storyboarding glass. I had gotten a B on some character designs I did for the western zodiac. I had this teacher before for an introductory class, and he was known to be hard on anyone mimicking the Japanese Manga drawing style. He has nothing against the style, but sees a lot of people lacking the training simply butchering it. Because of how close my style is to the manga art, as well as how messy my work can be, it was hard to get a good grade out of him. But I pulled through. During my character design and storyboarding class, I went to him for help, picking his brain and getting his opinion through out the process of my projects.

After pairing me with one of my classmates to rework his storyboards while he reworked mine, the teacher marveled at how well we had helped each others’ stories flow better visually. We were also assigned to work on sketch books, primarily doing quick figuring drawings to add to our reference collection. But he never collected them, deciding he didn’t have time to look through everyone’s sketch books. If we wanted to, we could come in during office hours so he could give them a quick glance. I did just that.

I was using the back of the sketch book for my personal use, and after looking through the reference sketches, he found my other drawings. One small piece he found was of a witch character design that I had planned on blowing up, inking, and coloring later down the road. The proportions were better than anything he had seen before, a vast improvement on my work since I first had him as a teacher. He boosted that B grade I mentioned above to an A, which boosted my over all grade for the class. I later found out from my conceptual design teacher that my sketchy, free hand, never cleaned up style of drawing is far more captivating than any of my works that are cleaned up. Something changes between the sketches to the finished product that simply makes it less. Reminds me of a drawing teacher I had, who didn’t like rendering things to perfection, but instead simply sketching and making the messy lines bring out the image.

The second teacher I proved myself to, though in a very small and insignificant way was my inking teacher. I took him because the last inking teacher I had didn’t make me feel like I learned anything. The class was too easy, I guess. Anyways, this one guy, known for his prowess with ink and pen, was tough. I felt like I wasn’t doing anything right, though I enjoyed disturbing him with one project he made us do. If I can find a cheap place to get it scanned at, I’ll post it sometime.

If you haven’t noticed, I’m pretty good at getting side tracked. Anyways, there was a fund raiser that he was helping out with, he had us spend some class time working on insect designs. Something monstrous looking, but designed from insects. I don’t remember what I did, and I’m not sure if I even have it still, but he liked my design so much, that he wanted me to paint it on a board to be auctioned off for the fund raiser. Apparently, the fact that he liked it took him by surprise. It sure took me by surprise. I know, not a really good and inspiring story as the one before this, but it still made me feel good about myself in some small way.

How does this correlate to being a failed storyteller? It was during those three years I spent getting my degree, and during the time of a short lived web comic that I worked on with a roommate, that I found that as much as I love to tell stories, and as much as I love to draw, I don’t have the ambition or energy to do both a the same time. I was completely drained, and literally didn’t draw or even doodle anything for a very long time. You should hear the pride in my dad’s voice whenever he talks about me, telling them how there’s never a day where he hadn’t seen me drawing. If I had been living with him still during that dry period, he wouldn’t be able to say that anymore.

But I’m getting better, and ideas are coming back into my mind again. Role playing helps me deal with my yearnings to come up with story ideas, and actually collaborate with other people to making up a fun plot and resolve that are character driven. And occasionally, I’ll be inspired to draw up someone’s character to help make me feel that I’ve accomplished something artistically.


But now, I’m sure you’re wondering even more about “You will Never Remember what I will Never Forget”.

I don’t know if it’s because of the way my brain works, that I find some things more important than others, or it’s some hopeless curse that strives to torture me through out the rest of my life; but I’ve learned that even though I can’t remember stupid quotes from some funny movie, I can remember random conversations from so long ago, and replay them over and over in my head until I get completely frustrated with myself when I can’t stop thinking about it. However, I get more frustrated with anyone else that I had said conversation with, because they don’t remember a single word of it.

It’s ten times worse now, because I’m dating a guy who can’t remember anything I told him seemingly five minutes after the fact. I can repeat to him, over and over again at random points in the day, week, month, or year about something, either a soap I like, or about an appointment, anything and he’ll react like he’s just learning about it. Same goes with commercials, he’ll see something, repeat the same thing he said last time he saw it, and act like it’s all new to him. He’ll be half way through watching an episode of his favorite TV show before he realizes he’s already seen it. I love him, but I’m wondering if he’s coming down with some early stage of Alzheimer or something. I know I’m not perfect when it comes to remembering things, but you’d think that an appointment was important enough to even try to remember.

It’s not just him, though. I’ve had roommates who wouldn’t remember in depth conversations with about something that important enough to effect our way of living, socializing, what have you, but don’t remember ever discussing said problem. And so when it gets brought up again in a later conversation, they deny the whole thing from every happening, or blame it on some short term memory loss when it could have been a year ago when the conversation originally occurred.

What my favorite thing was when I recommended doing something at one point and then someone else comes up with the idea some months later, no one remembers the fact that I had mentioned it before. Of course they wouldn’t, because I’m the one that originally mentioned it.


I am a firm believer that I am not one who is meant to be remembered. It’s why I’ve failed as a storyteller, and why no one will remember anything I will never forget. As much as statistics like to say we all work the same, we really don’t. What treatment might work for one person doesn’t necessarily work the for the next, and there are simply not enough people interested in taking special care of someone who reacts so differently from what works for everyone else.

I thank you for your time in reading this, and I hope you enjoy reading what has yet to come.