It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a bottle: Breaking Benjamin - Phobia

Earlier today:

Some days the hopelessness of the situation is too much. Today is one of those days. 

That's not a cry for sympathy or some passive-aggressive guilt trip, it's objective reality. Today i am mentally and emotionally broken by the weight of $250,000. I'll be fine later once i rearrange some brain cells and shove it back in a bottle, but that doesn't make it go away, it doesn't make the next 20 years of trying to live on $900 a month any easier, it doesn't fix my falling apart car, it doesn't actually make anything better.

I say this with all sincerity, there's no reason for you to care other than human kindness. I have to be in a position to give you something you want in exchange for your money. You are in some similar situation as well. That's where the hopelessness rears its ugly head. I have to scrape and claw and worm my way into your brain, i have to beg and plead without begging and pleading. It rots my soul from the inside.

You don't have to reply to this, or worry about me, or anything, i'm simply telling you my reality as a human on this planet. It sucks 100% of the time, i just don't have the mental energy to ignore it today.

Thanks for reading.

Now, today:

I usually don't veto my brain when it tosses up an album, but tonight is an exception. The album my brain wanted was Offspring's Ignition, but 1) it's a convenient avoidance, and 2) i can literally listen to that album in my head any time i want.

No, Bottle says "hey, i'm Bottle, and if i know me, what i really should do is just lean into it and smile at the demons and say i'm better at this game than you. Choke on the melodrama."

So, here's Ben Burnley's album about his fear of  flying/dying. You remember the last time we broke out Benjamin, right? It was Bottle's Butt-Rock Butstravagansa. This is a short list, desert island with a solar-powered cd player album. Made a human centipede joke and everything. This album is gorgeous. It also has one of those weird uber-specific but completely mundane memories attached to it. It came out the Summer of 2006 and i had just started that super awesome part of the story where i lived in Texas during the week and saw my wife and newborn son on the weekends. That's not the memory, just context. The actual memory is the mail boxes and pebbled sidewalk of the apartment complex. Interesting addendum, Flyleaf is associated with the tree canopy surrounding the entrance to said apartment complex. No secret hidden message there, just the literal brain path this album lives in. One of my actual students was also my regular pizza delivery driver, so you know i tipped him like 60%.

What are we doing? We're just shoving all that pain and depression from earlier today into this bottle of semi-adjecent misery. Track 9 and i already feel fantastic. See, the trick is that i don't have to remember this garbage until i listen to this album again, but since this album is one of my all time favorite manual labor demolition albums, Ben and whoever else he got to play on this album (he changed band members more often than Iron Butterfly or Lauryn Hill even) will just beat the crap out of that hurt. Yes, of course it's silly, but track 10 and there's not even a tinge of mope left, it works for me whether you understand it or not. You know, synchronizing the garage doors, rematrixing the program, having Chriscrosstopher Robin glue me back together?  It's sort of like the Memory Palace thing, but in reverse, i put things in there to specifically forget them.

Now, you might think "wait, isn't that like intentionally repressing memories?"

Nope, i still know exactly where those memories are, i just don't have to deal with them until they ferment into something better, or at least slightly more palatable. No idea how to teach you how to do it. Sorry.