Failure to Thrive

All of my friends loved this old girlfriend I had. Despite the relationship ending poorly, they said that she should be congratulated for “healing me” or whatever the fuck. I can’t help but interpret this as some sort of backhanded insult. Like she should get a prize for putting up with me.

I nod and make approving noises and smile and agree with my friends because that’s what I always do because I’m a coward or bored by people or something. I don’t know. Something’s wrong with me, because I should grab people who say this, shake them roughly, and ask them if they’re out of their minds. That fucking bitch wasted 15 months of my life! She was a drug-addled alcoholic who cheated on me and still owes me $600. Jesus Christ.

When she broke up with me I wrote this 15 page rant for the front page called “Failure to Thrive.” It was this hilarious treatise about how she would never amount to anything. It was bonkers. Writing it made me feel like I was 15 again…which, actually, was kind of nice.

I thought about this whore recently, though, because I was ruminating on “What Great Society means to me,” as last week’s 9/11 article shows. I realized that, in 2009, this foul schlanger told me that I would amount to nothing because all I ever wrote were rants! She physically dragged me into our office, called up this website, and pointed at the tag cloud: “That’s all there is! ‘Rants’!”

And I took this. I could have replied, “Actually, ‘GS Archives 2004-2008’ is biggest,” but, no. I took her criticism to heart and I spent the next four fucking years trying to shape my writing so it would never fall into the “rants category” on this fucking web page. Jesus.

I’m so glad she’s gone because all she did was criticize. It was never constructive, either.

She was obsessed with being a stay at home mom and talked constantly about having babies. We both had debt up to our eyeballs, but she seemed to think that was no problem. We could form the perfect nuclear family and I’d Ward Cleaver away the debt while she sat at home in her dress and pearls, never having to work again. I’ve never met someone so obsessed with getting on the gravy train as she was. And I know lots and lots of people who are really obsessed with getting on the gravy train.

I didn’t much enjoy this mentality — that I was going to be her free ride. It was a bizarre style of husband hunting that, I think, was better suited to the 1950s than the 2000s, yes?

What upsets me when my friends praise her is that, while I forgive them for not knowing the full picture, I know that she herself doesn’t realize that she did anything wrong. Coming to terms with that frustration really helped me — as I ruminated on what Great Society means to me — to understand the true purpose of this website: It’s my own private and anonymous forum to call certain people from my past total and complete cunts.

And, I mean, holy shit. Some of you really are total and complete cunts. It’s actually humbling to have witnessed your total cuntness. I can’t stop talking about it because I simply cannot believe that you exist.