The Spleen Monologues

I am often asked: What is your problem?

Let me as you the same question: What is your problem?

When you look at the mirror you feel a deep, unquenchable discontent because no matter what products or services you buy, you will never, ever look the way TV commercials and magazines say you should. The cosmetics, fashion, health and fitness industries are sustained by your eternal dissatisfaction and the prenicious self-loathing that is called "self improvement."

You work for a person you do not respect, whose main qualification is that he is related or somehow connected to the powers that be in your professional universe. You take orders from someone of lesser ability, who criticizes your work because he knows that you know ge doesn't deserve his position, and dammit, because he can. The promotion that should've gone to you goes to someone whose ability to suck up to the boss would shame the most powerful vacuum cleaner. You stay in a job you hate, among people you can't stand, because you have bills to pay and a lifestyle you have to maintain whether you like it or not you actually like it.

You receive advice you don't want from people who say they care about you and have your best interests at heart, but are actually using you to delude hemselves that their lives are wonderful. (They need you more than you need them, ever think of that? Without poor little you to give advice to, who would they be superior to?)

You are considered a loser because you refuse to compromise your standards and settle for whoever is willing and available. You are called immature by people who jumped on the first warm body that happened along because they were afraid to be alone.

You are judged not on merits but on externals. Your clothes. Your car. Your looks. Your possessions. Your address. Your friends, the people you claim to be your friends, the people you think are your friends. the club you belong to. You are defined by furnishings in your house, the model of your car, the version of your software, the size of your cellphone, the labels on your clothes, the restaurants you dine in, the television sitcoms you watch, the new spiritual philosophies you subscribe to. "This is you," the salesperson says with a cloying smile holding up a product worth exactly one-fiftieth of it's price, and somewhere in the back of your mind you know that this is not you, but you take out your credit card and bury yourself deeper in debt because you can't afford not to buy what everyone else is buying. Better to be in hock than to be different. There is safety in numbers.

You are under pressure to follow the trends, which the minute they become trends, are on their way to obsolescence. You are required to eat food that is supposed to make you live longer, but which is so tasteless you wonder why people would want to live longer. You get tired of being called Fatty, so you follow diets and exercise regimens to lose weight, when it is a fact of life that you will gain all that weight back and more.

You see stupidity, self-delusion, and arrogance everywhere you turn.

When people say "Be yourself," they mean you should be more like them. When they say "It's okay to be different," they neglect to add, "But not too Different."

And when you vent your anger, people shrug their shoulders and say, "That's the way things are, there's nothing you can do about it."

Between you and me, I'm the happy one.

- The Spleen Monologues
Jessica Zafra, 12 Aug 2000