Hello, everyone. I’m Mark, and I’ve noticed a lot of negative, unhappy people online these days, and I think I have a way to help. Here’s a tip for any of you really going through it right now.
When my life gets too stressful, and it very often does, I fall back on my tried and true method of refocusing my mind, body, and spirit, of talking my psyche down from the ledge of oblivion. It always works. It has never failed me.
My calming technique is to just start making a sandwich. Simple as that.
Let’s say my piece of shit kids are fucking whining about Nintendo or whatever the fuck again and I’ve had just about up to here (imagine my hand well, well, well above my head, jumping a little to get there) with them. Well, instead of lashing out and screaming, instead of ramming their fucking heads through the door and shattering their stupid skulls, seeing their black eyes roll skull-ward, I just start making a sandwich. As satisfying as it would be to just literally tear them apart with my bare hands, my bear hands, like a psycho gorilla escaping the test lab, no. No, no, no. Never. I’d never do that ever. I just start making a sandwich. That’s all I have to do.
I have all the fixin’s ready at all times. I have to in order to keep sane. Their mom doesn’t understand it, but she’s on pills all the time or something, comatose. I don’t know. It’s not like I’ll get much of a response from her these days. Whatever works, right? Works for her I guess. But for me? For me though? It’s all about going through the relaxing and rewarding sandwich making ritual.
I buy expensive bread because I work overtime and deserve some of the finer things in life. What have the kids done to deserve that bread, hm? How many times am I going to have to hear the principal on the phone complaining about the things they’ve been doing in the tucked away corners of the school and under the bleachers, about how they’ve been spray painting words and symbols on the bathroom floors? No, kids. Bad, kids. You don’t get the nice good bread I do.
So of course that’s the first item to tackle. A hearty hardy ho of thick sliced white bread. That’s right! White! Save your fancy seeds and grains, your whole and half wheats for your granolo bars or what have you. Even though Obama once said, “White ain’t right”, I gotta disagree with him when it comes to bread. I slather room temp butter on two of the fat boys and throw them in a hot pan to delicately toast. I’ll keep a hungry eye on those two rascals, attentively focusing my senses on the smell of toasting, the sound of sizzle butter, the firmy feel of that maillard reaction on the pan side. Fuck, it’s therapeutic to shut out the violent shrills and nonsense blatherings of those snot nosed brats. Constantly with the chanting, those two.
Toasted but to one side only, that is to say each piece of bread still has a soft side to it, much like my neighbor who never seems to shut her blinds all the way, I put the half-toasts soft side down, much like I’d like to put my neighbor soft side down bent over the couch in her living room. You see, the toasty crunchy being on the inside adds an incredible textural… sensation or something like that. I’ll think of a better word later, but the point is that the outside of the sandwich stays nice and soft. Not in a sexual way like in my continuous fantasy about my neighbor, but in an epicurean way. Though, that implies sexual as well, doesn’t it? Let’s just say in a yummy way then.
Oh how the smell masks the acrid odor emanating from the bedrooms of those kids, that sulfuric, odorous fog seeping from the cracks of their doors! You can see why I’m stressed so often!
Now comes the mayo! Both sides, please! Oh, both sides you say, me? Yes, me, let’s do both sides! Now that’s a roight jolly bonny thought-ska-dilly! Haha! Oh, you British with your word choices. As my shitty, fucking, terrible “children” run amok and prod their scaly, catatonic mother with sticks or forks or whatever those things are—I don’t know where the got them or why—I think about the creamy balance that shplurf of mayo is going to add to the sandwich. I think about it a lot. I just stare right at the mayo’d bread and really lose myself.
The world dims around, the white mayo on white bread seems to glow, entice, beckon to me. “Meeeat… Chee-eee-eese… adorn me, festoon me my son… Adorn my waiting body…” Yes. Yes, Master Sandwich. Thy will be done. I am your servant, your willing slave! I commit my body and soul to you, O, Sandwich!
And so I do. I’m let go of the bare sandwich’s allure for a moment long enough to get a nice stack of thin sliced ham and turkey out of the fridge. Yes, we call it a “fridge” here. Get over it. And, yes, double yes, I make sure to really hassle the poor fella at the meat slicer, ya know, just really be a fucking problem for him until he gets my deli meats cut so dangerously thin he has to call the manager several times to make sure he’s allowed to mess with the meat slicer settings that much. But I get it. I get the meats I need for the sandwich I very, very desperately need.
I do my best to ignore the pointy toothed grins of my wife’s abominable children. Their mischievous eyes creep me out, and if I’m being perfectly honest with you all, I find it very uncomfortable, like physically uncomfortable to be in the same room as them. I just feel my bones twisting beneath my skin, my muscles twitching with erratic spasms, my sense of balance and sense of self kinda just go all out of whack. That’s why I just do my best to nod approvingly at whatever strange prose they offer and just focus on stacking my meat.
And I pile it on high, why not? The fuck you gonna do about it, huh? I alternate paper thin slices. It’s an arduous process and one that I just have to convince myself is worth it because if I ever found out that it doesn’t actually make a difference whether or not I alternate slices, then I’d just… Man, well let’s just say I’d let these monster kids do to me what they did to their mother. But that’s what I do and it takes hours. It takes several stiff straight kicks to the chests of these shrieking children trying to throw me off of my therapy session, but I do it do it do it to it.
With assembly line efficiency, I unwrap and plap, plap, plap, plap four slices of American cheese (Sorry, Obama) right on the mountain of meat. Easy now, boy, here’s the part that will test your mettle! Courage, now, courage! Don’t let them take you! Don’t succumb to your fear, old chap! This sandwich will see you through, and the visions they subject you to will vanish! Vanish I tell you, boy! Do not tarry for they surely hear your thoughts! And with that gruff inner monologue, I place the other bread on top. Sandwich made!
I tremble a bit seeing the beautiful stack. My whole body shudders with anticipation, shedding the horror around me, the awful presence of those vile creatures scrambling along the walls and ceiling. They won’t control me! This conquering bliss ripples through my nervous system. I can’t really describe the intense internal pleasure that snakes through my body, I mean, I guess it’s like an orgasm. I do feel very shameful, but that’s only a fleeting feeling.
Ha, ya know the funny part? Sometimes I don’t even eat it. Sometimes, I just lean over with my elbows on the kitchen counter and just stare at it. I re-enter that void and completely shut out everything around me. I no longer feel the smoldering grip of their sharp hands, nor their cursed words slither down my ear hole, nor that dread twist like a lead snake in my stomach, nor the blood in my eyes blurring my world view, nor the screams of despair from unknown reaches. None of it. I don’t know how long I’m there for, in that world where the only things in existence are me and that sandwich. It feels like a long time. Maybe it’s like 30 seconds, but it feels like a very, very, long time. Well, actually, I know it’s longer than 30 seconds. I don’t know why I said that. Sorry. I’m just… It’s the stress. No, yeah. It’s way longer because when I do finally snap out of my trance, those horrible kids and their mother are gone. Maybe they went to school or what not. Surely they’ll be back on their own accord. Right? Ah, who knows.
All I know is I was able to get through another high stress moment by making a sandwich, and that’s all that really matters.
I hope those of you who needed to hear this found this valuable. No one here is free of the chaos. Hell, some of us are continuously burdened by the embodiment of it, but if my technique works for me, then by golly, I think it can work for you.
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