On Fulfillment, Depression, and Buying Paper Towels

I must have made a pretty depressing image, tottering down the street toward my office building carrying a gargantuan 24-pack of  “HUGE ROLL!” paper towels, the receipt clutched in my sweaty, balled-up fist.  Or maybe it wasn’t depressing.  Maybe no one noticed at all.

But I found myself thinking, “This would be the most depressing time ever for me to get mugged.”  Waddling along the sidewalk, just a pair of legs beneath the massive and unwieldy package.  It wasn’t heavy, it was just broad, and I found myself hugging it against my chest, my arms stretched around it like a beach ball or a pillow or a child.  I imagined a thief, desperately in need of some cash, lurking in the alleyways and thinking, “I’ve gotta do this.  I’ve just gotta hold up the next person I see.”  But then he would see me, a vulnerable oversized woman-child plunking across the pavement, and a giant lump would form in the back of his throat.  “Not her,” he would think.  “Oh god, not her.  It’s too depressing.”

Me with my paper towels.  Depressing.

As I turned the corner, I saw a pretty little girl in a private school uniform, reading a book outside the beauty supply store where her mother shopped.  “Your life will not turn out how you think it will,” I suddenly wanted to tell her.  “Your life will be tragic and hard.”  But that wouldn’t have been very nice.

I can’t explain why it was so depressing, you see.  Why feel sorry for myself for carrying paper towels?  Do I think I’m entitled to something better?

No.  It was just that I looked at that little girl and thought—someday she will be me.  And when I was that age, when I was her age, I never would have pictured myself as I am now, lumping along hugging a package of paper towels.  I’m sure I used paper towels, but I never would have even thought about how they appeared in their place.  I wouldn’t have imagined walking to Rite Aid to buy them.  I wouldn’t have thought that they’d be $13.07 and my reaction would be, “JESUS, that’s more than I make in an hour.”  I wouldn’t have pictured myself picking out just the exact right amount of change and handing it to the cashier, before asking for my receipt so I could budget the transaction properly.  And I wouldn’t imagine myself just waddling steadily away.

I don’t remember exactly how I pictured my adult, grown-up life.  I don’t think I thought it would be very glamorous.  But I just didn’t envision myself with these paper towels.

How silly.  As though “myself with these paper towels” is who I am now, all I am now, what I do.  I realize that’s reductive, as though instead of being a person completing a task, I am a person defined by this single, inconsequential moment in time.  But when you think about it, for the people who drove by me during my walk, that’s really all I was.  A barely-visible girl walking down the street.  To nowhere.  From nowhere.  Just cuddling those paper towels.

But I wasn’t going nowhere, I was going back to work, which feels like home to me now.  And when I arrived, I wheezed up to the penthouse floor, tossed a few rolls into the kitchen, and stuffed another 17 into the bathroom.  And then I saw—there, in the corner—a roll of paper towels.  That had been there all along.  And my heart just about broke.  It just about goddamn broke.

But this story isn’t about paper towels, or my work, or money.  And I wasn’t upset about the walking, because I really wanted to walk, and it was a really beautiful day.  It was just that in that moment, I realized that I was dissatisfied with my life.  That nothing in my life had gone wrong, and everything was normal, and that I was still unhappy, because this life just wasn’t how I’d imagined, it wasn’t what I’d dreamed it would be.  Because I’d thought my life would be different, maybe just because I was naïve.

You can say that I was depressed because I chose to see things a certain way.  Instead of focusing on the beautiful day, or the many things in life I have to be grateful for, I chose to feel sorry for myself and be cynical and sad.  And I finally remembered what people mean when they say that happiness is a choice.

But choosing happiness isn’t easy.  It’s not like flipping a switch or skipping dessert or asking for paper instead of plastic.  We can’t always wake up in the morning and say, “Today, I will be happy.”  We have to work for happiness, by finding what makes us fulfilled.

Being fulfilled is about utilizing passions and pursuing dreams.  Being unfulfilled is like being trapped underwater, screaming.  You go through the monotony of your day with something festering inside of you, smiling and laughing while you rot from the inside out.  You go to work, you come home, you turn on your TV, you go to sleep.  You try to immediately satisfy your needs—maybe you drink too much or eat too much or buy shit you don’t need—you find diversions and distractions to drown out the voice in your head that says, “This life is not enough.”  But these are just Band-Aids for broken people.

When I graduated from college, I came to LA and began a new life.  It was about working and moving to a new apartment and figuring adulthood out.  But happiness isn’t sold next to shower curtains at Target, happiness comes from doing what you love.  For me, that’s writing and performing comedy.  When I do that, when I practice what I love, I feel fulfilled.  And then little mundane tasks, like buying paper towels, are so utterly forgettable, and even the really awful shit in life is manageable, because I have this precious little key to happiness, and that is my passion, and it is how I am sustained.



Author's Note:  Hi!  Hi friends!  Was that weird for you?  Do you feel cheated out of a laugh?  I'm sorry if that's the case.  And I PROMISE that my next post will be funny and just straight comedy--no depression involved.  In the meantime, you can look at this to feel better:  kittehroulette.com
xoxo, Annamal

Adulthood is Hard. I Assume.

I’m not an adult yet, but I do hand wash my delicate clothing items, which makes me feel like I have some authority to speak on maturity.  But—what even is adulthood?  When will I be considered a “grown-up?”  Will it be when my parents stop paying my cell phone bill?  Or when I stop doing fun things because I don’t want to deal with parking?

I like to think of myself as a highly functioning, responsible human being.  And yet, I am still in college, I primarily subsist on Lean Cuisines, and I always feel oddly proud whenever I complete basic adult activities.  When I go to the bank and talk to the stranger that works there, or ship a package at UPS, I am immediately filled with this elation like, “Look at me, I’m a machine of production!!  Next, I’ll Swiffer the floor and google how to fix my garbage disposal!”  But then, the exhaustion sets in.  The disheartenment.  The knowledge that I’m going to have to complete such tasks for the rest of my life, and no one is going to give me a lollipop, or take me out to ice cream, or pat me on the head and praise me for a job well done.  Knowing how to call Time Warner Cable doesn’t make me special.  

Last weekend, as I was walking along the Venice Beach boardwalk, I saw a small baby pug dog wrapped in a bright red T-shirt.  It was like a tiny, fuzzy little E.T., with a perfect wrinkly face and a permanently forlorn expression.  “I yam selling eet!” announced a woman wearing a babushka, thrusting the miniature creature into my welcoming arms.  I could feel it shivering as it attempted to burrow its face into my hands.  As I kissed the top of its head, it raised its eyes to meet my loving gaze.  And it looked at me like I had just killed its entire family.

The happiest I've ever been

"Life isn't worth it anymore."

At that moment, something inside of me--some dam of crazy, insane-person emotion--spontaneously collapsed.  I yielded the small E.T. into its owner's arms, and whipped out my cell phone to call my mom.

“MOMMY I MET A PUPPY AND IT IS SO LITTLE AND SAD CAN I SAVE IT?” I stammered into the receiver, without greeting or introduction.  To be clear, I don’t live with my parents anymore.  I’m not sure why I wanted my mom’s permission, when my roommates, or my 112-year-old landlord named “Bill,” might have had more to say on the subject.  But as someone who receives an allowance and often only feeds herself with a continually replenished supply of Torero Dining Dollars, I felt I needed her blessing, or at least her cold, objective reason to appeal to my irrational mind.  I needed her to remind me how to exercise restraint.  But it was too late—and in the middle of the crowded boardwalk, I began to convulsively cry.  “It looked at me!  And it didn’t know I loved it!  It didn’t know that anybody loved it!  I just want it to know that I care!” I breathlessly blubbered.  I imagined adopting “E.T.” and bringing him home to dress him in a cute little hoodie.  I envisioned myself attaching a basket to my bike and carting him around.  And then, I imagined “E.T.” and I traveling the world, on a mission to give one million tiny pugs one million tiny hugs.  On the other end of the phone, my mother was speechless.  I think we both realized that I was not yet an adult.

In my imagination, I am a strong, confident, intimidating boss-lady who knows how to command respect.  In reality, I am a person who cries in public when she sees a baby pug.  But does that mean that I’m immature?  Or does it just mean that I have a tender heart, and perhaps some deeply seeded emotional issues I’ve never dealt with?  

I don’t know.  I’m not sure I want to be an adult.  A reliable career, economic independence, putting posters in frames and keeping potted plants alive… these are things I look forward to.  But please: grant me these four months until graduation to cry about pug dogs.  I was always so eager to grow up—to have long hair, to read chapter books, to wear deodorant.  But sometimes it’s all too much, and I find myself wishing life would just slow down.  I want to go to my parents’ house and order Netflix and indulge in their fully stocked pantry.  I want to eat home-cooked dinners and be continually reminded to get a haircut.  And at night, I want to lie in my old bedroom, the shrine to my 14-year-old self, and google image after image of baby pugs.

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