Notes for a Memoir – Part 1

People often tell me, “Bloggerbels [not my real name], your life is so full of adventure and intrigue! Why don’t you write a book about it?” I defiantly answer their rhetorical question by telling them that I’m way too lazy to sustain a literary structure for more than 4,000 words of self-indulgent verbal diarrhea.

And yet, the nagging thought persists – What if, instead of spending my life searching for the coconuttiest coconut rice on Earth, I actually found the time to sit down and compose a grand compendium of my many regrets? Well, I doubt that will ever happen, but you know what is feasible? Writing an outline for a book that will never be written! Here now, with possible revisions in the future, are my notes for an imagined memoir:

• • Chapter 1 : Can’t Remember Shit – Childhood and pre-adolescence. You know how, in almost every memoir or biography, the part about the subject’s childhood is boring as shit? Yeah, that’s gonna be the case here, too. Can only remember really bad or really stupid things, like being terrified of my alcoholic uncle, or pushing a kid onto the sidewalk so hard that he had to get stitches, or peeing on the floor of my cousins’ bathroom for some reason. Can’t write anything even remotely interesting about my parents, because they’ll probably read it, so memoir will appear to tell the story of little orphan boy overcoming adversity. (Although, seriously, my parents are pretty awesome.)
  • Chapter 2: Memoir Becomes More Interesting As Life Becomes More Terrible – Elementary school. Being smarter than everyone else is stupid. Fightin’! Fightin’ teachers, fightin’ friends – it’s a problem no one understands. Early experiences with the Canadian mental health system. Massive weight gain as a side-effect of psychiatric medication. Being fat. Hopeless schoolboy crushes. Being fat some more! Fat fat fat! (Fat.)

• • Chapter 3: The Clichéd Horrors of Early Adolescence – Getting acquainted with my new best friend, depression! Crisis of faith; desperately calling out to God for help in an empty church and deciding the lack of a response proved his non-existence. Also, why are these little bristly black things suddenly sprouting out of my balls? Also, more schoolboy crushes, now as part of a delirious hormonal fever dream.
  • Chapter 4: High School Lows – Going to school online because exposure to human beings is incredibly painful. Parents splitting. Getting diagnosed with autism, and being grateful that I now get to be disabled and not just creepy. More object lessons in the Canadian mental health system. Taking anti-depressants and deciding if I want to keep taking anti-depressants – the answer is mostly yes! The staff at a long-since-defunct music store are my primary source of human contact during the day. Buy hundreds of budget-priced compact discs to distract myself from the fact that life is totally, totally terrible. And also, fuck acne. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK ACNE.
  • Chapter 5: Memoir Becomes Boring As Life Becomes More Tolerable – Continuing my studies in online university because exposure to human beings still remains somewhat painful. Doing copious amounts of volunteer work because it’s like a real job but with absolutely no stakes – just the way I liked things then, and just the way I like them now. Picking up women in random places, going on dates with them, and remaining a virgin who’d never been kissed for years afterward because I was still terrified of sex. Waiting for actual life to start.

Coming up in Part 2: Things happen that are actually worth writing about!