Jealousy

By Austin B. Hahn

You never accomplished much of anything

Your lack of achievements are the result of you boasting about your so-called “glory” days of yesteryear

Daddy didn’t love you enough

Mommy didn’t appraise you enough

You were too dumb to be appreciative of what you did have anyway

You have a reputation for being as bitter as the apple cider you drank when you were prom queen

The stench of your nasty personality can be smelled further away than that football you threw at the championship game

Now you’re stuck making forty thousand dollars a year trying to support your children who you can’t stand because they robbed you of the life that you wanted to live

Meanwhile, you glare at the the TV screen, sitting on your ass as you eat, continuing to get fatter

You chug along through the daily grind, but you don’t care to experience much life outside of your mundane routine

As soon as you hear about someone else’s success, you’re quick to attribute it to an unscrupulous act

You would rather bring someone down than celebrate them

Don’t come shitting on my parade

Just because my life is well now, doesn’t mean it’s been a fairy tale

Even then, suffering is not a prerequisite for permission to live a good life

Because of bitches like you, I have to be vigilant

Like a parent watching their kid, I have to watch over my success to make sure that you don’t sabotage it

You’ve exhausted the time of your life by trying to take away the years of others

Funny how you look back, and you realize you’ve left nothing behind

No mark of yours to leave on the world

All you’ll ever be is forgotten

I Hate

By Austin B. Hahn

This was a cathartic release and therapeutic for me. Here’s a list of reasons why I hate:

1) People can belittle and ignore you when you’re alive, but they will spend all the time in the world appreciating you and making a biopic of your life when you’re dead.

2) You can do right by people ten times in a row, but they will hold the one time you fuck up against you forever.

3) You can unintentionally hurt someone’s feelings, and that person, out of petty vengeance, can go out of their way to intentionally ruin your life.

4) We’re lied to as children. We’re told, “It’s okay to make mistakes. We all do,” but then we can get a bad credit report, denied a loan, rejected on a job application, or thrown in jail once we do. All this talk about how these consequences are in place to help us “learn” is bullshit because the message is clear: it’s not okay to make mistakes. If the contrary were true, then these harsh punishments would only be reserved for delinquents and not for human beings who happened to make a few errors along the course of their life.

5) Everyone can voice their opinion on social media, but many will sit on their ass and refuse to pursuit a cause or to stick up for someone who’s being physically attacked in a public setting.

6) People attribute their misfortunes to circumstance, but when others experience the same, they’ll blame them for their “laziness.”

7) People want rights for their own group, but they don’t want equality.

8) Once someone is comfortable, they stop giving a fuck and could care less about how their actions affect others.

9) We all start somewhere from the bottom. Status and wealth come and go. We all should respect one another regardless of our social standing, but people seem to forget that once they make it to the top.

10) People live as if they’re never going to die.

Thank God for Death!

By Austin B. Hahn

Have you ever hated someone so much that you wanted to kill them or wished they were dead? Well you don’t have to. Time will get them for you. As each year goes by, they get closer to Death. You don’t have to do anything. They get older each minute.

Sick of your wife nagging you on Christmas Day to spend time with your in-laws? No problem. Death can take her away. Wanting revenge after someone wronged you? Don’t sweat it. Death will arrive at their doorstep one day. Tired of watching your loved one suffer through chemotherapy? No worries. Death will take care of them. Medicine can treat pain, but Death has the ultimate power to liberate us from our bodies and free us from any chronic illness.

We as human beings should be thankful for all aspects of the life cycle, including Death. If it wasn’t for Death, life as we know it would become stale. The conditions that we were born into, such as our ethnicity, genes, national origin, and who our parents and siblings are, would forever remain the same.

Some perceive the loss of a loved one as a tragedy. However, I believe that a life lived, no matter how short, is an accomplishment. Living takes courage, and there’s no guarantee that our lives will reach fulfillment; we’re only assured that Death awaits us. Like Karma, as an inevitable force of nature, Death does not have a deadline. Death is uncertain. We have to love our family and friends today and maintain enough detachment so we’re not taken by surprise if they are gone tomorrow. The loss of a loved one is not a time to mourn, but a time to celebrate their life. Since no one lives eternally, we must not forget the importance of rejoicing in the moments we shared with them and that shedding tears upon their passing is healthy, but crying a river will not bring them back.

We seem to have little understanding of a person’s worth when they’re alive. We commodify what they owned in life, marvel at their accomplishments, and reminisce about the pleasant times, but we rarely tell them all we want to say when they’re alive, so we end up writing a eulogy they’ll never hear. We’ll start to miss their quirks that once annoyed us. We’ll think of them when we pass by their favorite restaurant. We’ll play a song that matches the emotions in our heart when we think about them. We’ll even sometimes pretend they’re still alive after watching a video of them, but they’re gone . . .

We may never know what more they could have done with their life, but one thing is certain: because of Death, they can’t be hurt anymore. There’s no more suffering. There’s no more struggle. There’s no more pain. Everything is quiet.

All we can do now is keep some mementos of this person for memories.