Shit Happens - Lessons learned so you don't have to

TEN EASY STEPS TO GETTING BANNED FROM A BAR

So you've successfully lived down to every last thing we mentioned in the previous chapters. Now let's see how those lessons can really pay off.

Of course, you may be asking how this could possibly impact you, and to that we counter with: do you regularly frequent a bar? Do you have a group of regulars that you may feel some attachment toward? Would you step in if they needed help with an unsavory situation should the need arise? Then welcome to a scenario you may find yourself in!

Here are the ten steps to ensuring you get a temporary ban from your local watering hole:

1. Ensure you are consistently drunk and drugged out at one establishment on a regular basis. Note that "regular" requires deep commitment and resolve. This involves attending said bar no less than five times per week, every week so as to become a permanent fixture at said establishment, as well as indicate your entire life revolves around the staff and patrons of this one location. This allows the misbegotten lot of them to exploit any weaknesses you may expose.

2. Ensure you are emotionally fragile on multiple occasions. This will help build a sense of comfort and safety within the sweaty, dank, and spilled-alcohol smelling hovel you find yourself cocooned within. It will also alert all present that you may be one to be exploited at a later date.

3. Ensure these moments of fragility happen in the presence of the supposed friends we told you not to make at the bar. Spill enough painful truths about yourself so as to allow these abhorrent animals to sense your vulnerability and begin formulating ways to use this for their own advantage all while ignoring their own trauma. Because everyone needs someone else to look weaker than them so as to ignore whatever foibles they possess.

4. Ensure at least one outburst occurs in the presence of your people. This outburst can take the form of a deep conversation with a stranger, a heated but respectable debate, or a less respectable altercation in which you must raise your voice to diffuse said altercation amicably.

5. Ensure you are present when some uncomfortable situation kicks off at your second home (or first home if you so deem. We aren't ones to judge). Keep an eye on said situation but do not engage as you do not wish to overstep bar-patron protocol.

6. Ensure you are present when another uncomfortable situation kicks off. This situation must be more heated than the previous situation to qualify as Step Six. Wait until the situation becomes untenable for the bar staff and they ask you to manage the conflict. Note this will only happen if you have carefully completed all previous steps so that said bar staff is aware of your ability to handle yourself and situations that are uncomfortable for others.

7. Ensure you are present for yet another uncomfortable situation that is very similar to the situation that happened in Step Six. Take careful note: This needs to be virtually identical to the Step Six situation for this to work properly. Make the choice to diffuse the situation because, as has happened in previous similar situations, this is what is expected of you by patrons and staff alike. In fact, not only is it expected, it has been previously demanded or pleaded of you. So, throw yourself into this new altercation with the same enthusiasm and ... violence isn't quite the right word ... imperiousness? Terror-inducing gusto? Yes, throw yourself in with the same terror-inducing gusto you have been asked to portray in the past.

8. Ensure your "friends" are either part of said altercation or the cause of said altercation so they can comment, after you've handled the situation of course, on how angry and violent you are for defending their integrity and safety.

9. Ensure word gets back to the bar staff so they can tell you how violent and angry you are for defending the bar's integrity and safety.

10. Ensure you go through several emotional stages (because your already fragile emotional state isn't quite enough) including pleading for understanding, frustration at not receiving any understanding, and anger at the constant stream of unfair judgement coming from all sides due to your frustration at not being heard.

Congratulations, you have now been banned from the bar for an indeterminate period of time, all for being exactly who everyone expects and wants you to be! Isn't It heartening to be so easily defined by people?

Here's our answer to this entire fun exercise: Fuck them with a rusty hammer.

This isn't who you are, this is who they've made you.

It was easy for them, too. So easy for them to force you into a role they wanted you to play so they could feel better about themselves. Because you desperately need to, want to belong somewhere. And these ... these trash pandas gave you a false sense of belonging that fuelled your desire to protect that which provided you inclusion.

It's false. It's all a charade to fuel their own insecurities and lack of self-worth. The only thing stronger than their desire to self-destruct is the need to watch someone else self-destruct, and you, in your pain, are willing to do so for some faint hint at belonging. This isn't your fault, this is just human nature, human fragility. Don't blame yourself for this. Just know. Know that you don't belong there. You don't belong to people like this. These are garbage bags in humanesque form. And what do you do with garbage bags? You don't keep them. You don't let them linger until the smell of them becomes tolerable. You dispose of them. You place them on the corner and wait for trash day when their carted away out of your life forever. This is your trash. These people are your trash. Put them where they belong: out of your life. Do the thing that will pain them more than any other single act could possibly do: LEAVE THEM BEHIND.