I Hate Myselfie

by Shane Dawson

  Me: I’m taking this. And when I get famous I’m going to tell everyone that I lost my weight using your archrival, Nutrisystem!

  Woman: Good luck with that.

  Even though this was one of the worst days of my life, it was a blessing in disguise. It forced me to focus on my YouTube channel, which eventually was successful enough that I could buy my mom a house and even spend more than $20 for an outfit at Target. So in closing, I’d like to say thank you to the weight-loss center for firing me. Just like when I needed to quit my job as paperboy for my grandma to “explore my options,” I needed to leave the world of weight loss to see what else was out there. And what I found was so much better. So for that I’m thankful.

  Also, if you would like to lose weight and get in the best shape of your life, be sure to call 1-800-NUTRISYSTEM.

  ASTRAL PROJECTION

  ABOUT THE ARTIST

  Christopher Daod became interested in art as a ­student during his early years in primary school. He continues to practice his skill during his high school years. He resides in Sydney, Australia, with his family. Follow him on ­Instagram at @Chrissy_Daod.

  I’ve always been different. Not just in a “Wow, that kid is different, did his mom try and shove him down the toilet at prom?” kind of way. But in a spiritual way. I was never an avid churchgoer and I don’t know the Bible cover to cover, but I’ve always had a strong connection with God and the spiritual world. When I was a kid I would just lie on my bed and talk to God for hours. On second thought, maybe I’m schizophrenic? Honestly, that would explain a lot.

  Anyways, on the night I found out my parents were getting divorced I lay in bed and cried for hours. I was nine, and the thought of my entire world changing was overwhelming and too much to handle. I had already eaten all the Nutter Butters in the house, so I resorted to sobbing into my Lion King pillowcase. I felt a hand on my back and a soft, calm voice telling me, “It’s gonna be ok.” I turned over thinking I would see my mom sitting on my bed next to me but there was nobody there. I know I should have been freaked out but for some reason I was ok with the fact that some kind of spirit had just touched and spoken to me. Thinking back, that was creepy as shit and I can’t believe I didn’t piss my bed.

  A year after that I started having really intense dreams. I was super close to my paternal grandmother, who had just died. Everyone always said when I grew up I would look just like her, which was disheartening, considering she was a morbidly obese woman who lived in a chair. She literally never got up from her chair during the last fifteen years of her life. She had her fridge within arms-grabbin’ distance, and I’m pretty sure she peed into a Big Gulp cup. So my future was looking really bright.

  The night after she died I had a dream that I floated out of my body and flew up into the sky. I could actually see myself lying in bed, and I could see my entire neighborhood as I floated away. When I got higher than the clouds I heard the voice of my grandmother. I turned to look at her and what I saw was a young woman in her twenties floating next to me with the biggest blue eyes I had ever seen. She had long, flowing hair and she was wearing a pink baby-doll dress. We had a long conversation about life, death, and even how she didn’t want me to end up like her. She told me to stay strong and not let anybody get me down. She told me to quit emotionally eating and learn how to deal with pain by being creative and expressing myself. She said I was destined for greatness and she would be watching me every step of the way.

  When I woke up the next day I ran to my mom’s room and told her about the dream. I told her what Grandma looked like and how it was like a younger version of herself. My mom started crying and ran to the closet to get something. She grabbed an old photo album and flipped to a picture of my grandmother when she was in her twenties. She looked exactly like I’d dreamed she did. The big eyes, the long hair, and even the same pink baby-doll dress. My mom said that she believed when we die and go to heaven our body goes back to when we were the happiest. My grandma chose to go back to her youth, when she wasn’t stuck to a chair. From that morning on I knew that I had some kind of strange connection to the spiritual world. Either that or eating two hundred Nutter Butters before going to sleep caused some seriously fucked-up hallucinations.

  When I was thirteen I started having different kinds of dreams. They weren’t conversations with dead people but instead dreams in which I would float around my neighborhood and spy on people. I know. That’s creepier than talking to dead people, but trust me, if you were thirteen and could snoop on your neighbors, you would.

  The first experience I had with this was one day after school when I decided to take a nap after watching about three hours of Saved by the Bell reruns. My family and I had just moved into a new apartment building that weekend and hadn’t met any of our neighbors. I laid my head back and drifted off pretty quickly. Then I opened my eyes and started noticing that the ceiling was getting closer and closer to my face. I turned around and saw that I was floating out of my body. I hadn’t done this in years, and I started panicking. I tried everything I could to get back into my body and wake up but nothing was working. It was honestly the scariest feeling I’d ever had. Well, that and the feeling I got when my school nurse made me take off my shirt in front of the whole class to give me a scoliosis test. That was traumatizing. One kid asked why my nipples looked sad. I don’t quite know what he meant, but I also kinda know exactly what he meant.

  As I floated farther away from my body I decided to just go with it and see where it was gonna take me. I went right through the front door like the Kool-Aid man. Except the door didn’t blow up into a billion pieces. I just kinda dissolved through it. I floated through my new apartment building and saw some new faces. A blond lady walking her golden retriever, a young Asian kid riding a scooter, and a gardener obviously looking into a woman’s window while she was changing clothes. My first thought was, “What a perv!” My second thought was, “I can probably float through that window!” But I held back and decided to go back to my body. I woke up in a huge sweat and let out a loud gasp. I instantly decided to pretend the dream was one of those that only felt super realistic. I totally disregarded the possibility that I could have actually floated outside my body.

  RING RING. I jumped up and screamed like a big-tittied blonde in a horror movie. Why do phones always ring when I’m already on the edge of freaking the fuck out? I answered it and it was my mom asking me to come to the car to help her with some boxes. As I walked out the door I saw three things that would change my life forever: a blond lady walking her golden retriever, a young Asian kid riding a scooter, and a gardener looking into a woman’s window while she was changing clothes. This was not a coincidence. This was something bigger.

  Astral projection (or astral travel) is an interpretation of out-of-body experience (OBE) that assumes the existence of an astral body separate from the physical body and capable of traveling outside it.

  —Wikipedia

  Now, I know this is hard to take in, and I’m sure a lot of you have started mentally checking out, but trust me, it’s not bullshit. If I were bullshitting you, I would write a story about how hard it was being a kid in high school with a fifteen-inch penis that kept getting stepped on in the hallway. I’m sure that would make for a more interesting book.

  If the term “astral projection” sounds familiar to you it’s ­probably because you saw that 2010 horror film Insidious, about the kid who could float outside his body while dreaming. When I saw that movie I freaked out. I thought I was the only person who had ever experienced such a thing. And it didn’t help that the kid in the movie floated down to hell and was enslaved by a pedophile demon that looked like Michael Jackson covered in menstrual blood. I’m surprised I ever slept again.

  After watching the movie I went back home and started researching and learned that astral projection was incredibly common. Even some celebrities could do it, like Gary Busey and Shaq! Ok, I’m aware those aren’t t
he best examples of people to trust, but hey, it’s something.

  That night I lay in bed and tried my hardest to float outside of my body. I thought maybe I could go and hang out with other floaters and talk about how cool we were because we could watch other people sleep. Who knows, maybe I could even become friends with Gary Busey and Shaq! Unfortunately nothing happened. A week later I went to sleep not expecting anything and of course that’s when it happened. I had the most intense astral projection of my life. I was taking a nap in my garage, which, believe me, is not as weird and depressing as it sounds. My garage had been converted into an office and had a sick-ass couch that was so comfortable I could imagine becoming my fat, dead grandmother and living on it. As I drifted off to sleep my eyes began to open. But this time I couldn’t float out of my body. Something was holding me back. I looked around the room and saw a black figure standing by the door. It didn’t have a face and didn’t have much of a shape. It was more like the essence of a person. I could hear it breathing and it started getting closer and closer to me. I tried everything I could to wake up but nothing was working. My heart was pounding and my stomach was churning like I was going to throw up. The figure got closer and closer but I still couldn’t see its face. Then it put its hand, which looked more like a claw, on my chest and started pushing down. It felt like this presence was trying to get inside my body. Finally I woke up and jumped off my couch. I ran out of my garage and into the house. I knew what just happened wasn’t good and was too real to be a nightmare.

  I decided to do more research and what I found was truly frightening. Many people who astral-project have run into situations where they encountered an angry spirit that wanted to harm them. Some even said that the spirit tried to jump into their body while they were away from it. Their advice was to “will yourself back into your body when you start to feel threatened.” Now, this all sounded like the scariest shit in the world and I never wanted to sleep again, but I knew that eventually the Red Bulls would wear off and I would have to face my demons . . . literally.

  A few nights later, as I fell asleep in my bedroom, I decided that if any dark figures tried to mess with me I would just will myself back into my body and everything would be ok. What’s the worst that could happen? I get possessed by some crazy demon, murder my entire family, and upload my confession on to my YouTube channel? As if!

  So I fell asleep and once again opened my eyes. I was floating. I was out of my body and floating in my room. I had left the TV on and there was a rerun of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives playing. If that spirit was to come back, hopefully the image of Guy Fieri choking down a ten-inch hoagie would scare him away. Just then I felt something was off. I was beginning to float out of my room but I looked back and saw the dark figure standing next to my body. I started panicking and felt my heart racing. I tried to close my eyes and will myself back into my body but it wasn’t working. The figure looked up at me. This time it had a face. It wasn’t human. It was almost animalistic. I decided to get up as much courage as I could and I floated toward the figure as fast as I could. I ran my spirit body into him and tackled him to the ground. It turned into a long, violent battle between me and this dark, cold mass. Then suddenly, I woke up. I was sweatier than I had ever been in my entire life. Even sweatier than when I found out zero-calorie butter spray is actually a thousand calories per bottle. Those fucking liars.

  This had gotten out of hand. I didn’t want to ever astral-project again. I’m not as strong as Gary Busey or Shaq. After reading up on people who have been in similar situations, I learned that to avoid astral projecting all you have to do is tell yourself, as you’re falling asleep, that you aren’t going to let it happen. So I started doing that. Slowly but surely I stopped and went back to having dreams about my entire family murdering me and eating my limbs for their survival. You know, normal dreams.

  If you have ever astral-projected, don’t be afraid to explore and float around, but remember, if it starts to get out of hand, don’t continue it. I think Gary Busey and Shaq might still be out there floating around while some mentally challenged demons have taken over their bodies. Maybe Britney Spears is a projector? Wow. Now everything makes sense.

  JUST A PRETTY FACE

  ABOUT THE ARTIST

  Anna Sofia Ellermann is a twenty-one-year-old self-taught artist with a particular interest in photography and digital art. Born in Copenhagen, she now lives on the beautiful island of Bornholm in Denmark. Anna believes in a colorful life with respect for animals and all people. Follow her at @Heroine_red on Instagram and visit her website, heroinered.blogspot.com.

  As a young boy going through puberty there are a lot of things you hope people notice about you. Your newly grown leg hair, your barely there mustache, and most of all your deepening man voice. The last thing I would do every night before I fell asleep was pray to God that when I woke up I would have at least one of those three things. Ok, that’s a lie. The last thing I did every night before going to sleep was violently hump my bed. I also used to pray that I would one day experience an orgasm. When you are a kid you don’t really have a “release.” You just have an urge to hump every object in your house. Sometimes even food. Am I going too far?

  Let me get back on track and also away from discussing boy penis. I’m guessing there are legal ramifications for talking about that in a book. Anyways, every morning I would wake up the same. No leg hair, no mustache, and definitely not a deep voice. But the worst trait that I had was something no boy wants. I had a pretty face.

  Now, I don’t want this to sound cocky. I really did have a beautiful face. It was plump and round in all the right places. My cheekbones were high and sat perfectly under my Coke-­bottle glasses, creating a cute little crease when I smiled. My lips were soft and shiny. My eyelashes were literally three inches long and made audible flapping sounds when I blinked. Like a fairy flying through the clouds. I’m still shocked and slightly offended that I was never molested. Even though my face was pretty I didn’t have a haircut to match. It looked like I had gone into a Supercuts and asked: “Who here is suicidal and wants to leave the world with one last FUCK-YOU?” It was as if someone had put head shots of all the lesbians in Hollywood into a computer system and had all their hairstyles morphed into one Super-Mega-Lesbian haircut. If it was physically possible for Rosie O’Donnell and Ellen ­DeGeneres to breed they would have popped me out.

  Because I looked so much like a woman I tried really hard to dress like a man. I would wear big flannel shirts, baseball hats, and cargo shorts with A LOT of pockets. But it only made it worse. I didn’t look like a man, I just looked like a really butch lesbian. I looked like the giver in the relationship, if you know what I mean. I wore the pants and brought home the bacon. At our lesbian wedding, I put the ring on her finger and led our first dance. Which, side note, I went to a wedding recently and the first dance was to Elton John’s “The Last Song.” The whole time all I could think was, “Isn’t this song about AIDS?” Bold choice.

  But it wasn’t just my looks that made me a little woman, it was my voice. I had the voice of a 1940s Hollywood darling. Every time I opened my mouth my grandmother would tell me how much I reminded her of Judy Garland. When a telemarketer would call they would start with “How are you today, ma’am?” This made it very easy for me to hang up on them guilt-free, so for that I’m grateful. But what was worse than my voice and my womanly exterior was the fact that my best friend was my mother. So not only did I look and sound like a chick, but ALL my interests were of the female persuasion. “JO-ANN CRAFT STORE ON A SATURDAY?! YOU DON’T GOTTA ASK ME TWICE!”

  My mom and I would drive around the city for hours blaring Paula Abdul and talk about how much my father didn’t understand us. We would get fro yo with extra toppings because it was our “cheat day” and because “we deserved it.” I even remember going to a lingerie shop to help her find something for her anniversary. She wanted something sassy yet functional and nothing that screa
med, “I’m willing to try anal.” That last part I just assumed because she never wanted anything with “butt fringe.”

  Sometimes we would refer to ourselves as Thelma and Louise. Looking back I realize how unhealthy and disturbing that is, but back then it was great. I loved spending hours watching chick flicks and braiding my mom’s hair. And don’t get me started on how good I was at balling melon. I was the melon-balling QUEEN. If my mom had died I think I would have been able to take her place pretty easily. I mean, having sex with my father would have been weird, but I’m sure I could have adjusted. Everything was great until one day my whole mama’s-boy world came crashing down.

  It was a really hot day, and my boy tits were dripping. I was lying on the couch with a Weight Watchers ice-cream bar, enjoying everything Montel Williams had to offer. Usually it was just rants about MS, but sometimes he’d have a psychic come on and tell people their lost kids were dead, and that was pretty interesting. My mom walked into the kitchen tying her huge red hair into a bun and opened the refrigerator to get a cold breeze. She put her ass against the vegetable drawer and moaned like a dog getting scratched in all the right places. We couldn’t afford air-conditioning so it was up to us to find our own source of cold air. We had to get really creative. One time I put a pair of my underwear in the freezer and wore them the next day. I still blame that incident for why my flaccid penis is so shriveled to this day.