How to Decay

By: August Rosenthorpe

WARNING: THIS PROCEDURE MAY CONTAIN INAPPROPRIATE SUBJECT MATTER. IT CAN EXPOSE YOU TO EMOTIONS INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO: DEPRESSION, ANXIETY, MELANCHOLY, AND/OR SUICIDAL IDEATIONS. READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED. 

Today, I am going to teach you how to decay. And, no, I don’t mean going out into the forest and lying dead on the fescue grass like a deer carcass. I mean that I will be teaching you how to emotionally decay, to deteriorate mentally through a course of grueling, hurtful, and permanently life-damaging decisions, routines, values, and manifestations. First, there is some background information pertaining to the method of execution that we’ll be discussing. For starters, this procedure will take approximately a decade to complete; 10> years is a sufficient amount of time to reach the highest stage of decay in the human brain. The highest stage of decay will be the aftermath of many learning experiences–spanning through days, weeks, months, seasons, years–drastically altering each aspect of your psyche until you are utterly hopeless, abandoned by yourself and those around you, or as Radiohead puts it, “let down and hanging around.” 

Second, this procedure will require one or two participants to interact with you daily for each of those 10 years. Not just any random person, but you need to find someone who you were thrust into this world expecting to trust, love, and learn everything about life from. Someone who has (or had) the utmost authority and influence over your adolescent self. This will evoke a sense of decay like you’ve never felt before. This is what we are looking for. We’ll refer to those participants as the Anaerobic Bacteria. Now that you have been informed of the tools required for this operation to be effective, let’s get started.  

Step #1: be a child.  

Specifically, a minimum of 4 years of age because that is usually when the brain begins to construct memories. Children are, frankly, angels of our society. They represent an ideal version of innocence: possessing minds and hearts that are inherently clean, having been unmartyred by the demons around them. Kids are carefree, genuine, and dependent members of the world, able to give and receive love both blindly and unashamedly–an ability that commonly evokes feelings of sentimentality from past participants of this procedure. Thus, being a child is crucial for the best version of decay: one that harbors past trauma and revitalizes it into consistent depressive episodes that decay both the body and mind. This is what we are looking for. 

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I was probably five years old when I had my first crush. I remember an activity we did in my kindergarten class. It was mid-April of 2012, the grass was a vibrant green, the bees were awakening from their winter slumber, and the flowers were in bloom. I think it was lunchtime, and my teacher decided she wanted to take us outside on this beautiful day to eat lunch. We were assigned line buddies–a classmate to hold hands with as we walked in a double file line all the way to the schoolyard. His name was Tito. We became line buddies for the remainder of the school year (which ended some time in early June). But that was too soon. I wanted to hold his hand forever. 

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Step #2: be different. 

The world we live in fears anyone who is different in any capacity, be it their voice, their mannerisms, the people they are attracted to, the clothes they like, their version of happiness… anything that makes you stick out like a dying weed in a rose garden–be it. This will allow the Anaerobic Bacteria to have a reason to show dissatisfaction, emotional neglect, and condemnment toward you, thus setting in place the building blocks of a future decay within your mind. The Anaerobic Bacteria will have an influence over you; they will tell you the definitions of what is right and wrong, and eventually, you will be face-to-face with the decision of choosing the lifestyle that the Anaerobic Bacteria deem as right (which will prolong the time it will take to experience decay) or the lifestyle they deem as wrong (which will accelerate the process of decay. This is what we are looking for). 

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Oh, I loved to dance. I don’t remember the age when I first discovered my love for dance, but I do remember the hours I’d spent playing Just Dance 2015 in my room. I particularly loved dancing to “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga. One day, I went into my mother’s closet, picked out the prettiest pair of church heels I could find, put a shirt over my head, and danced like nobody was watching to that fashionable, love-hungry bride with toned legs and monster claws. I was willingly caught in a bad romance. 

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Step #3: choose the latter. 

 In the previous step, I explained the self-confrontation that will eventually arise. This step builds on that. You are instructed to choose the second option: the lifestyle that the Anaerobic Bacteria deem as wrong. You’llmost likely do this sometime in your teen years, when you acknowledge the importance of figuring out who you are. You realize that you’d rather be different, be outcast, be hated, just to achieve happiness. A kind of happiness that hopefully, you wish, will last the rest of your life. A kind of happiness that makes life worth living, even when you are stuck living it with the Anaerobic Bacteria for what seems like an eternity. Counterintuitively, this fateful decision will come back to haunt you on several occasions during your journey to decay, but it will reach its peak once you’ve fully decayed. This is what we are looking for. 

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I knew they’d be horrified to see me wearing skirts and makeup underneath my mask, but I didn’t care. I finally felt like I had a purpose. A lot of my high school classmates stared and made fun of me, but a lot of them also loved my fashion style and showered me with compliments everyday. I adored being the center of everyone’s attention. I felt pretty and that was all that mattered to me. 

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Step #4: fight back.  

At this point in time, you will already be experiencing the side effects of choosing the latter. The Anaerobic Bacteria will continue to eat away at your insides, mutilating you from the inside out. They’ll try to make you act and think like everybody else, but you’re not going to. It is vital that you fight relentlessly against the norm. This can be done through two primary techniques. The first technique is rebellion: intentionally doing things they disapprove of, even if it isn’t something you’d do otherwise, or at least consciously, like exaggerated mannerisms. You should rebel against their rules to give them the impression that you are unaffected by their constant hatred and disgust. There should be rebellion in everything you do, but most importantly in the clothes you wear and the people you fall in love with. These are the aspects about you that the Anaerobic Bacteria hate the most. The second technique is arguing: verbally defending yourself from the never-ending outpour of abhorrence. This will feel especially difficult because one of the side effects of choosing the latter (step #3) is the development of a stutter. You see, the psychological trauma that resulted from choosing the latter can cause a special type of acquired stuttering, called psychogenic stuttering. When you experience psychologically distressing events, the brain’s emotional center (the limbic system) goes into “fight, flight, or freeze” mode. The body is instantaneously flooded with stress hormones that distort the cognitive abilities of the brain’s neocortex, making it difficult to get your words out. Due to these overwhelming stress signals, the brain chooses survival over speaking, hence why some participants find it better to not talk at all. Being quiet results in less yelling. Less beratement. Less pain. But you must try to overcome your stutter so you can use your voice to argue. By using these techniques, you are actively making an effort to act unaffected by the Anaerobic Bacteria’s hatred for you, therefore hiding your true feelings which aids in the process of decay. This is what we are looking for. 

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We sat down in the dining room together, my brother on one side, my father on the other, and my mother across from me. Turns out my brother’s friend took a photo of me at school and showed it to him. Probably embarrassed, he told our parents about it. The dining room lights were dim, the sunset was a harsh reddish orange. It’s getting dark.  

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Step #5: cope 

After fighting back, you’ll feel empty inside. You’ll have no more fight left in you. You must now find ways to cope. Ways to avoid crying. Ways to postpone suicide. It’s okay, I believe in you. Here are some recommendations if you’re unsure: falling in love too easily, selling your body online, eating junk food, and avoiding all contact with the Anaerobic Bacteria by any means possible. Those are essential methods of self-destruction, perfect for reaching a peak state of emotional decay. This is what we are looking for. 

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His name was Key. Over text and video call, he’d tell me how beautiful I was, how I belonged to him, how I was his little slut. I felt alive. I’d press record and arch my back for him, pretending he was behind me thrusting life into my aching body. But by the end of the night, I’d always end up alone anyway. 

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Step #6: decay.  

Happy decaying! 

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