hamster

Hamster in the wheel.

That's what it feels like sometimes. Same view, over and over and over, thinking maybe it will be different each time and yet the scenery never quite seems to change. To boot, on the round in the wheel when you thought you'd finally achieved the right view - the one you were looking for the whole time - some crafty fucker starts lobbing in cryptic messages about how your wheel is going to just go away because you are an asshole hamster. You furrow your brow, yet continue to trot.

You're a good hamster. You work hard to keep your cage neat and tidy, to make the other hamsters around you feel good and welcome in your area and to be nice whenever possible. And even when that other crafty, more aggressive hamster comes and takes a crap in your nice, clean area, you give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he just couldn't hold it in. He didn't mean to mess up.

It's when all the other hamsters come around and start in on your character that you really start to think that maybe you were on the wrong wheel this whole time. When those other hamsters start to tell you that because you feel you deserve not to have shit in your nice, clean area and that you want to be respected and treated well, that you are somehow a demanding, brat of a hamster, well that's when things start to get confusing.

That's when you start to realize how many fucked up hamsters there are out there, yourself included. Not only that, but there's no guarantee that the other hamsters in that cage can even see you for who you are, because they are too busy looking in the mirror next to the water bottle, at their own perfect coats, beady eyes and flawless hamster brains.

I think the best option open, is to not be offended or bothered by the other hamsters and here's why. If other hamsters could be good cage partners or playmates, they would. No hamster out there wants to be the rodent that takes people for granted or purposely mistreats his or her fellows. Additionally, those other hamsters probably have their quiet moments where they wonder why they do what they do, and wonder why you haven't kicked them in their hamster nuts. They are probably even secretly fascinated with you in your niceness, misplaced and underdefended though it may be. But even if all the other hamsters furtively think you're fantastic, being mistreated is being mistreated and no self-respecting hamster should put up with that shit.