Evil Things I Can’t Stop Doing

1. Gleefully combing through the Facebook pages of recently dumped and/or divorced friends searching for hints of discontentment.

2. Calling my grandparents and other relatives when I know I only have limited time to talk, like while I’m waiting for the subway to arrive.

3. Immediately discarding birthday cards that don’t have money in them.

4. Seeing an unattractive couple and instinctually feeling cheated, even though my being alone has nothing to do with how I — or they — look.

5. Lying to people about having recreational drugs because I want to keep them for myself.

6. Giving guys my real phone number because I’m too chickenshit to turn them down directly, then ignoring their text messages until they take a hint.

7. Completely ignoring panhandlers, people handing out religious fliers, fundraisers with clipboards, etc.

8. Semi-consciously manipulating people into asking questions that will ‘naturally’ lead to me ‘having to’ answer with self-aggrandizing information that I’ve been dying to let them know.

9. Judging people negatively for unseemly behaviors — clutch words, nervous laughter, unsolicited accounts of their accomplishments — whose underlying motivation is simply to be accepted, liked, part of my team.

10. Advising friends to handle a situation in a way that affects me positively, rather than negatively, despite the fact that my advice may not be in their best interests (but being aware of it).

11. Assuming things about people based on their looks.

12. Allowing myself to join in the mass outrage/ ridicule that often happens on the internet, which typically frames a person as a narrative — a black/white timeless cliche — rather than a nuanced human being with his or her own side to the story.

13. Being stingy with money, who pays the bill, etc.

14. Wasting food, being completely aware that 1) I’m throwing money in the trash, 2) it would horrify any one of the millions of starving people, 3) it’s supposedly against my ideals.

15. This one’s really messed up: tricking people into liking me more by affecting a dedication to hyper-aware earnestness. That is, I have a semi-conscious acceptance strategy that seems to be part of my behavioral muscle memory of using the idea that I’m earnest and deep to manipulating people into thinking I’m earnest and deep. Evil.

16. Sometimes making racist jokes to myself, in my head. Yikes.

17. Ignoring, basically, all of my mom’s phone calls. And almost everyone else who only wants to hear me and experience me.

18. Having notoriously unreliable emotions. Like — one day I’m convinced I need to break up with you and turn my life around. Then I tell you, and you get sad, and I like you so much more when you’re sad, for some reason, and then I can’t get enough of you.

19. Staying in relationships because I’m afraid of being alone.

20. Being greedy when it comes to sharing food, even with people who I love.

21. Putting the phone down when I know someone is going to be talking for a long time about something I don’t care about, occasionally saying ‘yeah,’ and doing something else.

22. Preemptively agreeing with someone about media that I know they dislike to avoid having to hear their long critique of it that does not interest me.

23. Avoiding phone calls, then texting “What’s up??”

24. After a certain amount of time, throwing away things that were meant to be meaningful by the person who gave them to me.

25. Telling someone that I’m already busy for an event when I really intend on staying in my bed, eating snacks, and watching TV/movies on my computer.

26. Making plans to hang out with a vague acquaintance I happened to run into on the street while knowing, definitely, that I am actually loathe to hang out with this person and will avoid their texts/emails if they actually follow through (which is a low probability).

27. Completely ignoring follow-up texts from people I went on an OkCupid date if I don’t like them, rather than doing the right thing by texting that it’s not the right fit, or something.

28. Seeing a Gchat/Facebook chat window pop up and simply closing it, while a fleeting “No” goes through my head.

29. Waiting until the next day to respond to a text message so that I can pretend I was already asleep when I received it.

30. Pretending to hold the elevator door open for someone when I’m really pressing the ‘close’ button.

31. Thinking of an ex during sex.

32. Lying about not having any money so people will buy me drinks.

33. Secretly feeling a sense of relief when my best friend breaks up with their significant other.

34. Lying about being sick so my one night stand will leave.

35. Not telling the person behind me in line for a public restroom that there’s no toilet paper left.

36. Not getting up for the elderly woman standing on the subway when no one else is willing to get up either.