Selfishness
Sometimes when I sit and think about my own unhappiness, it doesn’t feel like a darkness creeping up behind me like it used to. It’s begun to feel more like an anchor of hatred and disappointment lowering onto my chest at an excruciating pace.
I’ve been happier recently than I used to be, and the people in my life help me the best that they can. I can’t say that other people don’t feel the same way. To think that I’m alone in the world is such a naive and selfish view, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling as if I’m trapped in a dark room with nothing but a dying flashlight.
Lastnight I was up until about 1am, drunk off of several shots of whipped cream vodka, lying face-up on the futon in our living room. Robyn and Drew had somehow ended up on the floor, I can’t remember the intricacies. But for about 2 hours I talked incessantly about the things I think about.
For example, something I had never told anyone but thought that the conversation was appropriate to reveal: I once almost stepped into the middle of moving traffic. On purpose.
I’ve never been the suicidal kind of depressed, because I like to think that I have enough self-awareness and strength to not let these thoughts creep into my head like they do. There are some that don’t agree with me, but I believe suicide to be the most selfish thing you can do. It’s selfish in the most baseline of ways.
Sometimes when I used to sit there in my dark, dank little bedroom and think about how it wouldn’t matter if I died, my first thought would be my mother. Always my mother. Her sweet, rounded cheeks that she passed to me. Her often-disheveled blonde hair and melancholy blue eyes (which I wish she had passed to me).
It would take hours upon hours to explain the kind of relationship my mother and I share, but all I can say is that I wouldn’t have it any other way. The things we’ve been through together, it was me and her against the world, and I would never want to hurt her in that way, let alone all of the friends I’ve made.
Love is a powerful thing, and in the end it always seems to beat everything. All of the hopelessness, all of the despair and the eternal emptiness that is my head, I can always stop myself with thoughts of the ones I love. It makes me sad to know that some people don’t have that ability. The self-awareness that it takes to stop yourself from doing the unthinkable needs to be a palpable force in your head.
When I say that most of the time nowadays it feels as if there are two people in my head, constantly at war, then there’s no other similes that work better. There’s the person I was before. The childish, mildly sociopathic, selfish little shithead that I grew up with, and then there’s the grown, strong, selfless person that I’m trying to be.
The war is never over, but I like to think that the relevant battles are being won. As long as I try.