i get angrier every damn day because i can’t talk to you and you won’t talk to me. and it’s not fair to anyone. especially not me. and the charade can’t go on much longer before i snap.
children will be conceived, wrists will be slashed, scars will be healed, and tears will be wrenched to this music.
that’s all i have to say. no superlative will do any justice.
i am like an onion.
please do not underestimate me, for if you do, you will have missed so much.
there is a lot about me that i don’t like to share and i have my reasons. don’t ask about those. sometimes words fail me. i try to speak and they get jumbled for no reason. it makes my speech cautious, at times. yet i talk all the time about meaningless things, just so i won’t have to talk about what really matters. the things that never pass my lips are the things i feel most deeply. watch my eyes, they will tell you what you need to know. watch my smile. it will give away even more.
sometimes my heart feels like it is going to burst because of all the love it has welled up inside. i cannot begin to describe my capacity to love. do not confuse it with me being in love — it is not the same. i can love someone completely and unconditionally without ever slipping into that moment. there was a time in my life where i felt safe and warm inside the arms of strangers because they would speak gently to me, and wipe the tears from my face. i am just passing on what they taught me.
i get overwhelmed by people the first time. i am an observer until i am comfortable. some people misinterpret this — they think i am being aloof. but i watch everything so closely that there isn’t time for me to be involved.
i think that i make people uneasy at times. some have seen me as intimidating and they were not afraid to share this with me. this troubles me greatly, even though much time has passed.
ever greater than my capacity to love is my capacity to forgive. sometimes i do it when i know i shouldn’t, but i do it anyway. my compassion is nearly saintly. i remember The Lord’s Prayer even though i don’t consider myself Christian.
forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
and lead us not into temptation.
my willpower can be, at times, iron strong.
i like the metallic taste of my blood when i accidentally scratch a scab off. i like the smell of gasoline even though prolonged exposure causes cancer. i like to wake up early in the morning and listen to the sound of a thunderstorm in the distance. i like to sleep with my hat on because i like how it makes my hair look the morning after.
i have been asleep.
i am starting to wake up.
i am like an onion — layer of cells upon layers of cells. i am waiting for someone to peel me apart.
she, too, is like an onion.
she is a tasty addition to the pizza that is life, but i regret it when is ask for her too much.
and she makes me cry.
At lunch the other day, I was presented with what is quite a common occurrence nowadays: the University Center lunchladies chiding me for not removing the silverware from my tray for them. At some point earlier this semester, they began to ask that we take this small sacrifice to make their day a little bit easier, but it only took one instance of putting my hand into the nastiness that is someone else’s dirty utensils to discourage me from ever performing the act again.
What I mean to say is: screw the lunchladies. Why should I have to subject my unblemished skin to salivary leftovers that never quite made the fork-to-mouth leap just to save the dishwasher some work? I’m under the assumption that these people are getting paid to be more than just eye candy.
I don’t intend to use my entire allotment of print to attack dining room procedure; this is just an accessible example of a moral theory called ethical egoism – looking out for my own self-interest first and foremost.
Ayn Rand explained it well in a column for the Los Angeles Times:
“Man — every man — is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself. The pursuit of his own rational self-interest and of his own happiness is the highest moral purpose of his life.”
“But wait!” you cry out. “Putting yourself before everyone else makes you a selfish jerk!” In a word, you’re wrong. I am not a jerk. The matter of selfishness comes down to semantics. My dictionary describes a selfish act as “seeking out one’s well-being without regard for others.” Just as an absence of hate does not love make, a lack of regard does not guarantee its opposite, and thus my being selfish should not conjure up the image of a vicious creature climbing atop piles of dead bodies to achieve its ends.
Instead, selfishness should be considered a virtue, as when it is put into action, it allows one to secure and protect one’s rational values, such as life and happiness. And if selfishness is a virtue, it follows that altruism, its polar opposite, is something to be avoided at all costs. When you sacrifice something of yours to help someone weaker, you are demeaning yourself and making weakness virtuous, and then the meek go right ahead and inherit the earth.
What all of this means is that I was not being an ass when I remained seated on the bus ride home from New York at the end of pacing break, even though several passengers, including older women, were forced to stand in the aisle for two hours. I will repeat, I was not being an ass. Had I given up my seat, I would have belittled my happiness and said “Hey, weakness is alright by me!” and that would have made an ass of me.
For those of you who don’t believe that egoism is a practical belief, Rand makes a stirring argument for it in “The Fountainhead”:
“Now observe the results of a society built on the principles of individualism. This, our country. The noblest country in the history of men. The country of greatest achievement, greatest prosperity, greatest freedom. This country was not based on selfless service, sacrifice, renunciation or any precept of altruism. It was based on a man’s right to the pursuit of happiness. His own happiness. Not anyone else’s. A private, personal, selfish motive. Look at the results.”
This idea of ethical egoism is very closely related to the theory of solipsism, which is the idea that I am the center of the universe and everything else is merely a creation of my consciousness. Because there is no sound philosophical proof for the existence of a God, solipsism can easily be argued from an atheist point of view. Without some higher being, there can be no life after death. If there is no life after death, then the universe must end upon my death. Once I go, you’re gone too. Thus, the universe hinges on me.
Now that I have established myself as the center of the universe, I can do as I damn well please. Putting anyone else’s interests before my own certainly does not make sense, because no one else really exists. So I can play my rock music as loudly and obnoxiously as is humanly possible at 6 a.m., wreak havoc on campus without having to consider the numerous hours President Farrington will have to spend penning an email decrying my actions, and mess around on the guitar when I know that my neighbors are studying or trying to sleep – all in the name of my well-being.
And don’t even concern yourself with what egoism allows me to get away with, because you’re just a figment of my imagination.
the problem is that even when i have every intention of talking about something important, i can’t do it.
(this evening, obviously)
it’s just that it’s so hard to talk about and i know you’re not going to pry and even if some miracle allows me to spit out what’s on my mind, what are you going to do about it? do you even care that much?
i don’t know.
i realize that i can be a pretty damn lousy friend and that i must be trying your patience by now, and for that i’m sorry.
,…