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Dear Everyone,

I have an unfortunate aptitude for crushing people.

Chrissie calls it self-centred arrogance, but I'm not convinced that's the case - see, I haven't lost the ability to empathize. I lie awake some nights, thinking and trembling ever so slightly, and I'll wrap myself up into a ball of morose anxiety over those I've trampled. The weight can be crippling and it's always piling, building upwards onto my shoulders and driving me down. Sometimes it's blind and sometimes it's necessary, but I never like causing pain; I never ignore the repercussions. I feel bad too, even if you didn't happen to notice. I hide it well. I don't know why.

I look out for number one, but I also love numbers two and three and four and five and six and... well, it stops there. If you care for everybody, the precious little you have to offer does nothing and you burn yourself out. If you care for nobody, you implode in selfishness. There's a happy medium in there someplace which few people seem to understand.

I am struggling to explain without sounding cold and calculated, but I fear I am failing miserably - fuck. Listen, I don't choose an elite group of people to love in some kind of lottery or checklist, and pointedly ignore the rest of the world. I am just painfully aware of the fact that we are all spread thin, like so much bubble-wrap over a vast expanse of delicate porcelain. You can't be emotionally responsible for every china vase or decanter you meet. You just can't, without running the certain risk of shattering yourself in the attempt. For me, it's not a conscious process of choice - that's where cold calculation would fit in, I guess - but sometimes I can still catch glimpses of the corners and edges of bubble-wrap expanding and receding, covering new friends and leaving the past exposed. It's always moving and, try as I might, I can't stop in any one place.

Arrogance would be thinking that anyone especially cares; believing that my sphere of compassion can shatter hearts and lives, or offer miraculous relief from the cruelties of fate. Self-centred thinking would be trying to cover yourself with your own bubble-wrap, rolling into a ball so tight that nothing else could possibly fit inside. Coldness is not giving a fuck at all. I don't think any of these describe me but, hey, I'm me. I have a vested interest in not thinking of myself as a bastard. I have high self-esteem, 'tis true, but if I was officially diagnosed as a dickhead I might have to reconsider. I used to be a Nice Guy, you see, back in high school, and I feel warm when I think that the ashes might still be smoldering somewhere deep inside.

So, for those who have been left out in the cold and those who might be stepped on in the future, I'm sorry. I need you to know that I don't prance gleefully onwards in life, unscathed and unscarred by your gradual and sudden passings. I take pieces of you into my breast, without warning or trying, and they scratch and burn at night long after your face has faded from view. Every once in a while I meet someone who leaves me with a salve instead, a cooling presence, and it gives me hope, lifts me back up, cracks my ribs and heals the guilt. I wish - one of my Great Wishes - that I could find a way to back away, to vanish, without hurt. I will always disappear; I would love to be a salve instead of a crushing heel, but I don't know how.

Love,
Christopher

Posted by Chris at 02:31 PM