You Can’t Take It With You
Posted on | November 23, 2008
I arrived back from St. Lucia and had a blast - but I’ll get into all that at another time.
R.e.: More Later.
I came back and called my friend Steve. He told me of a man that he said I knew that had potentially committed suicide. There weren’t defined parameters: Meaning there was no note that helped clarify the situation.
So, I looked him up. I was told I knew him, and being terrible with names but great with faces, I needed a visual to remind me.
I recognized him.
Vaguely.
We weren’t close, we weren’t friends, we didn’t even travel in the same circles, really.
But here was a guy who was, by photographical standards, gorgeous. Again, from outside views, had a GREAT job. A GREAT life.
And here he ended what some would see as an all together life.
People’s views of themselves; their place in the universe are so diverse and mixed with personal history and self-perception that reality is so clouded.
Other’s see me as this or that. Fun, loud, life of the party…
I see myself as the fat-bald-white guy who is needy and lacking in self esteem.
No, this isn’t self pity. Nor is this is a cry for adoration. It’s just, fundamentally and plainly, HOW I see myself.
Absolution is a bitch.
It might be chemical, I don’t know. I have addictions, I have flaws that are so plentiful that they fall out of my brain on a daily basis but I can’t go there. If that’s where I decide my energy is to go, I’m lost.
It takes so much to just wake up. To face a job that is tiring, is lacking in financial compensation but I see what it does give me.
Other’s say to me, “you’re so self-less.”
No, I’m not.
I’m the complete opposite. I’m selfish because the people I work for remind me that I matter.
And I’ll take that over anything.
I’ve been told, by a certain friend, that I don’t care enough about them. And I’ve stifled communication with him because I was tired of being told I was a jerk. I see his position and did the best I knew how to do to rectify the situation but it, to me, didn’t seem enough.
“You didn’t do this. Others did but you didn’t.”
It’s what was pressed into the hand-held mirror every time we talked.
Why would I continue to let that being force fed?
Like I said; I am this, I am that.
So, here I contemplate why he committed suicide and all I can come up with is, I don’t know why someone who I perceived to have it all ended his life when I recognize that I don’t.
Maybe, fundamentally, my glass is always half full.
I see what I DO have and not what I don’t.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. There are many times when I love to wallow. Succumb to the self flagellation that freely allows my right arm to whip my back while I remind myself of my failings.
There are more scars on my back than most may realize but I try to keep it into perspective.
I’m sorry this, perceived make-shift, human being didn’t feel he had the right to live. I truly am.
I am not in pain, I’m not facing a terminal disease, I’m not even living in a cardboard box.
The words of a fictional character keeps coming to mind. “Do or do not. There is not try.”1
I am a failure in many ways. Again, this is not self deprecation. It’s a fact.
But I have to remind myself that I am a success. Changing what I need to in my world and recognizing that I am a failure.
“It is a wise man who knows he is not wise.”
Who said that?
I don’t know but it’s what I cling too.
To those who knew this man better than I; to those who thought as I do that he seemed to have it all…
I’m sorry for your loss.
But remember, perception is a wildly messed up thing.
You may think you have little when you actually have the world at your fingertips.
Chemical imbalanced synapses aside, you are what you make of yourself.
If you need a drug to compensate, take it. If you need a dietary change, eat it. If you need global acceptance, seek it.
Just be and be glad for the chance to screw it all up.
- thank you, Yoda. [↩]
Comments
4 Responses to “You Can’t Take It With You”
Leave a Reply
November 28th, 2008 @ 6:37 pm
Haven’t checked out your blog in a while, but WOW, picked a day and a post when I needed to hear those words the most …Thank you, you made me feel better, on a not so great day.
I’m sorry for your loss
Hugz
Nick
November 29th, 2008 @ 5:35 pm
Thank you, Nick. Sometimes I write and think it’s more for me and that I’m writing in a vacuum - just a purging of thoughts. To know that what I write is being read and that it means something to people means a great deal for me. So thank you.
December 30th, 2008 @ 1:52 pm
man, those words bound from the screen like lightning. truer words were never spoke!
February 2nd, 2009 @ 8:10 pm
[...] to say the least [↩]well maybe more than a BIT occasionally [↩]see blog “You Can’t Take It With You“ [↩] Filed Under Acting, Age, Friends, Money, Now, Relationships, Scoundrel, TFO [...]