Duplicator

"I think most of us would be horrified to meet ourselves and discover what everyone else already knows about us."
-B. Watterson

The point that I've been consistently returning to is that everything of the last six months has been done before ... by me. There's nothing new here. The difference is that this time I'm the one on the other end. Of all the actions, mistakes, sins, and choices made, I've just never had to face them this way.

The difficulty I'm thus having is reconciling recent events with the idea that I've done the same things in the past. It's forcing me to come to terms with something I've never anticipated- myself. I'm seeing myself and my own previous actions in a way I've never been able to articulate or understand before. This new knowledge has already been both impactful and, perhaps more importantly, painful.

I'm trying not to lament my past actions or choices as I sort things out. There's little sense in doing that aside from dealing with my own feelings. The most significant thing to take from this is the decisions I will make in the future.

For 22 years, my personality and character have been built on fear. Most of the other base facets of how I behave- the obsessiveness, the perfectionism, the need for acceptance- can be traced back to that original quality. Sometimes positive outcomes have resulted from it, not the least of which include my professional and academic achievements. But when it comes to people ... to love ...

You can never really understand your impact on others until someone else impacts you the same way. It's the reason why I love teaching music. I know what it is to be taught by a good teacher whom I respect and want to make proud. It's the reason why I hope to be a good father someday, because I know what it is to have the best one.

And, like everything else in the world, it goes both ways. You can't understand the hurt you cause someone else unless you've been hurt the same way.

Now, regardless of how you feel about the show, I'm going to end with a quote from South Park. Butters articulates my current feelings very well.

"Oh, I love life ... yeah, I'm sad, but at the same time, I'm really happy that something could make me feel that sad. It's like... it makes me feel alive, you know. It makes me feel human. The only way I could feel this sad now is if I felt something really good before. So I have to take the bad with the good. So I guess what I'm feeling is like a beautiful sadness."
-L. Stotch

Happy Jueves Eve.

You Can't Give In

"I'm just sad for you."
"Why?"
"Cause I know it won't make you happy."

I have great friends, a strong family, and countless opportunities coming up this year. My graduate work will go well, the TA job should be fun, and I'll be doing more musical activities than I have since high school.

So for now ... I'll try to focus on that stuff.

Happy fall semester.

Alfred

They'll hate you for it ... but you can be the outcast.
You can make the choice that no one else can make.

The right choice.

Red Cross

As I begin to fade I can feel my body growing cold. My mouth is dry and rusty, my lips tingly with their slow loss of sensation. My hands begin to shake, and I find it ever more difficult to hold them where they are. I’m losing my grip. My feet are numbing ever so gradually. My toes will barely flex. The last sensation I begin to feel consciously is a dull but pervading thumping in the back of my head, just above my neck.

In the distance, I’m aware of the realization that this rhythm is my heartbeat. Almost. It’s slower than my heartbeat, more profound, more instinctive. The awareness spreads to all my organs, heightened by the deadening of my limbs. The vessels meant to keep me alive, usually forgotten, have come to occupy the whole of my being.

My mind wanders. Is this what it’s like to die?

Frigid ice lances through my arm and jolts me back to thought. This might be what it’s like to die. Two minutes to go. I can make it.

The last some-odd minutes my life has oscillated between red and clear. Red leaves, making me weary and numb and dropping me into the primeval of my organs. Clear returns, a freezing that numbs also but puts me back into a hazy mind. Every minute or so they switch. Numb and numb. Dying and sleeping. How did this start?

“Give me your hand,” she had said.

Red again. Black spots at the edge of my vision and I’m sinking. I can see the essence of my life moving away from me, taking with it energy and feeling and want. We’re waiting until enough is gone. Half a liter of me.

Clear again. I can see but I’m frozen. The clear isn’t what I need. It’s a replacement for the red, to keep my veins and arteries and capillaries from collapsing. But it won’t do what only the red can. The coldness makes me feel hollow.

“You’re going to feel this,” she had said.

Red again. The drop is a little higher each time. The red had begun with a burning and an excitement as I opened myself. Willing to give energy and feeling and want freely. Wishing I could give more, regardless of the fall.

Clear again. I’m dimly aware of the fact that the clear is mine as well, in some way. Despite this, our short time apart has made it cold, and the crystal coldness of it is alien to me. No one has ever cut themselves and seen emptiness come out.

“We’re done. You look pale,” she says.

She applies a thin band-aid that barely holds back what I continue to give.

I stand up. My limbs are weak and my vision unclear. The dull throbbing in the back of my head is deafening. I stagger away on unsure legs, full of my own cold nothing. Outside of my skin I tell myself to be patient. In time energy and feeling and want will flow back into my body from the deepest part of my bones, restoring the red of my life.

For now … I leave behind half a liter of me.