cavatica

It's 4am. I'm tired. I should be sleeping. But I can't just yet. I've felt the first stirrings of an old passion long dormant, of sunlight long obstructed by windows shut and barred. I want to open them--to let some of the light in, to breathe fresh air and remember. But I have to do it slowly, so I won't be blinded.

A friend of mine is emotionally self-destructive. Well, no. That's not right. He's emotionally--and literally--reclusive. He's built a world for himself around video games and movies and comics; he closes himself in his room and hides from people who love him because, he claims, he doesn't want to be a bother. He misses class. He doesn't take care of his diabetes like he should. His relationships have suffered. He missed going out with friends tonight because he got involved in a game and completely forgot about them. He knows it; he hates it; he doesn't do anything about it.

This galls me to the point of fury. It shouldn't. It's not my problem. I couldn't figure out why I was expending so much energy on it.

So I was talking to him about it tonight on IM. I was trying to bring him to some kind of big revelation about the fact that everyone he knows keeps bringing the subject up because we love him and actually think he's worth something--and then I thought, well, why do we do that? Or, at least, why do I do that? Why this constant exercise in futility? If I was really his friend, if I really had his best interests at heart, wouldn't I just leave him alone to do what he wanted until he got his own shit together? I mean, that is my inclination. And I said:

"I'm not trying to like, convert you or anything. I can't make decisions for you. No one can. Fuck people who tell you what to do; they're not you, they don't know. I'm just saying that if YOU feel unhappy with the way things are for you--with the way you've made them for yourself--then you need to decide how to handle that. You have an obligation to yourself to do that. Fuck what I think, or Sarah thinks, or your parents or anyone else think."

Click. Eureka.

I said:

"If your life is worth living, worth saving, then you either have to live it or die. You live or you languish. Not both. And the biggest crime here--the biggest frustration, from where /I'm/ sitting--is that you're neglecting your duty to yourself. You're being selfish in all the wrong ways. And I wish you wouldn't. Refusal to acknowledge the wider world because it's not what pleases you, what you don't FEEL like doing, is self-indulgence. It's a disavowal of the rest of existence because the rest of existence doesn't suit you. And that doesn't work. It never works. Because the rest of us ARE here. The thing is-- you can't change what happens TO you. All you can affect, all you can decide, is what YOU do with yourself. And because that's the only thing you can control, you either have to control it or just sort of wither away. And that's GOOD selfishness. Doing what you have to do because it's all you CAN do."

This is a bastardization of all kinds of philosophies, though I've gotten most of it by osmosis, I think. The biggest thing for me was Objectivism--this idea of duty to the self above all else. It used to stir me up, get me so passionate... and now I feel it again, this indignance that anyone--ANYONE--would willingly neglect their duty to live! That's the injustice!

We have a choice: to live or die--that is, we're all going to die, but we can either just die at the end of a full life, or kill ourselves by refusing to live. Live or languish. And it's... it's so exciting that we have the choice. The choice to live. The choice to be. I can't unmake the rest of the world. I can't close my eyes and make it unexist. And I can't control who loves me, or who hates me, or any of the stupid shit that people do that pisses me off so much. But I can still decide how to handle it. I can decide to lie around and feel sorry about it--to not live--or I can decide to get off my ass and accept that this is life, and it isn't fair, and it doesn't like me, but that the fact that I live at all is a reflection of my choice not to die.

So I can't save my friend. I shouldn't try. HE has to be responsible for saving himself. But in resolving why that inflames me so, I've realized--not for the first time, but for the first time in a LONG time--how wonderful and powerful it is to be upset about it. Upset because someone I love isn't being selfish, and released because I remember that I can be.

Pura vida.