A Little Wisdom from Vayt I found your scar Hidden in the knotted muscle of my arm And remembered When I was a little boy, I cared for all things. I remember, very vividly, crying at my eighth birthday party because someone I had invited stomped on a Daddy long-legs just because he could. It was my birthday and the most emotionally touching part of the day was little me staring down at the twitching legs of the dead bug before that little asshole of a kid stomped on it again and scraped. I care about things. This has always been true of me. I pull my car off the side of the road when I pass a turtle crossing the street, if only to dodge out there and get the fellow to the other side. I feel awful, still awful, whenever I run over a squirrel or chipmunk that always dare the crossing only when it’s too late for me to stop. In my earlier story, you saw how I struggled to put an animal out of its own misery. My mother told me, “Collin, you’re just more sensitive than most kids.” My dad always said “Man up and deal with it.” Conflicting advice on polar sides of the fence and I grew up a little crooked. I can’t help but feel when it comes to people. I wear my heart on my palm, and lose it in a handshake. I want to empathize and be friendly with everyone, even as impossible as that ideal is. I don’t like being trouble and I cringe when people get the wrong impression of me. My mom says I was sensitive, my Dad says I was weak…so now I’m sensitive and believe myself to be weak, that’s how the two concepts married. Most of the time, I’d like to not care as much…juggernaut through life to get to some elusive end goal with blinders on. Certainly my emotional fragility ends up being more problematic than helpful…although I’ll always hear both sides to a story, I always struggle to break up with someone or tell them something mean (but most often true), simply because I cannot stomach the idea of hurting someone. It’s a weakness, no matter which way you cut it…because life is a collection of triumphs, failures, pain, and pleasure. We cannot know the upper limits of joy without the perception of sorrow. We cannot know how the starving feels unless we’ve starved ourselves. If anything, life teaches us that gathering scars is a means of proving your right to be here, and your right to perspective. The strong will triumph, and the weak will bend beneath pressure. To a certain extent, if I put the emphasis in my life on the lives of others, I wouldn’t end up with anything more than that vague feeling of righteous satisfaction for being helpful…and while I’m not knocking the qualities of being a good person or a good friend, I do want to submit that it is possible to miss the entire point of life itself if only lived for others. We have dreams, goals, wild ambitions that ask…no…demand to be the center-stage attraction of our lives. For whatever reason, I put a lot of that off for others…I stayed in Indiana for my friends and family, stayed in a relationship because I was one of her only friends. I make decisions that, in the end, don’t further any agenda at all…but detriment my own. Today I looked at graduate schools outside Indiana. Today I looked at apartment rates and job openings on both the East and West coast. If I stay here much longer, I’ll remain here…and I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing, only that I don’t want it to be a decision that is made by time, rather than choice. I can’t save every bug from being stepped on, or argue the case for the lives of wayward spiders that show up in my sister’s room. If I can intervene, I will, but I can’t mourn over the tiny defeats any longer…they hold me back. I just wanted to write something from what I was feeling right now, especially before I step into something I really don’t want to do…but have to. As always, thanks for reading and listening in -Collin |