Considering that one of the great pretenses I had for my having come to New York was to write, and considering that I do much less of this than I had ought to in general... And seeing as I have spent the day inside the quaint house in Brooklyn spinning wheels, going over questions and searching for answers, and pulling metaphorical shoe boxes of pictures out from underneath my metaphorical bed I literally sleep in (Or rather, cannot sleep in) on a daily bases, I thought now at nearly 3 in the morning would be a grand time to do such a thing. Write, that is... Not all the other circle-running, run-on sentence creating disaster that runs parallel to my existence and what I allow it to be.
If you know me at all, or are from New York and mention it at a table I'm serving you will notice that I have quite the affinity for the City. It runs in and out and stops and goes and pulls and pushes and when you have something to do, you don't feel like you're doing it alone so much. At least, that is the way that I experience it. I write better here... The romantic in me, though it may be. I know that I can go out and take a walk and ask someone where to get off on the F if I'm trying to get to Strand and they will even walk with you there provided it's close enough to where they need to go. Everything moves too fast for you to worry about every action all the time, and this I use a great deal of my life to do.
This said, I am finding myself in a predicament that I fear I have caused. Rather fitting as "Chance" may find it, one of the books I had brought with me this trip is The Abolition Of Man by C.S. Lewis. A lecture on the importance of the universal values and the defense of them. This is both interesting and important to me and quite frankly at present it is a little frustrating to me. I try with great effort [if not always in action, than with hope, in heart] to live my life now and have always in an attempt to do what is right without compromise. This has been the very mechanism that has made me tick. I want others to go first, I want to teach and love and encourage and I want to change wherever I am for the better before I move to my next place. I would like to believe that is all good, and I believe it is in theory (And that last statement is what makes Lewis' book a bit more confusing at present). I do not think that you can debunk those things as good virtues; the desire to live honest, true, noble, and honoring. I have a rather hard time writing any of that off and would fear very greatly the day in which I ever did not feel that way. The issue at hand is that I'm not entirely sure when exactly it is okay or unselfish to do the self preservation dance.
People, or at least a few key people, have asked me many times in my life what I want and told me about how I need to look out for it. Note that many of these people make me feel terrible as soon as I do that very thing, but I digress. I honestly do not know how to answer that question a good deal of the time... This is not however, because I am a indecisive young man without great opinion; I'm rather the opposite and perhaps too often. It is because for a very long time my desire and want has been to take care of the people I care so much about. What I want on a very basic level has often not been an option and when the time comes where it can be I feel uncomfortable and selfish about it and so I dismiss or suppress it (Because that's healthy) and so I don't think about it often. It has no answer because it is not a question.
That being said, it is important to me that I do not play myself as a tragic hero torn apart by his great love and attention to others. I want to view the other side of the mirror I have... I do believe that I can be rather selfish and I have found that when I act on these selfish feelings I tend to do the first thing on the list of things I never wish to do: hurt the people I love so deeply. I may sound confusing and contradictory but it's my blog and so they are my thoughts and I am deeply sorry. This is more for me than anything else as I have very little place to flush out the papers I allow to pile.
This really amounts to this: I go left and do for another who I care about far more than most anyone, or go right and attempt to clear and clean up many situations and feelings spread in various places for over half a decade. Narrowed down further: You or me. If I choose you, I feel I may end us here again, and if I choose me I hurt you. But if I choose me than I can know better what to do, but that means choosing me and that might hurt you and leave you out of the picture... Maybe forever. So I feel this way, do I be selfish and not think so much about the other situation so as to figure out what I want? Or do I stick with what I have been doing and risk a.) Hurting people because the feelings I suppress come out. b.) Faking my way through it all? Or is it faking it? Or is it just persevering. I don't know. I just know that I care very deeply, and that this is what I think about late at night and all the time. I hope that anyone who knows me knows that I care and that I try and that I don't want to put me first. I try.
You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked.
A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?
And IF you go in, should you turn left or right…
or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite?
Or go around back and sneak in from behind?
Simple it’s not, I’m afraid you will find,
for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.
Goodnight.
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