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There's a time when the best plan of action is choking down some pride, doing what they know is best for you, and not acting like someone you're not. I know people, people I'm close to, and they lie to me. They don't lie all that well; they want to be found out. But they lie just the same. They smile and tell me everything is just grand. They take their turns crying to me in private, or at least leaking out the pain they don't realize we all have, and then a day later, like my grandma before her church's bi-weekly bingo game, they put on their faces. Maybe others don't see the facade for what it is; who can be sure? I know several times in the past I've taken in the artificial happiness hook, line, and practiced grin. I've gone around thinking a friend of mine was well on his or her way to peace only to be reminded by another, or by an emotional outburst featuring Pent-up Aggression as Bunny and Depression-caused Breakdown as "The Rookie," that things weren't so well. I've been blind enough to comment on the pleasant attitudes of others only to be reminded, "Tom, you know she's just faking it?" These people, they come to me wanting to tell their stories, and somehow the next day they expect me to believe they slept well that night. I didn't sleep well; I know you didn't either. I'm never going to claim that I have never put on my acting hat and went to work. Never. What I am going to claim is that from now on, I'm going to try not to hide so much from my closer friends, and I'll tell you why. Sympathy fucks. The real reason is this: if people know the crazy thoughts bouncing around in my mind now and then, they'll realize it's similar to the crazy ideas in their own mind, then maybe they'll be more apt to not act. If they (we) didn't act, the pain would be bearable to us all. You might not be able to take it, and that's alright, because together we can. Together we can.
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"Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's phony. I want to puke every time I hear it."--Holden Caulfield, from The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
"'Cause what you see you might not get/ And we can bet so don't you get souped yet/ You're scheming on a thing that's a mirage/ I'm trying to tell you now it's sabotage."--Beastie Boys, from Sabotage After a while the faces of the watching men lost their bemused perplexity and became hard and angry and resistant. Then the women knew that they were safe and that there was no break." --John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath |