Cowards die a thousand times

Wednesday, October 1, 2008
A new month arrives, hope is still nowhere to be found. Watched Jeopardy with dad over his lunch and then did some wash and household chores. The guy that took dad’s Jeep home last night called back today and bought it. I think dad dropped the price to $4,300. The Cubs lost 7-2 in NLCS game 1 to the Dodgers. The big political news today was that the Senate passed a revised version of the $700 billion bailout bill 74-25. Now the bill goes to the House.

I read chapter 8 of my book on Existentialism tonight. The chapter focuses on Jean-Paul Sartre. This is the first time I have really read and studied Sartre, and more importantly, given him a fair shake. Many years ago, I was quite Conservative in my principles and therefore, I easily dismissed Sartre (a committed Socialist). But now, it seems as if many of his ideas are quite realistic. Since I am new to him, I could not completely study him in a single day so I’ll write more about him when I feel I have a more complete understanding of his ideas. One of his many great quotes was “everything that exists is born for no reason, carries on living through weakness, and dies by accident.”

To my complete surprise, Angela, my former coworker, whom I just recently wrote about, called today. I hadn’t spoke to her for a very long time! She said she didn’t know why but she thought about me at work today and wanted to see how I was doing. Of course, I had to lie to her, not because I wanted to deceive but because I wasn’t going to admit to the breakdown I had and that I’m an unemployed loser. I would really like her to be a close friend in my life again but that is way too good to be true. She made a point to tell me she has lost like 40 pounds since we last saw each other. If so, I’m really happy for her. She asked if I still looked “Ethiopian” (ie too thin) and I said “probably.” I said we need to get together sometime (and I’m really serious, I’d really like to see her) and she agreed but I can never be 100% sure if she really meant it. We talked about some of the good times we had in the past and how much we hated our jobs at BlueCross.

I need a fix cause I'm going down, Down to the bits that I left uptown, I need a fix cause I'm going down, Mother Superior jump the gun, Happiness is a warm gun, Happiness is a warm gun mama, When I hold you in my arms, and I feel my finger on you trigger, I know nobody can do no harm, Because Happiness is a warm gun mama, Happiness is a warm gun, yes it is, Happiness is a warm, yes it is, gun.

Here is where I always look at the glass as half-full. I’m glad that Angela called but when something good like this happens to me, in the long term, I’m worse off. It’s because the worse thing to do someone is not to keep them down and discouraged, rather, it is much worse to give hope to someone that is discouraged and then take it back. That is what is crushing. I’d be better off in the long term if things didn’t come along to give me false hope because that only leads to the crash. I’ll probably give her a call next week and see what happens. Expect the worst.