Believe in Love, I Can Be Good
There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort. (Jane Eyre)
Being good is something that I have been obsessed with my whole life. Call it silly, call it self-absorbed and centered around how other perceive me, but I want to be good. When I say good, I don’t mean like straight A grades at school or never getting in trouble with the cops or anything. I just mean that I want to make people feel better, I want to be someone that causes no harm. But that’s not realistic, I know that. I’m far too selfish, anyhow, and that’s the real problem. That’s why I write all this stuff for people to see, because I’m selfish and I’m holier-than-thou and I’m maybe just not so good after all. But I’m going to try. I want to be helpful and kind, first of all. That’s a good place to start. I like to see other people smile, I like to see something I did make their lives feel a little easier. I have a constant desire to see the people I love succeed, and I want them to have everything they could possibly have. I want to see them bathed in light, I want them to hold the keys to everything. I want them to see my open arms and understand that I intend nothing but good. Words are not intention, deeds are not intention, maybe someday I can line them up. Nobody’s ever without sin, I know. I remember being in high school and having a silly fight with some of the girls I used to be friends with. I was kind of at the center of it all. When I was in high school I was a lot like everyone else who is in high school and I listened to Bright Eyes all the time. They have that song, An Attempt To Tip The Scales I think it’s called. It’s got this really long weird bullshit interview at the end with this guy Todd Fink from some band called the Faint pretending to be Conor Oberst. It’s full of weird lies and bullshit, like when he says he had five brothers that drowned in bathtubs named Padraic. But there’s this part where he says “I really just wanna be warm yellow light that pours all over everyone I love.”. I used to listen to that part obsessively, over and over and over and over and cry in my 2005 Honda CRV in the poorly maintained parking lot of my high school. I needed to live up to it, but I couldn’t. It troubled me for months, even past graduating. I don’t speak to these people anymore, so maybe now I don’t get what all the trouble was for. I don’t know why I felt the desire to lay myself down at their feet, I don’t know why I had to self-flagellate so hard for them. I feel differently now that I’m older. First of all, I feel like I really love the people I know now, the ones that I consider friends and even the ones I don’t. I mean it, I think it’s the idea of mutual respect, the fact that nobody is asking me to torture myself for them and then maybe it’s not even about me at all and why can’t I stop making it about me? It’s not about me, I want to make other people happy and I don’t want it to be about me. I want to be loving, I want to be happy, I don’t want to make anyone upset or mad or anything like that and I don’t want to be a cowardly, self-deprecating loser. I’m trying to grow up, I’m trying to figure out who I am, I’m trying to live without shame and make every day as good as it can be. I’m trying to be myself, and what does it really mean to be me, anyway?