(no subject)
A heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
p.244
I put my hand on his shoulder. I can't believe he's going to make me
give him the speech. I am livid that he's going to make me give him the
speech. I do it, piecing it together from times I've seen it done on TV
and in movies. I tell him that there are many people who love him and
would be crushed if he were to kill himself, while wondering, distantly,
if that is the truth. I tell him that he has so much potential, that he has
so many things to do, while most of me believes that he will never put
his body and brain to much use at all. I tell him that we all have dark
periods, while becoming ever more angry at him, the theatrics, the
self-pity, all this, when he has everything. He has a complete sort of
freedom, with no parents and no dependents, with money and no immediate
threats of pain or calamity, He is the 99.9th percentile, as I am. He
has no real obligations, can go anywhere at any moment, sleep anywhere,
move at will, and still he is wasting everyone's time with this.
But I hold that back -I will save that for later- and instead say nothing
but the most rapturous and positive things. And though I do not
believe much of it , he does. I make myself sick saying it all, everything
so obvious, the reasons to live not at all explainable in a few minutes on
the edge of a psychiatric ward bed, but still he is roused, making me
wonder even more about him, why a fudge-laden pep talk can convince
him to live, why he insists on bringing us both down here, to this
pedestrian level, how he cannot see how silly we both look, and when,
exactly, it was that his head got so soft, when I lost track of him, how it
is that I know and care about such a soft and pliant person, where was it
again that I parked my car.
p.244
I put my hand on his shoulder. I can't believe he's going to make me
give him the speech. I am livid that he's going to make me give him the
speech. I do it, piecing it together from times I've seen it done on TV
and in movies. I tell him that there are many people who love him and
would be crushed if he were to kill himself, while wondering, distantly,
if that is the truth. I tell him that he has so much potential, that he has
so many things to do, while most of me believes that he will never put
his body and brain to much use at all. I tell him that we all have dark
periods, while becoming ever more angry at him, the theatrics, the
self-pity, all this, when he has everything. He has a complete sort of
freedom, with no parents and no dependents, with money and no immediate
threats of pain or calamity, He is the 99.9th percentile, as I am. He
has no real obligations, can go anywhere at any moment, sleep anywhere,
move at will, and still he is wasting everyone's time with this.
But I hold that back -I will save that for later- and instead say nothing
but the most rapturous and positive things. And though I do not
believe much of it , he does. I make myself sick saying it all, everything
so obvious, the reasons to live not at all explainable in a few minutes on
the edge of a psychiatric ward bed, but still he is roused, making me
wonder even more about him, why a fudge-laden pep talk can convince
him to live, why he insists on bringing us both down here, to this
pedestrian level, how he cannot see how silly we both look, and when,
exactly, it was that his head got so soft, when I lost track of him, how it
is that I know and care about such a soft and pliant person, where was it
again that I parked my car.