A moment of perspective
I used to wonder what my funeral would be like.
I imagined a big room, attended by everybody who had ever cared about me, with anybody/everybody (who wanted to) having a chance to come up and speak. Little did they know but, in essence, so many people in attendance held a small piece of the puzzle, a small bit of information about me that nobody else knew - and when they spoke, they were helping to fill in the greater picture. In the course of the speeches, the attendees would learn so much about me that they never knew.
I've said for years that nobody has really understood me as a whole, though my father probably came closer than anybody else. It is largely inadvertent; I mean, it's not as if I've made any sort of effort to keep the areas of my life compartmentalized, but the fact is that my various circles don't have much overlap. So I guess I imagined, at my funeral, that people would talk and be amazed at the things they learned about other areas of my life that they'd previously known nothing about. I would become larger than life, the final sum of all the parts they never knew.
I've done oh so many good deeds over the years. Sometimes it was completely anonymous; sometimes (by necessity) it wasn't anonymous, but the person I helped was aware that he or she was not to talk about it with other people. I believe that good deeds are only good deeds when few-to-no people know about them; otherwise, all the giver is really doing is self-aggrandizement, because the true reward of a good deed should simply be the self-knowledge of one's actions. And yet, maybe in a way I too was still guilty of a form of deferred self-aggrandizement, because I once upon a time believed that at my funeral, people would in fact come out and talk about all of the ways I'd helped them over the years. I thought that maybe, just maybe, people would somehow gain more respect for me after I had passed and that, as the stories flowed from all the people about the good things I'd done for them and others, some who were lukewarm towards me might realize that they had misjudged me. It would be my moment of redemption, so to speak.
Now I realize how foolish I've been. There isn't going to be some grand funeral event in which everyone's eyes are suddenly opened. There won't be a moment of truth in which people realize they've maybe misjudged me. Nobody is going to be awed when they hear stories about my life. Hell, there won't be any stories at all. Nobody cares. Nobody freaking cares whatsoever, about me or my life or my achievements (I'd say "or my failures", but no, plenty of people still care about those, because I suppose it helps them ignore the beam in their own eyes). I mean nothing to anybody at all, except maybe a cat or two (and I don't say that to disparage the love of a cat in any way; in fact, the love of a cat is literally all that's keeping me alive right now).
People have short, short memories, and no loyalty whatsoever. They only care about what you've done for them lately, and/or what you can do for them in the future. I've been stabbed in the back by people I thought were friends. I can think of "friends" who, when the cracks started to show in my relationship with a girl, went behind my back to try to talk her out of her clothes. I can think of people I fought for and protected in their time of need, people who had no friends but me when the chips were down, who much later on launched a campaign to destroy me because I was in the way of their ambitions. There were people who took advantage of my financial generosity (including, of course, my own father). There was the ex who not only two-timed me while she was away at college, but also tried her best to gaslight me as I caught her in lie after lie. There was the ex who fucked a couple of friends of hers that she told me for weeks were "just old friends" who "had no sexual interest in her", but then expected me not to be mad because it was only a physical affair and not an emotional one. There was... oh, fuck it, why am I even bothering with this? I could go on and on for hours and hours and still not run out of stories to tell. People suck. Betrayal sucks, and the wounds it leaves never really heal.
Some of the very people that I once imagined standing up at my funeral and gushing about all I'd done for them are now people who'd sit back and laugh if they saw me drowning.
I guess my point is that I don't really matter much to anybody, and that even the people I've helped (sometimes with considerable sacrifice) have eventually gotten around to betraying me. Nobody loves me or would fight for me. Nobody cares. Some of them don't remember and/or have chosen to forget the friendship or love we once had, and what it meant to us at the time. There's no happily ever after. People may have some goodness, but they also have greed, ambition, selfishness, and even apathy. When you help someone out, you might earn some "points", but what I always failed to realize and appreciate is that for most people, those points have an expiration date; if a person offers to return a favor for something you've done for them, you have to collect immediately or not at all, because pretty soon their memories fade and your points expire. Loyalty is fleeting, and the sands are always shifting.
A few people will come to my funeral, though not many. The ones who come will just be the people who happened to have liked me at that precise moment. It'll be quiet, and sad, and meaningless - almost the exact opposite of my silly little fantasy.
I'm saying all of this now because, although I don't know how much time I have left on this planet, and although I do not admit to having any specific plans for early termination, I can't shake the feeling that my time is winding down. And maybe it needs to wind down, because I'm really tired of the ceaseless pain. I'm really tired of the betrayal.
I imagined a big room, attended by everybody who had ever cared about me, with anybody/everybody (who wanted to) having a chance to come up and speak. Little did they know but, in essence, so many people in attendance held a small piece of the puzzle, a small bit of information about me that nobody else knew - and when they spoke, they were helping to fill in the greater picture. In the course of the speeches, the attendees would learn so much about me that they never knew.
I've said for years that nobody has really understood me as a whole, though my father probably came closer than anybody else. It is largely inadvertent; I mean, it's not as if I've made any sort of effort to keep the areas of my life compartmentalized, but the fact is that my various circles don't have much overlap. So I guess I imagined, at my funeral, that people would talk and be amazed at the things they learned about other areas of my life that they'd previously known nothing about. I would become larger than life, the final sum of all the parts they never knew.
I've done oh so many good deeds over the years. Sometimes it was completely anonymous; sometimes (by necessity) it wasn't anonymous, but the person I helped was aware that he or she was not to talk about it with other people. I believe that good deeds are only good deeds when few-to-no people know about them; otherwise, all the giver is really doing is self-aggrandizement, because the true reward of a good deed should simply be the self-knowledge of one's actions. And yet, maybe in a way I too was still guilty of a form of deferred self-aggrandizement, because I once upon a time believed that at my funeral, people would in fact come out and talk about all of the ways I'd helped them over the years. I thought that maybe, just maybe, people would somehow gain more respect for me after I had passed and that, as the stories flowed from all the people about the good things I'd done for them and others, some who were lukewarm towards me might realize that they had misjudged me. It would be my moment of redemption, so to speak.
Now I realize how foolish I've been. There isn't going to be some grand funeral event in which everyone's eyes are suddenly opened. There won't be a moment of truth in which people realize they've maybe misjudged me. Nobody is going to be awed when they hear stories about my life. Hell, there won't be any stories at all. Nobody cares. Nobody freaking cares whatsoever, about me or my life or my achievements (I'd say "or my failures", but no, plenty of people still care about those, because I suppose it helps them ignore the beam in their own eyes). I mean nothing to anybody at all, except maybe a cat or two (and I don't say that to disparage the love of a cat in any way; in fact, the love of a cat is literally all that's keeping me alive right now).
People have short, short memories, and no loyalty whatsoever. They only care about what you've done for them lately, and/or what you can do for them in the future. I've been stabbed in the back by people I thought were friends. I can think of "friends" who, when the cracks started to show in my relationship with a girl, went behind my back to try to talk her out of her clothes. I can think of people I fought for and protected in their time of need, people who had no friends but me when the chips were down, who much later on launched a campaign to destroy me because I was in the way of their ambitions. There were people who took advantage of my financial generosity (including, of course, my own father). There was the ex who not only two-timed me while she was away at college, but also tried her best to gaslight me as I caught her in lie after lie. There was the ex who fucked a couple of friends of hers that she told me for weeks were "just old friends" who "had no sexual interest in her", but then expected me not to be mad because it was only a physical affair and not an emotional one. There was... oh, fuck it, why am I even bothering with this? I could go on and on for hours and hours and still not run out of stories to tell. People suck. Betrayal sucks, and the wounds it leaves never really heal.
Some of the very people that I once imagined standing up at my funeral and gushing about all I'd done for them are now people who'd sit back and laugh if they saw me drowning.
I guess my point is that I don't really matter much to anybody, and that even the people I've helped (sometimes with considerable sacrifice) have eventually gotten around to betraying me. Nobody loves me or would fight for me. Nobody cares. Some of them don't remember and/or have chosen to forget the friendship or love we once had, and what it meant to us at the time. There's no happily ever after. People may have some goodness, but they also have greed, ambition, selfishness, and even apathy. When you help someone out, you might earn some "points", but what I always failed to realize and appreciate is that for most people, those points have an expiration date; if a person offers to return a favor for something you've done for them, you have to collect immediately or not at all, because pretty soon their memories fade and your points expire. Loyalty is fleeting, and the sands are always shifting.
A few people will come to my funeral, though not many. The ones who come will just be the people who happened to have liked me at that precise moment. It'll be quiet, and sad, and meaningless - almost the exact opposite of my silly little fantasy.
I'm saying all of this now because, although I don't know how much time I have left on this planet, and although I do not admit to having any specific plans for early termination, I can't shake the feeling that my time is winding down. And maybe it needs to wind down, because I'm really tired of the ceaseless pain. I'm really tired of the betrayal.