Much Ado About Nothing
Current Mood: aggravated
Current Music: random country music on the radio
“I should have felt angry, but I only felt sad-sad and degraded beyond measure by the bitterness of his terrible disappointment.” -Erik
So, this is going to be a ramble about nothing, but most of my posts are, so this should serve as no real surprise.
I am rereading Phantom, and although it is hard to put down most of the time, I’m finding as I near the end I have to put it down. I can’t stand to see Erik nearing his end.
I love Erik. He is, by far, my favorite fictional character, and I’m just having difficulty with how incredibly cruel it is to deprive him of everything. His entire existence is cruel. The fact that someone so… innately deserving of love could come to such an end… really irks me. And I know, having read this before (I’ve had to stop at page 377 at the moment, because I need a break) that before all is said and done he does get his one evening with Christine or whatever, that one little crumb over the course of his entire life-but that isn’t enough! Perhaps Erik accepted it, but I DON’T. Why did Erik only deserve crumbs of what other people took fro granted? He, who has spent so much of his life without that thing which other’s take for granted, would have appreciated it! More than others, Erik deserved to be loved. He deserved to have someone love him with a consuming passion-someone to choose him. He deserved that.
And he never got it. He began his life as a reject, and that is how he died. He spent his entire life virtually alone, and while it deeply saddens me, more than that it makes me absolutely angry!
And this is probably because I do see so much of myself in Erik, and so when I see that Erik inevitably does not receive the elusive happy ending, but instead a harsh, bitter reality, it makes me wonder about my own ending.
For a time, he was happy-ish and “bloody contented” to be alone (when he carved out a spot for himself, his house beyond the lake under the opera), but he noted that as he got older, that ease of youth began to fade and in his later years it became hard again. All his life he had to struggle with himself, trying to make peace and accept the crumbs, trying to tell himself he had shed his last human vestiges-not because he wanted to, but because he had virtually no other option. Humanity and everything related to humanity rejected him, so the only thing he could really do in return was reject it back. In essence, it would be like the kid that never gets picked to play dodge ball saying, “I didn’t want to play anyway.”
And how could I not relate to that?
In [other?] news, today was my last day at Classic and I was able to tell Jake goodbye and give him that little nudge that I was unable to give him the other day. I got to tell him that while I suspect that movie is not out anymore, we could see another one. However, he had his earbuds in, so he's like, "What did you say?" and I said, "I don't believe that movie in particular is in theaters anymore."
"Oh, yeah, I looked for it awhile ago and it wasn't there. We'll have to see another one."
"Yeah, we could see another one," I reply, smiling invitingly. Then I say goodbye, but I end up getting to see him again anyway--like twice--when I go across the street.
But when I said goodbye the last time, he was like, "Well, I'll see you at Perry Family Restaurant."
And then it got confusing, because he went on to say "if not..." something, but I was already responding, "Yeah, hopefully," so whatever else he said got lost in the fray.
I'm not going to hold my breath.
In fact, I aspire never to hold my breath for an uncomfortable amount of time ever again.
I have made sure--not always by my own hand, but it has happened nonetheless--that everyone in my life right now is expendable. In fact, everything in my life right now is completely expendable. If I lost my job, my friends, my whatever, I might only be minorly inconvenienced. I've learned that in not over-valuing any given thing, and not valuing anything really more than anything else, you can come back from any loss. It is only when you place too high a value on things that you can be crippled.
And really, why should I place a high value on someone who doesn't want me anyway? Viewed this way, it is utterly illogical.
But then, the only "person" I can relate to is a deformed genius with a slightly fractured mind, so what do I know?