My Way
There was a varsity tennis match happening in the field house, so I was relegated to a treadmill for the run my body was screaming for. For beating out stress, nothing comes close to running. It was night and the overhead lights shone brightly upon me, turning the window before me partially into a mirror. I kept staring at the words on my tshirt, the one she gave me for the last birthday. I have the card she gave me with that gift on my desk at work and I have re-read it every day for the past week or so.
Veritas. Aequitas. I thought of the analogy he gave me, of being the blind kid in the middle giving it his all but in the end, everything being for nothing. The more I thought about it the more I realized that this situation is nothing like that at all and he only used the analogy because it was a weak spot in my armor. If you decide, before you start, that you're not going to be successful, guess what's going to happen? Life is pain. You figure out how to deal with it, or you spend your entire life in that nowhere land of self doubt. Maybe I'm an a-hole, but I won't go down with this ship.
And after the run I took in a deep breath of cold night air, dialed the number and put the phone to my ear. "He feels emasculated in the house, I think. Like he's not contributing." As though this is something that is up to me to remedy. As though I haven't already tried, a thousand and two times, to help light some kind of spark.
The voice that replied to him sounded like steel, and I was filled with pride to hear it. "Yeah, this has actually been going on for a lot longer than we've been in the new house." When I pulled into the driveway I gave him a gruff goodbye and hung up because I don't want anymore negativity in the Ponderosa. You know, I have spent a vast quantity of my life making sure that the people around me are fulfilled and happy, and when I try to apply the same care to my own life I feel guilty for doing it. It's a behavior that's up to me to change. We all are the keepers of our own happiness. She's right; I too have filled my heart with hate. He looked at me with those shark eyes and said, "no one has helped me" and I wanted to smash him.
But it also made me realize that there is some selfishness in my desire to help him. I am not a martyr. We each save ourselves.
Veritas. Aequitas. I thought of the analogy he gave me, of being the blind kid in the middle giving it his all but in the end, everything being for nothing. The more I thought about it the more I realized that this situation is nothing like that at all and he only used the analogy because it was a weak spot in my armor. If you decide, before you start, that you're not going to be successful, guess what's going to happen? Life is pain. You figure out how to deal with it, or you spend your entire life in that nowhere land of self doubt. Maybe I'm an a-hole, but I won't go down with this ship.
And after the run I took in a deep breath of cold night air, dialed the number and put the phone to my ear. "He feels emasculated in the house, I think. Like he's not contributing." As though this is something that is up to me to remedy. As though I haven't already tried, a thousand and two times, to help light some kind of spark.
The voice that replied to him sounded like steel, and I was filled with pride to hear it. "Yeah, this has actually been going on for a lot longer than we've been in the new house." When I pulled into the driveway I gave him a gruff goodbye and hung up because I don't want anymore negativity in the Ponderosa. You know, I have spent a vast quantity of my life making sure that the people around me are fulfilled and happy, and when I try to apply the same care to my own life I feel guilty for doing it. It's a behavior that's up to me to change. We all are the keepers of our own happiness. She's right; I too have filled my heart with hate. He looked at me with those shark eyes and said, "no one has helped me" and I wanted to smash him.
But it also made me realize that there is some selfishness in my desire to help him. I am not a martyr. We each save ourselves.
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