This Is The Sound Of One Hand Clapping

when i'm depressed i wonder why people insist on continuing to make me feel worse. when i'm happy i wonder why people can't stop infringing on my good mood. i'm becoming more self centered, more socially needy and yet more internally closed off as the years go by. i think the world should change for me rather than me adapting to it and i'm so sure in my ways that the ground could open up right under my feet and i'd probably expect to float right along. i avoid being shaken up, skirting chances at real change. i take less and less responsibility for my failures because how could i possibly not have met the many expectations on my potential unless someone or something, an external force beyond my control, was acting against me. i feel like i'm owed something. that is the ultimate product of my education; that getting straight A's and having teachers give me high marks for being one of the good students somehow entitles me to success. despite my very privileged life, the many opportunities laid out before me, the complete lack of hardship, i still haven't been able to make it work. i'm a slacker. lazy at heart and so involved in my discontent that i still feel righteous when essentially complaining about my inability to just get off my fucking ass. i purposely avoid hard work that might result in a failure on my part, choosing instead to pour myself into other people's projects so i can use them as an excue to put off what i fear will be just another flop in a string of my mediocre creative endeavors. it becomes easier to glorify and polish up past accomplishment than it is to make new ones. but the growing awareness that people realize it's all just talk on my part burns at me. i look at the many individuals turning out great things from humble beginnings and i can't even muster up admiration or inspiration any more. just jealousy that i don't understand what keeps them hungry and shame that i had a head start and accomplished less. a growing number of unanswered correspondences tell me what a burden i've become to many of my friends, who have their own problems to deal with and shouldn't have to be bothered with my acting out for their attention. so i'm relegated to posting a note on facebook, the communication equivalent of salmon releasing their egg and sperm out into the water, hoping to get lucky. because a phone call would require too much personal involvement and a text message is somehow too impersonal. actually meeting face to face is out of the question because it might result in awkwardness at the cost of you having to drive in LA traffic and at the risk of me taking out my frustrations on you. if you really care, then the best thing you can do is ignore this. don't respond to my attempt to make you feel sorry for me. don't feed into my sense of self importance. no heartfelt i love you's, no pats on the back about how talented you think i am, no cleverly callous jabs or half jokes. don't say you're there if i need you because if you haven't heard any of this from me before then you obviously don't mean it. this isn't a test. this isn't me asking you if i look fat in my jeans. it's not me telling you i don't want you to call when i really really do. it's not a request for your advice on how to live happier. if anything it's an attempt to publicly shame myself into action. it is a declaration that my life is a self inflicted mess so don't try and set me up with your single friends because i will just use them to plug holes in the dam. this is me, telling you my problems while admitting that i've done nothing to fix them and that kind of apathy should never be rewarded.