2

The whole time I feel defensive about my feelings, like I’m thinking to myself _Who do you think you are?_
The community service worker we worked with at C____: both of us covered in grass stains and clippings; him trying to get me to go to a club with him, where he‘d had a lot of luck with women. _The other guys say there’s no women here,_ I said. He said: _Of course they think that. Look at them; but look at you._
I wonder if my low self esteem manifests as thinking my face is ugly because that’s the natural focal point of low self esteem, or because of the sexualized nature of the House -- looks were everything.
I know my ideas of the definition of _good looking_ are warped by television and movies.
_I thought it was soooo refreshing,_ Max___ said, in his over-charismatic way, about the first night I stepped into the cafe. _I knew you were one of those people who was good looking but didn’t know it._
Sometimes I think my low self esteem is actually me asking myself, constantly, Why wasn’t I loved? My looks? My personality? My self?
It’s what I wanted when I was eight or nine years old and wrote that I never wanted to be confident. What I knew of confidence wasn’t confidence. It was simply assumptions, upheld like the ten commandments; people lived that way so that they could detach, and be protected from -- oblivious to -- the moment.
Like those supposedly confident white middle class people in the 1950s, who craved routine and lies to Realness and Truth. I know they were driven by intense Fear of the times, and understand them, due to the House. I wanted different.
My self esteem seems intrinsically tied to my power. And my low self esteem seems just as intrinsically tied to sex, as if power and sex are connected.

__________
　

K__ and I still aren’t talking. It makes me sad, even though I am doing little to stop it. I think why why why does this always happen? Me knowing it’s my fault, because K__ is normal.

__________
　

The other night, Mace_ and I hung out, drank some black market vodka, and watched a movie.
I have a lot of friends, but I can’t help notice how I prefer K__’s company. I even lied to Mace___ about having to go meet a convoy, so that our night -- enjoyable as it was -- wouldn’t drag out.
It makes me sad, missing K__. I know I’m his equal, and my way of asserting my equality was to get away from him for awhile. When I catch myself missing him it seems to go against my first assertion of equality.
__________

　
I like myself, when I’m alone. Do you? I think to myself, Then why are you always alone?

__________

　
I’ve wanted to keep pretending that I can get rid of the Difficulty, and then start my life. Not wanting to accept that I must be successful anyway, Difficulty or not.
It’s the Toughness that sees me through. I have to show up just the same, even with the likes of K__, Difficulty or not. I’ve wanted to get rid of the Difficulty, wanted to finish it up, remember it all, put it away, so that my life can be just as good as K__’s, and I can be just as good as K___.
The fact that he has no problems, no urgent memories, flashbacks, nightmares, has made his life seem more successful than mine. Once I get rid of that stuff in mine, then my life can be successful too.
The truth is I’m just as good with all the memories, flashbacks, and nightmares. My life is just as successful, and I am just as worthy of the same successes.
The only way I could be friends with K__ was to never judge him for not having lived a Difficult life. The only way for me to do that was to see the K___ that is all stories, that could’ve been born in the House just as easily as me.
I wonder sometimes if he does the same with me. I don’t know what I feel toward K___. I just feel anger. It doesn’t help that K__ has flaws.
I was effortlessly confident at the café. K___’s that confident all the time, regardless -- because he was loved. Whenever there is a lack of love in my life, I fill it with self-love. It’s simply more Difficult, that’s all, more forced, but the result is the same.
K___ has the advantage that way. There’s something the boy hates about still showing up -- still playing, still competing -- when every one else has advantage. It tires Him out.
Sometimes I agree with the boy, because after twenty something years on this earth I can see how they monopolize. How they cheated. How they made sure education didn’t reach the powerfully intelligent. That freedom wouldn’t reach the powerfully strong.
Sometimes I’m not as impressed, due to the fact that K___’s good looking, was well loved, and faced little Difficulty.
One reason my self-esteem feels rocky is the fact that K__ and W__ were faced with reasonable tests along the way according to their age and position -- tests that when passed with flying colors were easy to feel proud of.
Meanwhile I was faced with tests extraordinarily beyond my age and position, which were impossible to pass with flying colors. Hence, I don’t get to feel easily proud.
They got A’s on reasonable tests while I got mostly C’s on difficult ones. It’s difficult for a boy on his own to feel proud of a C, or an adult to feel proud of a lifetime of C’s.
Sometimes I think I’m angry with K__ because it’s Difficult to be friends with him, when the Difficulty would be there regardless. If this was true it means the anger isn’t True. But I trust my anger, and continue to choose to.
Still, the anger has remained inexplicable, seemingly with no discernable beginning or end. And I wonder about it.
For awhile now, K___ has seemed cocky to me, while he didn’t used to. So cocky it sucks all the conversation out of the room, all the honesty.
Maybe I’m just reading him as cocky. Everyone says he’s cocky, but I rarely notice it. Maybe I only notice it when it’s convenient. He says he never means to be cocky or arrogant, as if that’s enough. My believing him has worked for a long time, but it still feels risky, like my dignity is always on the line.
Sometimes he seems to try not to be cocky, like when I -- out of sheer faith in him -- talk honestly with him. Then he just seems condescending.
I remember what it was like, those silent weeks when K___ and I stayed out of each other’s way. How much better I was, how Focused and at ease.
Whenever I see K___, I’m immediately reminded of how I’m trying to live without my power. If I can write enough, if I can learn enough, I can stay in my head forever. I know that’s not what I want, and yet .. I don’t want to come out like K__, proud without having earned it. (I still didn’t know he was getting high on the side.)
It’s like when I’m Him, I don’t believe myself for long, because there are still underlying tendencies I don’t recognize.
Instead of relying on my own Toughness, I began to rely on K___. I let my power go without even noticing. I think to myself, Why do I always do that?
I made this choice. To leave my Hometown, and all my people. People with Wild lives like mine. I took the good job. I moved away. I took the educational benefits and it won’t be long before I will always be surrounded by the likes of K___.
Sometimes I think I’ll probably never run into a Real person again. If I had the choice I would’ve stayed in my Hometown, but I knew at some point there would be a baby, a child of mine, and I can’t allow the generations between my legsd to know the things I know.
There’s nothing wrong with being poor. But America has a way of turning poverty into an atrocity that I can’t allow them to do to my children.
K___’s life seems to lack these qualities, these thick choices. I don’t envy him for it. I think the Wildness of my life is closer to nature, despite that the average person might cringe at first sight. When that person sees the wild, is awed by it, looking at a sunset or canyon or ocean -- that person is seeing me.
I don’t assume that because I want what K__ has -- freedom, education, and peace of mind -- it means I want to be like him. If it ever seems K___ assumes this, I don’t know which I want to do more: vomit or punch him.