Waiting for the bus

Sometimes I think:

You're killing yourself.

As surely as if you had a gun in your mouth, or a noose around your neck, or a bottle full of pills in your belly. You're killing yourself. You're just choosing to do it in a way that's slow, and acceptable by society. You're killing yourself with liquor and cigarettes and food. You're living a suicidal, self-destructive lifestyle. Which is sort of the only way that someone who is terrified of death can kill themselves.

Sometimes, this is what I think.

And it's stupid, because I don't want to die. Death holds nothing for me. And yet, it's also *not* stupid, because in so many ways, life holds nothing for me.

I had an argument with a friend the other night, in which I explained that I felt that I was fated to a life of failure and misery because I lack the capacity for selfishness.

He told me that there was no such thing as fate.

I told him we were arguing semantics.

He told me that the most successful people he knew were the ones who cared about nothing but their own success, who were selfish, who were willing to go after what they wanted with a single minded ferocity.

I told him he was making my point for me.

For some reason, I can't shake the notion I have that what *I* want is the least important thing in the world. That what everyone else wants is far, far more important. That if there is a sacrifice to be made, the sacrifice should be mine.

I can't shake that.

No reason to stress, though, because in a way all of this is suddenly irrelevant. Because life is what happens when you're making other plans.