Once, when I was a teenager, and experiencing the kind of
emotional trouble experienced by such people, I told a friend several years my
senior that all the stories he told me about himself when he was younger made it seem like he had a really easy time of it.
He was so competent and witty and courageous when he was my age, whereas I was
such an idiot and an emotional wreck. He calmly and immediately replied that
this was because he didn't tell me about all the nights he spent alone in his
basement listening to records, so that he wouldn't have to be upstairs in the living
room.
 |
| I'm not saying to worship me or anything, but pull me down the street on a big float and dance around me. |
The image I had of my friend was, of necessity, limited and incomplete, and I thought he was some kind of superman (or at least
super-teenager). As a teenager, I could have said this of most of the people I
knew. My image of them was necessarily limited and incomplete and, considering
that I didn't see them doubting
themselves or suffering from loneliness or confusion (and I was too self-absorbed
to think about it), it was easy enough to think that they didn't suffer from those things. They were cool, and I was doomed
inexplicably not to be.
