excerpt

Hi friend,

...I haven't had any thoughts of hurting myself and haven't been doing anything to hurt myself, but in a way I guess my apathy is self-destructive. I always wonder, though, if everyone doesn't have self-destructive tendencies of one sort or another.

One of my favorite shows that I used to watch with my family was "Joan of Arcadia," about how God would appear to this 16 year old girl named Joan and give her different tasks to do. In this one arc, she has this close friend named Judith, who is in ways neglected by her psychiatrist parents and has bad drinking and drug habits. One night, when with a bunch of friends who are meeting a guy for a drug deal, Judith is fatally stabbed. Joan is freaking out, and her boyfriend Adam, whose mother had committed suicide a few years earlier, is hard on Judith and leaves Joan at the hospital.

When he shows up again, Joan rages at him.
Joan: How could you? How could you just leave me?
Adam: I'm sorry. I tried, okay? I couldn't do it, Not after my mother, I couldn't, I just couldn't see someone throw her life away like that, not again.
Joan: She didn't, she didn't kill herself.
Adam: Some people do it all at once, and some people do it a little bit every day.
Joan: I loved her.
Adam: I know. And I don't know why that doesn't matter.

I always think of that scene when I think of people's self-destructive tendencies, or even just of the way people neglect themselves. Maybe everyone is just killing themselves a little bit every day. And if that's true, even if only in ways, I don't know why other people's love doesn't matter to us. And at the end of the day, if my apathy is my worst self-destructive tendency, I guess things could be a whole lot worse.

- Me