Time flows ever-onwards, and questions of worth...of self, of others...continue to surge up to be eventually soothed.

An angry someone-or-other is currently demanding I make some sort of amends to him for dropping him on Facebook. He seems to be of the opinion that dropping someone you haven't talked to in over two years is somehow a horrible offense, and is using the moment's curiosity that caused him to realize that he could no longer view my page as reason to subtly press the claim that he cares much more than I do about other people.

He certainly cares more than I do about this given situation, but as to the more extreme accusation...I'm not sure.

---

This Didn't Happen

"Hey."
"Hey."
"What do you want?"
"Uhh....why do I have to want something? Maybe I just called."
"You must want something, you're talking to me. People don't generally do that without ulterior motive."

---

It has been a long-standing complaint of mine that the only time my phone rings, the only time my chatwindow bleeps, it is because someone, somewhere, wants something. The truth of this statement is, first and foremost, dubious. Furthermore...it is only recently that I have begun taking into consideration the thought that when you call someone just to find out how they're doing, it's because you want something, too. Everyone wants something from everyone else. It's just, sometimes the thing they want is surcease from loneliness, something to assure them that they are not alone in a world that frankly gets more terrifying by the day.

This is a thing I do sometimes. The world is large and frightening and I am but a person, a sometimes sad, sometimes lonely, sometimes depressed, sometimes bored individual. So I pick up the phone, so I sign online.

Which means that when I call people, when I chat them, it's because I want something, too. The reason I cut the gentleman in question instead of sending him a message was because I didn't care enough about his company to seek it out. He did not fulfill any given need, so I cut him out and didn't give the matter much more thought. Truth be told, he was one of approximately thirty or so people I also dropped on that particular day.

Does this make me cold? Does this make me apathetic? Or does it make me human, susceptible to human failings? Should this even be considered a failing? I know I'm neurotic. I know I'm paranoid. I know that sometimes I am these things with good reason, and sometimes I'm these things because habit too long established is a hard thing to put aside. Cold, though, stonehearted, apathetic, these are things that I am having trouble equating with my personal mode of life. I have been treated with apathy too many times to be able to allow the possibility that I am capable of being apathetic to settle comfortably into my heart.

Of course, Facebook doesn't matter, and the ruffled feathers of someone who in all honesty does not care about anything outside of his ability to stir mud wherever he can find it doesn't matter, but as that was the scenario that put the thought into my head, it's only fair to mention it.

I begin to suspect that I, who have accused people of not caring throughout the course of my entire life, have finally realized the advantages of apathy. I don't like it, mind you. It does not at all sit comfortably with me, which is why I'm even writing this entry. I don't think I will ever be able to just...walk away, get called on it, and not have some version of this cycle of introspection rev itself into being.

 But there was a time, perhaps two years ago, that I would have begged this person to take me back, be my friend, answered his angry email with something doormattish and pathetic. Anything to prevent his dislike from hitting home, anything to avoid having someone out there with a less-than-stellar opinion of me. But there are a lot of people with a less-than-stellar opinion of me anyway, so why should I have to put up with someone I don't like?

Ah. And there's the rub.

Probably someday I will be able to go through this process without spending a half-hour writing up a blog entry to detail my own feelings in the matter. Probably there will come a day when I'll just laugh about it, or at least shrug it off.

Then again, maybe it's the lack of shrugging that not only makes me who I am, but makes me worth caring about. Is that ironic? Or is it just appropos?