The Others - 20. Chapter 20: My philosophy

I don’t think I ever heard of a word that describes what I’m feeling right now. It feels like I betrayed myself. I feel confused. I feel like a mess.

Betraying yourself feels dirty, you know? When you don’t plan to do something, but you still do it, you feel like you are messing with your soul. I didn’t want to kiss him, he is my step brother for god’s sake! I ran away after the kiss. I left the boy confused. I won’t ever be able to fix this. I can’t speak to him anymore, not without explaining what happened.

It was great, though. Is that weird? He is my step brother, though I’m not supposed to know that yet. He doesn’t know it, that’s for sure. It’s not like we share the same blood, my father isn’t his real father. I’m using the boy to get to my father, but I won’t ever kiss him to achieve that. I won’t act as if I love someone when I don’t. I’ve been there. It hurts.

No, I liked kissing him. Does that mean I like him? I liked kissing Sam, but I don’t like her in that way, I’m sure of it. Why oh why am I this confusing. Sometimes I wonder if it would be easier if I was just on my own. That’s why I’m going to leave everyone behind. A few more days at school, and some of those I'll skip. Then the party at Brian’s. After that I’ll leave everyone behind.

It’s dark outside already. I wonder where Codey is. Is he thinking about me as well?

I’m lying on my bed staring at the ceiling. What would death be like? I've thought about it a lot. I fear the uncertainty of dying, because if I didn’t fear it, I probably would’ve done it already. That’s a painful thought, but it's the truth, unfortunately. If I wrote this down, the story of my life, I imagine no one would like reading it. I’m not a character people could love, I don’t even love myself. I’m living from moment to moment, one step at a time, just so I can forget this confusing feeling. I am trying to understand myself, but I can’t.

Lately I’ve thought about dying more often. I fear that if I don’t run away, there will be a certain point in my life at which I will choose to die, and I don’t want that. That’s why I want to escape.

Sometimes I wonder if maybe I'm this confusing just to give myself a reason to be sad. It feels less depressing when you’re sad for a reason, you know? That’s why I keep thinking about Yuri, why I keep opening his picture on my computer. I am sad. I will always be sad, but when I’m looking at that picture, at least I have a reason to be sad. It feels human to be sad with a reason.

I’m going to leave next week. I’ll take my bike and ride away, and never come back. I don’t want to hurt the people around me, so I'll leave. Of course this will hurt too, my mother will be devastated when she finds out. My brother won’t mind, he will act hurt of course, but in the end it only means he will get even more attention from my mother, so he benefits as well.

I can’t go without leaving something for my mother. A note, my version of a suicide note. Getting out of bed I slowly walk to my computer. I open Word and start writing.

“I always wanted to make a journey. I don’t mind where I’ll be going or when I’ll be going, but I want to leave. This is my goodbye, meant for my mother.

I don’t blame you, you were the greatest mom ever. I don’t blame Tyde either, he was a difficult one, but he had his reasons. No, I solely blame myself. I’m a failed human being and that’s why I’m leaving.”

How will my mother react when she sees it? I can almost see her crying. I can’t do this. Not now. I need to talk to someone. Can I go to Sam? No, I’ve been there a lot lately. I can’t get any closer to her, I’ll hurt her when I leave.

I open my email and click on Seth’s name.

“Hey AR,

I haven’t heard from you lately. I always try to keep in touch with my most faithful readers, that’s why I decided to email you. I don’t like talking through emails, so I wondered if you maybe wanted to add me through Skype? Don’t worry, I don’t want to speak to you personally, just chatting is okay. It’s just a better way to talk, you know?

AB”

After sending it my telephone starts ringing. I answer it.

“Hey Matt,” I hear a soft voice.

“Codey!” I didn’t expect him. Why, you ask? I don’t know, I just didn’t expect him even though it would be perfectly normal to expect it. That doesn’t make sense, right?

“You ran away…”

“I know, I’m sorry. I was a bit confused, I didn’t mean to.”

“I’m sorry too, Matt. It’s all my fault. You're straight, I know that, I only confused you. You probably don’t want to see me anymore, and I understand. I need to ask you something though, before you stop talking to me,” he rambles.

“Codey.”

“I need to talk to you one more time, can we do that? Then you can start ignoring me like everyone else does.”

“Codey.”

“I know what you want to say, Matt. I’m sorry, okay? I’m not a queer boy that starts kissing everyone that talks to him.”

“I liked it.”

“My dad heard about… wait. What?”

“I liked it, Codey,” I whisper.

Silence.

“Codey?”

I hear a sniff. “Are you playing with me? You liked it?” he cries.

“I liked it. I’m just a bit confused. I didn’t want to like it and I’m not sure why I did.”

“Are you gay?”

“Yes, Codey, I am… Now tell me, what about your step dad?” Another silence. “Uhh. My mom kinda told him what I said about you. I told him it was a lie, but he wants to talk to you about it. So uhm… yeah.”

“Oh,” is all I manage to say. Shit. “What about next week?” There will be no next week.

“Why next week?”

Lies. Lies are everywhere. I need to keep lying to avoid any problems. I need to lie so no one finds out about the void that’s inside me.

A popup appears on my screen. An email from Seth!

“Uhh. I kinda want to get rid of the confusion first. I want to get to know you and I want to work out what I'm feeling.”

“Oh, I understand... I guess. Do you want to meet again soon? Without my dad, I mean.”

“I’d really like to, Codey.” Why do I say his name out loud so much? Do I like the sound of it that much?

“Did you tell anyone about today?”

“No.”

“Can you keep it that way? I don’t want things to get any more confusing.”

“Of course, Matt… Uhh, can I see you tonight? My dad isn’t home, so uhh…”

“I’ll be there at 8, okay?”

“Great,” is his response, and with that we end the conversation.

I need to find out about my dad really fast. Deadlines are approaching. This Sunday will be occupied by the party, so that leaves only tomorrow, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday to find out about him, to talk to Seth, to write my goodbye note and to write the last blog entry. It’s going to be a busy week.

I open the email.

“Hey AB,

I’ll add you right away!

AR.”

I open my skype and see he already added me. Cuteboy99 is his alias… fitting, I think with a smile but immediately wipe it off my face, as if I’m afraid someone could see it. If there were someone watching me now, there would be more things to worry about other than the smile on my face.

“Hey,” I type.

It takes a while before I get a response. “Is this really you?”

“It’s me, the real AB, haha.”

“I can’t believe it, I’m such a fan of your blog!”

“Thanks man, I appreciate it.” He doesn’t respond. “I’m a fan of your emails too,” I say.

“Ah, thanks.” Silence. “So, why did you want to add me on skype?”

The nice part about online chats is that you can think before you say anything. Of course that’s something you do in real life as well, but not as long as online. People won’t expect a fast answer, because they can never know if you’re just postponing the response or if your connection is bad. I like chats. Maybe that’s why I like writing my blog posts, I can take the time I want – even though I write them pretty fast, I want to write what’s on my mind and don’t want to spend much time revising it – and I won’t get corrected. Of course I get emails often from people disagreeing with me. I read them, I try to understand it and most of the time I reply to them. I tell them they did exactly what I wanted; created a discussion. I don’t write to get agreed with, I explain, I write to make you think. It worked, so thank you!

Normally I don’t agree with them, there is a reason I post a certain idea online, mostly that’s because I totally agree with myself. When someone disagrees, but doesn’t really try to convince me, I just read it, reply to it, and get on with my life. Not that there’s much to that – my life.“I wanted to get to know you better,” I hesitantly reply.

“That’s a good thing, I guess? I’m flattered,” he sends back.

Okay, self-reflection time! What’s going on here? What exactly am I doing? Why didn’t I start this introspection when I decided to email the guy? What was I thinking.

It was a good question, why the hell would I want to chat anonymously with a person I know in real life – a person I never payed attention to, even if I could have. I ignored him for years when he was sitting very close to me, why would I want to get to know him now? And even if I wanted to, what happened to the always-tell-a-lie me? Why would I tell him something I didn’t even know myself before I said it out loud. Wow, this is getting confusing.

You know what is a fun thought? I think I’m very confusing, compared to others around me. But… can I really compare myself to other people? Think about it before you respond. Of course, I do look like the people around me, in a certain way I’m the same species. Or am I?

This is a really weird thing to think about. The only person I know like I know myself… is me. And I can’t compare myself to me in order to know for sure whether I’m like the people around me. Can you follow? I think about this principle a lot – I’m not sure if I’ve written it down before though – how do you know you really exist? The only reference material you have, is you.

Descartes, a famous French philosopher thought about this, I recall from my random internet searches. He said something like:

“Considering that the very thoughts we have while awake may also occur while we sleep without any of them being at the that time true, I resolved to pretend that all the things that had ever entered my mind were no more true than the illusions of my dreams. But immediately I noticed that while I was trying thus to think everything false, it was necessary that I, who was thinking this, was something. And observing that this truth ‘I am thinking, therefore I exist’ was so firm and sure that all the most extravagant suppositions of the sceptics were incapable of shaking it, I decided that I could accept it without scruple as the principle of the philosophy I was seeking.”

Okay, I know this description doesn’t really do what it is supposed to do, namely describing things. Let me give an example instead; what if everyone around you is a robot. A really advanced robot, that’s for sure, because you didn’t find out before you read this. So, how can you really find out about it.

In other words, maybe I’m supposed to be confusing. Maybe that isn’t as weird as I think. I’m myself and that’s all I can be sure of. I’m certain of the way I am and with that thought, almost everything I do or screw up, is just my influence on MY surroundings. Because that’s the only thing I can experience, my surrounding. The world around me IS exactly how I see it, how I want to experience it, because the only observation I can make of the world, is my own.

I bet this didn’t explain at all what I wanted to explain, I almost don’t understand it myself. It did something though, it explained how exhausting my brain can be.

“So tell me, who are you?” I send.

“Am I supposed to tell you about me even though I don’t know about you?”

I smile again. “I thought you emailed me that you felt as if you knew me? So isn’t it my turn to feel the same about you?”

“Hmm, I guess you’re right. But, can you at least tell me how old you are?”

What should I tell him. Would the truth bring him closer to the truth? Wow, that question makes no sense, but in some way it does. Could the truth about me bring him closer to discovering who I am, I mean. I don’t think it does, there are loads of people around my age, right? So I respond in the dumbest way possible to tell him my age. “I’m around the same age as you.”

“How do you know my age?” Another great thing about online chats: they can’t see your face so lying is way easier! “I just guessed. I’m 17 years old. What about you?”

“I expected you to be way older. You seem so wise.”

“Haha, thank you,” is my reply. “So, how old are you?”

“17 as well.” For almost a minute none of us sends a message. “So, what do you want to know about me?”

That’s something I haven’t really thought about, but apparently I didn’t need to, because I send a reply before I could even think about it. “Why did you start reading my blog posts?”

“Uhh, that’s kinda personal, I guess.” Is his response.

“Ah, come on, tell me?”

“Okay, you don’t know me, so I guess I can tell you. I’m at a catholic school,” he starts.

I already know that, I think, tell me something I want to hear. And unknowingly I already know what comes next: another complication in my life.

“And I really believe in God.” Silence again. “But, I’m gay.”

“Why didn’t you want to tell me?” I reply. I don’t mind him being gay. I don’t mind! I already knew, didn’t I? But it doesn’t matter, right? Of course, I always thought he was cute, but I kissed Codey, doesn’t that bind me to him. No, I’m going to leave it all behind! That’s the plan! And hey, if someone you think of as cute happens to be gay as well, that doesn’t mean anything. It’s just chance. It's just coincidence he's gay, so what? Or maybe it isn’t really a coincidence, maybe I get attracted to men who I think are gay, that’s logical, right?

I don’t believe in a “meant to be” or a “match made in heaven”. I DON’T BELIEVE IN IT! It’s nice though… No! It isn’t nice. Why would it be nice? It doesn’t change a thing, I’m still going to abandon everyone I know. Even in some kind of fantasy where he’d like me…

Wait, what am I doing. I need to get out of this spiral of thoughts, or “thinking feedback” as I normally call it. This is getting out of hand. Relax, Matt… uhm Adam… Relax.

“Oh shit. I’ve got to go now,” I quickly write, followed by one of the biggest mistakes I ever made. “I’m sorry Seth. See you soon!”