Because he thinks he should be consistant.

I'm trying to figure out how to value a human life.

And not just how one values a human life, in theory, but how I and the people I want close to me value life though action, word and deed.

But first, a selection from bobrauchenbergamerica by Chuck Mee:

19 Dessert

Bob's Mom brings out a cake and
sets it down on the picnic table.
As this next scene goes along,
Susan starts to eat compulsively,
taking pieces of cake or cupcakes from the table--
at first absentmindedly, at a normal cake-eating pace,
and then more and more compulsively,
until she is stuffing it into her mouth.

BECKER
I think I know how he feels myself.
I thought you cared for me, too.

SUSAN
I did care for you.
There was something about you
I don't even know what it was that just hit me
I couldn't help myself
but then it turns out
it was like a summer storm
it passed as quickly as it came
and then it was over.

BECKER
Maybe it wasn't over for me.

SUSAN
I'm sorry.

BECKER
I don't think you can just drop someone like that
and just say I'm sorry.

SUSAN
I didn't just say I'm sorry
I am sorry.

BECKER
This is why some people call women fickle.

SUSAN
I don't think it has anything to do with being fickle.
How it is for women:
Women feel what they feel when they feel it
and then when they don't feel it any more they don't feel it.
Unlike a man
who won't know what he feels when he feels it
and then later on
he'll realize how he felt
and so he'll talk himself into feeling it again
when he doesn't feel it
because he thinks he should be consistent about the positions he takes
and stick to them
so a man always thinks he feels things he doesn't feel
and so he never really knows how he feels at all.

BECKER
That could be true.

SUSAN
Of course it's true.
Pretty soon
you're going to thank god you had such a narrow escape
you're going to feel lucky I dumped you

BECKER
I'm never going to feel that.

SUSAN
Maybe not.

BECKER
I think you must be a sort of a tease
or worse
some kind of seducer and dumper kind of person
who is just a loose cannon
cutting a swath through men
leaving them wrecked all around you
what is that all about?

[She speaks, with a mouth full of cake,
eating as she speaks,
with greater and greater animation as she goes on,
till she is yelling through a mouth full of cake.]

SUSAN
Maybe that would be about something
if it were in any way true
but it is not in any way true
I'm a person who is looking for true love
like anyone else
except the difference is
I am trying not to be afraid of my feelings
and censor things
and lie and lie and lie all the time
pretending I feel like this or that
going with some guy because I couldn't be sure any more
how I felt about him
because he had some things I liked and other things I didn't
and trying to talk myself into not caring about the things I cared about
and caring about the things I didn't care about
because I've done that a lot in the past
so I am trying to let my feelings lead me through life
And
feelings are feelings
they come and go.
So probably I'm just as disoriented as you are
and left in the lurch
suddenly dropped
or thrown down the stairs
it's not as though this is not a struggle for me too
but the one thing you can be sure of is
if ever I am sure of how I feel
in a way that is the kind of feeling that I know will last
then when that time comes
if it so happens that I do tell you I love you
then you can be sure of it.

Not all of this applies, some of it is here out of pure love for the writing.

Long story short, I ran out of meds and went into crisis this weekend. I had to leave work early Monday to go to the ER to get a script written for me. I called Mr. VNRS from my sister's car and very nearly begged for company later that night. I was scared for my life and I finally felt like I could trust this person enough to ask.

"I don't know," he said, cagey. "I'm going roller skating. I've been planning it for a week. Don't you have any other friends you can see?"

I had spent the previous night first being a near-fight-starting wet blanket at our friend Becky's birthday and then sitting in my bathtub trying to calm down enough to sleep and not murder myself.

"Um. No. Whatever. I'll...call you."

We didn't get out of the ER until 10, at which point I was so overwhelmed that I went home and passed out and slept until noon the next day. My old friend Dan came over and helped me get functional enough to get the script filled, later reporting that I seemed "1000% better" post-drug. It's true, I am not currently harboring a desire for my own death, which, all in all, I am going to consider a bonus -- even if it means a return to the hypomania and nausea of re-adjusting to citalopram. (Blogger doesn't recognize that word and suggests I replace it with recitalists or extramarital. See? Hypomanic! Normally I would neither have cared nor shared. Modern pharmaceuticals' gift to you.)

Later, the Rock Star and I spoke briefly about his comment. I asked him not to do it again if I came to him for help since that might cost me my life. He said that scared him. A lot.

I'm trying to understand this exchange, which confuses and upsets me. I also have a cold and audited for Balagan at the TPS generals (more on that front later), so everything is kinda weird, body-wise, and that also limits my critical thinking.

However, and more importantly, I have a personal issue where I minimize disrespect done to me and maximize disrespect done to other people. So, if someone hurts me and my friend the same way, I will usually be more angry on their behalf than my own. Make of that what you will in reference to my character and history.

So, I feel that the Rock Star's behavior is unethical and, more to the point, calls my basic notion of his good character into question. I look at this and think: This is a person who does not make friends. He does not love people: he sees the potentially-dangerous consequences of his actions and behaves discompassionately. This is not love, and, if not, what really are the people he calls friends?

Speaking with him a little did not help, and, instead, the only excuses I can see for his behavior -- fear, or lack of emotional preparedness -- were not there. As far as I could tell, he simply...didn't choose to care. It wasn't important enough to him.

It's extremely challenging for me to ask for help with this, my disease, this irrational chronic existential crisis that I can't help but feel is mind-numbingly cliche and embarrassing. Even my closest friends, my sister, people who, like the Rock Star, were there every day for me in the hospital, I can hardly bring myself to interrupt their lives to save my own out of sheer guilt. I must have felt very ill and a danger to myself to know that I had to ask for help.

But now I feel I don't know this person. I feel nothing less than revulsion for his choice. For my friends, even if it is a person who has boundary issues, I would save their life first, and then have the longer conversation of why this is inappropriate behavior. This is triage: stabilize the acute and then treat the chronic.

But I have a disease, I realize, an illness, wherein I cannot always see my emotions for what they are. When I hear this from my lover, I hear, "Oh, what are you doing tonight? Slitting your throat? Yeah...not feeling that so much. I'm going to spend time with virtual strangers who call themselves our friends, and you can come if you want. No? I guess no one will miss you. You have fun, though. With the throat slitting and all. It's cool that you're into stuff, you know, keeping busy. Bye."

No, really, that's how it sounds. Hell, when people tell me they worry for me I hear, "How unfortunate that your life is hard! If it's convenient then I'll maybe be around. If I'm there. You know." Which, rationally, I know is not what they are saying, they're saying, "I love you! Please, please don't go." It's symptomatic of the disease that I have a different translation.

So, all this beggars the question, how do I react to this? Should I take it at face value, has this person been misrepresenting his nice-guy front? Should I feel dirty that I trusted someone who has no ethics, should I feel suckered? Should I feel sorry for them? Should I forgive them, try to be friends if nothing else? Should I avoid a toxic situation all together? Would I feel more or less upset if I were a spectator and not a participant?

I truly, desperately want this to be a fluke, that Mr. Very Nice Rock Star is as nice as he seems to be. I have for some time been wondering why he has few, if any, close friends or confidants. Maybe it's not that he's uncomfortable with intimate friendships, perhaps he's incapable of it for other reasons: he may be unable, for whatever reason, to give that level of respect that I expect from my other intimates. I don't want that to be the case. But I'm afraid it it may be, and that I will have lost most or all of my respect for him literally over night. Yet at the moment, how do I know what is real? If I don't know my own reality, do my feelings even have a place?

I'm frightened. This makes me feel sick: shunned by someone I love, for the first time since getting out. I want my friend back. I don't know what will happen. I feel like I am clinically unlovable.

Last night I hung out with Jake and told him all this. All he said was, "Well! That's when you call me. Why didn't you call me? Hello, best friend! You should have just come over. I miss you! And don't think about it too much. Everything's going to be okay. I promise."

That's the best lie I've ever heard.

I want to hear it again.