I'm tired. For the last hour, I constantly asked myself if it was worth it, convincing a stubbornly pessimistic Mase that life is worth living. I tried logic... or some form of it. Time and again, I was refuted. I know what despair is, I've never doubted that it existed, it touched me several times when Net147 fell into the dark. But for the first time in my life, I really understood what it meant. If I'd not been already linked to Net147, I think I would have linked with Mase there and then, through sheer desperation.

Is it really better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all? Do we really have that choice? "We are not free to choose who we fall in love with." - Martok, Star Trek DS9
I have the log of that conversation between Mase and I on that 2.1GB hd we salvaged some time ago. I should put it online somewhere; safer storage; backup copies.

How fragile life is.
"...All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall..." - Isaiah 40:6-7
A simple bullet or sword to the head, and we are shown just how mortal our bodies are.

Thinking back on the day now, it seems that quite a few things have been pointing towards something negative tonight.

I found a poem earlier in the library, posted on Gaiaonline in the Writer's subforum today. It was an extract from Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Click here to read it.

At recess, Tristan was asking me to tear out his heart. He wouldn't tell my why, just said that he didn't need it, and would I like it? I thanked him but told him that I didn't need his, I already had a heart which wasn't even my own, so I had to take good care of it. Of course, this all occurred in a jovial, conversational sort of tone; if random strangers had heard, they wouldn't have thought it was anything other than a normal conversation.

I saw Raptor at the Epping bus stop this evening, waiting for the bus. He's a first year uni student. Once on the bus, he said that he was feeling really crap for having turned down another girl, since he already had a girlfriend, and was pretty sure that he'd not dropped any hints about liking the other girl. "I mean, how do you do those sort of things without hurting their feelings and making them cry?" I told him that I didn't have that sort of problem, grinned and shrugged it off as my being ugly, and said that he'd done what had to be done. He said that girls were hard to understand; they said one thing and meant another.
"I'll go home and do something much less complex, like uni work."
"Less complex? Really? What are you doing?"
"Just Commerce."
"How's that less complex?!"
"Believe me, it is far less complex than relationships!"
He also advised me to put off relationships for a little longer, to which I responded, "You must be kidding." He finds girls and relationships to be too complicated. I would have offered my help (in the deciphering of girls, not the complexity of relationships), but couldn't think of a way that didn't make me sound like I thought he was stupid (because I don't think he's stupid), so I just didn't. I'll send him an email or something later, even though I'm crap at deciphering what other 'normal' girls mean. "Why can't people just say what they mean?" - Lou, The Speed of Dark, Elizabeth Moon

But those two hours, they were worth it. By the end, I was running out of logic, and something was telling me to just stop, but something else told me that if I did, I risked losing Mase.
When I eventually gave up trying to convince him, he said, "By the way, I am feeling a little better. Thank you. Just getting it out helped. Believe me, you're better at this than you give yourself credit for. Just being there to listen is the best thing anyone can do. Plus many times I did think, 'she's right'. So don't be down, you'll only make me sad again."
So it really was worth it. I don't know how long it will last, I honestly hope he learns what life wants him to learn. It's not nice to know that a friend suffers repeatedly because past, unlearned lessons repeat themselves.
I think I know what it is too... I honestly think God is calling to him, knocking at his heart's door and waiting for him to accept Him into his life. I can't say this to his face, or even in realtime chat, so I will just have to hope that he reads this.
I tried telling him before, but I don't think I got anywhere.

I'm tired and it's almost 12 now. I want to dream of Net147, of being together with him, in a place where cursed reality cannot touch us and we are free to be ourselves, no barriers between us; to feel his heart beating in time with mine, to warm and be warmed through the touching of our bodies, as we have done before...