The Navel Gazes Back at You!

My buddy Dave, he had a Diaryland page. Rustic Yuppie. It was semi-artistic and depressed and kinda cool in the way of yearning teenagers who play guitar. (When I checked the page, which is still up, I realized exactly how much present-me writes like past-him. Fuck.) I read it all too frequently, in the obsessive way of teenagers who really have nothing to do but check Facebook. The content was banal, but I checked so often in case he mentioned me. He did once, and not even by name. Bastard.
I've probably said all of that before. So let's go a bit further. Faced with the journal of his depression, I looked for some validation that I was of meaning to someone. This is not one of those revelations that leaves me shell-shocked and yearning to be a better person. It's kinda fucked, but it's what I did to get by.

Well, I mean, "did" is maybe a stretch. In the process of writing this, I got curious and checked his Facebook page. He is still the same Dave he was in high school, an identity that has become significantly less cool to me with the benefit of time. The revelation gave me a jolt of schadenfreudian joy that I've made more progress, immediately followed by that familiar vertigo that follows a look into the pit.

He didn't mention me on his Facebook page either. Fucker.