My Lucky Charms

Sometimes, when I'm in alot of pain for one reason or another, I wonder what would happen if I died. I'm not really worried about it for my own sake, not to sound macho or fatalistic, I'm just... not worried at the time. But I do worry that I'll leave something unsaid to those I love. When that happens I'll thumb out an unsent SMS to my parents before I go to sleep, just in case I don't wake up.

What? You don't do that? I think it's practical.

But it is a little unfair. What about everyone else?

If Karma exists and there really is a great set of scales in the sky ensuring we all get our dues via some sort of cosmic reckoning, even across reincarnated lifetimes, then I must have done something fucking amazing in a previous life. I must have! There is no other explanation for why I have been so fortunate in my friends.

On meeting new people I usually revert to the quiet, introverted, idiotic kinda guy that I was in high school. This is why I generally don't like meeting new people. What should I say? "So what have you been doing since... forever?" or "Hi! I collect ears in a bucket"... I can never decide. And yet despite this, I have managed to gather around me a group of people who hung on long enough to see the quiet, introverted, idiotic kinda guy I really am. Or maybe they just didn't run away quick enough. Or the poor bastards were related to me and didn't have a choice. "I pity the fool..."

I vaguely remember a Japanese proverb that went something like "Self worth is like a butterfly on your back- even if you can't see it, your friends are there to describe it for you." I've always battled with self-esteem issues and this little gem often comes to mind when my friends step up and slap me around the head for bleeding self-pity. I just hope I've been there to do the same when they were feeling particularly useless or that they considered me an option if they simply needed an ear.

And just in case I haven't... If I am gone tomorrow I want you to know that, in my own way, I cared. Even if I wasn't very good at expressing it.

This isn't a drunken shout out of "I love you guys". But I do.