To be conflicted is to be normal; to be confused is to be a teenager; to be trampled is to be dead. It is an undying love for all things that could never love you back yet which bring a consolation to internal turmoil is to be a nerd. To be shy not out of misgivings but out of anxiety is to be an outcast. A fall to the ground from a shot to the head; a quiet sleep away from an overwhelming battle; a lost hope for what had been the only hope for acceptance - it is the fight between the hypocritical superficiality denounced by the superficial and those who care not for what they do not have because of what they have lost from those who do not care for them.

A death of a salesman it will be, a salesman strangled by his own past, a past that others care not for because - despite the ramblings of the existentialists - one is somehow not from their past they are for the future. Reservations die hard, as stories remain untold because they are not ready to be heard, yet to release is not to forget but to forgive and to move on and bring closure. To go on for so long invisibly, within sight but never acknowledged - essentially ignored and forgotten. For a while it has been a struggle not to hate but to love, a love rejected out of misunderstanding, not wanted for the same superficiality that started it all. Now it is a lost fight for a lost cause against lost people in a lost world.

These notes, well, what are they? They seem to be futile and misguided attempts at attention-grabbing, hoping to evoke some sympathy from some caring yet foolish folk. Are journals and diaries not for the public to see? Are they not for one to put down private emotions? Is that what writing amounts to? Diary entries of a tumultuous and distraught teenager who will figure out themselves at some expected but unforeseeable time?

To keep water in a pot for too long is to let the water boil over and destroy the flame that is feeding it. To say that everything boils over is to predict the unpredictable, to foresee the unforeseeable, to know the unknown. These pieces, if pieces of contempt, are experiments to see if there is any care left in the world, but if they are not, they are pieces of reconciliation between not enemies but the destroyed and the destroyer, between the alien and the alienator.

To fade away when you were never there to begin with, to go out with a bang yet there was nowhere to go out of, to die not a noble death but the death of a martyr, a martyr of oneself. That resentment is sensitive - it does not fade easily, it is inclined more towards building up rather than settling down, as wars do not come from noble causes but from petty misunderstandings, just as mountains are made from molehills. The process is deceivingly simple - to not be proactive, to be blissfully ignorant of an innocent calmness before the calamity, a dreaded explosion from an innocent toy, an innocent explosive. It manages to be this way every time, the voices who speak but are not heard do not speak forever, yet they give no warning as to rebellion nor revolt - it is a sublimation from what appeared to be nonchalant and indistinct to an active pursuance of the worst of all evils, then a sudden stop with the realization of the impossibility, the futility of the cause, because who is a friend without a heart?

Yet through all this, the diamond is shrouded - it is hope covered in envy. The question that is answered, though never asked is this: Why is it that keeps one alive? To the defeated it is not the company of people but the company of accomplishment, what would sum to the definition of self-worth and a passion for the small things that compose the large - a curiosity out of necessity. For those who are not it is more the liveliness of people and the purpose delegated by a system designed to delegate purpose - it is the entertainment of from socialization. The line is blurry, the dichotomy is false, the reasoning is unstable, though if one tidbit were to remain true it would be that too many assumptions are made and too few care enough to explore the other side. The contempt perpetuates, the hate continues, the misunderstanding remains, yet each side wants the other, yet each side would fight for the other, yet each side loves the other, because we are humans.

The story of Willy, and most applicably, Happy, in Death of a Salesman most aptly describes the superficiality that exists now, which will be misinterpreted not out of desire but out of ignorance, ignorance that was so beautifully passed on by those who will call out the misinterpretation - a pot who cannot see that it prevented itself from being understood. One can easily argue, in the spirit of the play, that to trying to be liked, or more appropriately, well-liked, is a bad goal to pursue. That would be a bit of an extreme standpoint - being an extrovert is generally considered better than being an introvert, as no matter what people have to work with people and in the end this is a civilization of interdependent humans that are born and raised by other humans, not a collection of self-sustaining individuals. Moderation is the key - avoid obsessive social avoidance and obsessive socialization.

This all comes down to this - I won’t give up on life just because I’m on the wrong side of the tracks, and I ask that you don’t give up on me because of who I am now. The power of one bitter and hopeless person is unforgivable by those who do not respect it - those who suffer were complicit. The power of a connection, a relationship, is unfathomable by those who have it, their strength is only seen when they are broken by one without them. When you have no friends to love and no work to be proud of, what do you have left to lose?