Sympathy

There's something about another guy crying in front of you that sorta makes you think about things. Sure, girls cry all the time but for a dude to cry in front of another dude means something's really messed up.

Something about that whole situation today sorta struck me as significant enough for me to remember it now, just before I'm going to bed. I didn't even like the guy. He's the kind of arrogant yet idiotic, pompous yet loserish kind of person that sorta typifies everything I hate about other people in army. He came back to camp today after a long 3 or so months of MC for depression, and I can imagine the kind of remarks he would've gotten from the other insensitive blockheads of assholes in my camp. I had way better things I'd rather have been doing like reading my book or playing PSP, but something I saw in his haunted eyes made me stop and ask him into my office to talk, and catch up a little. Maybe it was because he once slept in the same room as me for a period of time, or maybe by my indifferent attitude towards everyone in camp it meant that I was a closest thing he had to a friend in a hostile environment. I still don't know why I did it.

But anyway he came in, and I made the mistake of asking how he'd been and what had happened. He didn't exactly... break down, we were never close enough for that, but yet when you see someone who was once so cocksure and annoying lose all shred of his dignity and not even give a damn you can't help but feel... sorta sorry for him. Like yea he was, and still is an asshole and an idiot, but nobody deserves that kinda shit happening to them. At least not for his sins. Hell, if you wanna talk justice even I deserve all that more than him. And feel sorry for him I did, because ultimately that was about the most I could do. I couldn't help him, which was not for lack of trying. I talked to him, tried to talk him out of the self-destructive spiral that he seemed destined towards, and ran into that same stubborn obnoxious idiot that annoyed the crap out of me 6 months ago. Despite everything that happened, it occured to me that he was still exactly the same person. Broken down, spit on by society and without a shred of his dignity left, but he still hadn't learned a thing about his faults or what led him to his current state. I can't even find it in me to laugh, or shake my head at that kind of idiocy. There was just a lingering sense of pity, for someone that despite all the bad things that happened, has NO IDEA AT ALL why they happened, and seems destined for similar events to hit him again.

Perhaps I'm being judgemental, and maybe despite my pessimism he finds the will, or the divine help, to pull himself out of his current predicament. After he was sorta calmed down he left my office, and I told him to take care of himself and to call me if he ever needed help or anything. To my surprise I found that I meant what I said, that I really would help him as long as it was for his own good, even though I probably wouldn't influence his life in any impactful way.

I never liked him. I don't think I ever will. But somehow it's not easy to turn someone like that away. And when you see someone so young who's been fucked so thoroughly by life that you think he's doomed to ignomity and a shitty existence and you want nothing more than to have absolutely nothing to do with him, that's when surprisingly you find that you actually care more for people like that who can't help themselves. So all you do his offer your hand, not even hoping that he'll take it and you can lead him back into the light, because that would be too much to hope for, but simply believing that in helping him take that first of many steps he might defeat the odds and make something out of his life one day. Perhaps I exaggerate, as I always do, but that's how we learn.

And learn most importantly, I must. To see what had become of someone who once had unwavering belief in his own strength and abilities, due to a combination of stubbornness and bad luck (or being on the negative side of God's plan, take your pick), and keep it in your brain as a dark reminder of what you DON'T want to become.