You like Ulysses?

Please don't like me.  I don't like being liked.  People who know me seem to know this through some instinct or perceptiveness that is alien to me.  I make a concerted effort to conceal my discomfort at being liked.  I mean, being liked is something I am supposed to want, right?  So I try to appear as though I want people to like me, but despite my efforts they know the truth.  People are magical.

You see, I can't give in.  I can't like myself, because then I will have to cry.  He has been hurt—not lately, but hurt in his essence, back near his origins.  And if I give in to liking him, I will have to care about what happened to him then, and I will have to cry.  It won't be just a tear, or even a sea of tears.  Though some tell me there is a limit to these things, it feels like there will be no end to the tears.  It will be an inundating, annihilating flood.  It will not have an end, but it will end everything. 

I am not sure, but I think others have been there, to a place that is after the end of everything.  Maybe if I went there, I would discover what comes after the end of everything.  Or maybe I would discover that no one ever goes there, no one in their right mind, anyway.  Maybe I would realize, after it is too late, that all the people who do like themselves got off this train back at the last stop because they did not want to go this way, to the end of everything.  It would be just me and the old woman who keeps staring at me giggling, the crazy toothless lady with the dead leaves in her hair.  She is always on the train that goes to the end of everything.

Everybody has always known something that I have never understood, they all share a kind of common fabric, and I try to pretend that I am a part of it.  A friend once called it standing in anxiety, trying to think of something spontaneous to do.  Everything about me is wrong, I am not attached to that fabric, and the best I can hope is to deceive some few who are included, some one.  The best I can hope is to deceive myself.  But I already know too much.

I don't want to be alone.  But I am afraid of you.  I don't want tragedies to happen that always happen as a part of life, things like losing limbs or getting paralyzed, like breaking hearts, like dying.  And I won't survive that original pain, so I split myself in two, and I keep him, ...where?; I don't know.  I keep him—somewhere. 

Already time for bed, again. 

Why does this always happen?  Another day is gone, and I'm just getting here.

Anyway, I told my boss today to take her bonus and stick it.  She wanted to give fifty bucks each to me and three others who came in on almost no notice to do overtime this week because somebody quit unexpectedly.  It went like this:.  Unsmiling, she solemnly called me into her office.  Her face betrayed nary a hint of good nor bad—well, maybe a hint of bad.  She closed the door, and whispered conspiratorily, "We're giving this to the four who came in to do overtime.".  She produced a folded fifty in my direction.  As I took it she said, "But you can't tell anybody, because we can't give it to everyone.". 

"I won't do that.  Keeping secrets breeds suspicion and distrust; it's not worth fifty bucks for me to do that.  I won't do it for any amount of money.".  She snatched it back. 

"Well," she said petulantly, "then don't take it."

"OK," I said, "Thanks for the thought.".  I really kinda meant that.  She glared as I left.

Had I not been exposed in the past to their breathtakingly insulting and demeaning behavior, I—stunned—probably would have walked away with the bill, and despite later misgivings, never returned it.  But I have had practice with the fifty dollar bill at the place where I work.  And the last time it happened, I swore it would never happen again. 

Either give it to me, or don't.  Either be grateful, or be not grateful.  But spare me your disingenuous gratitude, and keep your strings-attached bribes that you call generosity.  If it's not above-board, it's not a bonus—it's a liability.