Selfish

“Bro…you really made a mess of it this time…”

I couldn’t tell if the emotion in Yaki’s voice was exasperation, concern or irritation, but either way the message was clear: I screwed up big time on this one.

“You were watching, huh?” I said, sluggishly closing the front door behind me.

“Pep told me about in advance, there was no way I would miss it.”

“Then I guess you know now just low I really a-unf” I said, being cut off by Yaki tightly wrapping me in a running hug. “Y-Yaki?”

“How are you so smart but so stupid when it comes to yourself? Why do you have to put yourself down so much to protect other people?”

“Yaki, I don’t… what are you…”

“I’m glad you decided to help Pep, but I hate that you had to hurt yourself so much to do it. Are you really so blind to your own value? Idiot.”

“Come on, Yaki, you’re being ridiculous, I… I’m not… I’m not hurting…” I caught myself by surprise as the words got caught in my throat, and I felt tears start to fill my eyes. I kept trying to say something to her, to deny that this was how I felt, but I couldn’t so much as get a word out.

“You don’t have to say anything. You don’t even have to move. Just… let yourself rest, okay? I’m here.”

I wanted so badly to pretend everything was okay. To politely step away from Yaki’s hug and deny that I was upset at all. But it was as if the moment she grabbed me the dam finally burst, and every ounce of exhaustion and misery I had been holding back until that moment was let loose on my mind. I felt sluggish and heavy, almost collapsing into Yaki’s arms, my legs barely able to even take my weight anymore.

And quietly, ever so quietly, I cried.

***

Yaki supported me across the room, my body still feeling weighty and tired, and I practically collapsed onto the sofa, my eyes closed as I savoured the relief of no longer being on my feet.

“I had no idea I was so exhausted…” I said quietly, wiping away the few tears still remaining on my face.

“Really? You not look in a mirror today?”

“Huh?”

Yaki then surprised me by taking out her phone and snapping a picture on my face, which she then showed me. My eyelids looked heavy, and the bags under my eyes had sunk far deeper than I had expected. I even looked paler than normal, almost sickly. It was the same sort of look I always had, but substantially worse than usual.

“Jesus… no one even mentioned anything at school.”

“I expect everyone but me, and maybe those two girls, doesn’t see much of a difference. You always look like a world-weary old man trapped in a teenager’s body, after all.”

“I prefer to just think of myself as a world-weary teenager instead.” Yaki and I both let out a slight chuckle at our shared joke, and I felt a small amount of the burden on my chest lift. Even if everything was going worse than I could have expected, I at least knew Yaki was in tune with me.

“I’m guessing by the Walking Dead cosplay you’ve got going on, you’ve probably not been sleeping great recently, huh?” she asked. Despite the joke, I knew the question was of genuine concern.

“I’ve never been a good sleeper, but I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t been worse recently. I’ve just… had too much on my mind, I guess,” I said, rubbing my heavy-feeling head with my hand.

“And I guess I probably made that a fair bit worse with the whole ice rink thing, huh? Sorry for that one…” Yaki bowed her head, seemingly in genuine apology.

“No, I’d say you helped quite a bit, actually. If she and I hadn’t talked things over on the weekend, she likely would have just been another thing keeping me awake. So… thanks for looking out for me on that one.”

“Hey, what are family for, right?”

Yaki laid her head on my shoulder, and I leaned my head against her own. Honestly thanking her for just one thing was practically a disservice to everything she had done for me. If there had been one positive constant in my life, one rock I could always fall back on, it had been my sister.

Pathetic, right? An 18 year old man being so emotionally reliant on his younger sister? But considering every time she has gone out of her way for me, how could I not be? She hadn’t been a crutch that I leaned too much weight on, but a belay that had always caught me when I fell.

I owed her more than I could ever really repay.

But there was still something else in my mind in that moment.

“So… you’re not mad at me for ruining Pep’s stream completely with that outburst,” I asked, perhaps a tad afraid of the answer.

“Come on, be real. At that point, what was there to ruin? The chat had been covertly bullying Pep the entire time, and that last dono was just a bridge too far. If I’d been there, I probably would’ve been just as harsh. Maybe worse.”

“But then… why’d you say I made a mess of things earlier?”

“It’s not what you did that’s gonna cause a mess. It’s what you said,” she relied, a certain sadness in her voice. “Putting chat in their place for the way they were treating Pep was a good call, but to do so you tried to use their insults against you as a kamikaze. Go down hard and take them with you. I’m sure it felt like a good catharsis to you, but you didn’t think much about the people outside of that, did you?”

“What do you… oh…”

As soon as she pointed it out to me, it hid me like a tonne of bricks, and I couldn’t believe this was the first moment I had thought about it. I had put myself down to protect Pep. From her perspective, I had just sacrificed every shred of my self and social image, all to protect her from the consequences of a stream she wanted to do in the first place. Odds are, she was probably quietly stewing in her room about how much of a burden she feels.

I had been so adamant on protecting her from harm that I had hurt her in a completely different way.

“You really are clueless sometimes, bro,” Yaki said, shaking her head slightly, “but the fact that you’ve figured it out now at least means you’ve improved. The old you would have just accused me of speaking in riddles and then made fun of me.”

“Yeah, well, when most of your free time is spent on a club with the most dysfunctional members known to man you tend to get a little more attuned to people’s emotions.”

“If only that attuning kicked in a little earlier.”

“I know, I know…” I had already planned to apologise to Pep anyway, so it was just a matter of changing the subject of my apology. Though I can’t say I wasn’t a little annoyed at myself for not having thought about it without Yaki’s help.

“So… why did you say what you did? About yourself, I mean?” She asked tentatively.

“I’m not sure, really. It was part because I wanted to take those things away from them so they couldn’t use them against me. But I think a part of myself also believed what I was saying.”

“Is that really how badly you see yourself? That you’re some terrible excuse for a human being, barely better than some cowardly online trolls?”

“No… or yes? I’m not sure. I definitely don’t see myself as a good person, but what I said on stream isn’t the be all and end all of my self image. I guess it was just… the worst of me coming out all at once.”

“But why are you so convinced you’re not a good person? I mean, you have your rough edges, no doubt about that, but what makes you think you’re any worse than the rest of us?”

“I… uh…”

It was a question I surprised myself by not having an answer for. What was it about myself that I was so convinced made me some despicable person so worthy of hatred and contempt? My tendency towards misanthropy? My sharp tongue? My short temper? All things that are likely to anger certain people around me, but not enough to justify how bad the image of myself in my head was. So what was it that made me think so poorly of myself?

“Selfish…” I muttered, mostly to myself.

“Whaddyou say?”

“I’m selfish, that’s why. People are always getting hurt by my whims. Both those I care about and those I don’t. A person whose personal desires cause harm to those around him, that can only be called selfish, right?”

That was my true and honest view on myself, at least as far as I could put into words. A selfish creature, using those around it for it’s benefit and bringing them pain in return. A loathsome hoarder of joy and satisfaction, not content until it alone had what it desired. That was the image of myself I had constructed.

“But… I don’t think that’s right…” replied my sister. “I won’t try and tell you that you’ve never hurt people. It’s like you’ve said yourself, humans hurt each other just by existing. But I don’t think you’re selfish. In fact, sometimes I think you’re too selfless for your own good. Hell, that entire breakdown today was just to protect Pep, right?”

“It was… catharsis. They pissed me off so I let myself loose on them. It was nothing so noble.”

“But it was motivated by your desire to protect Pep, right? And you even held off until the point of no return because you thought it would be best for her, even though it wasn’t for you. When it comes to the people you love, you can hardly be called selfish. With them, you’re too damn selfless to protect yourself.”

I wanted to reject Yaki’s words. To insist that it was all just my selfish desires in the end. But whether the reasoning was because it made me feel better or because I genuinely wanted to help, the result was the same. I still helped the people I loved when they needed it, even to no personal gain. Maybe… I’m not quite as awful as I thought.