Insecurities, Two

Insecure people make me insecure, because I am insecure about bringing about their insecurities, with carelessness or flippancy. But secure people also make me insecure, with their carelessness and their flippancy, and because I desire to be as secure as they are. But the most secure-seeming people I know I have often found to be deep-down insecure, perhaps the most insecure of all. They have become the best at hiding their insecurity, in order to feel more secure by seeming more secure.

When I think about all of our insecurities, and the way they cause each other or lay one another to rest, it does not make me less insecure. It might even make me more insecure, realizing that we are all this way. But it does make me want to rest a quiet hand on everybody's hearts, one at a time, and keep it there for a long beat or two, securely.

Insecurities, One

I am insecure, because you never tell me that you like me. But I have found out, from a friend who tells me things about other friends (because that friend is insecure and hopes to solidify our friendship by telling me the secrets of other friendships, so that we may have a secret), that you do not tell me you like me, even though you do like me, and have wanted to tell me, because you are insecure. You are insecure about our friendship, and believe that if you tell me you like me, I will think myself superior to you, and will not like you. Hearing this makes me feel more secure in a way, but more insecure in another. It makes me insecure thinking of telling you that I know that you like me, though my telling you may make you more secure, because then you may tell the friend who told me about you that I told you that that friend has told me about you. Then that friend would know that I have told that friend's secret, which is that that friend tells that friend's friends that friend's friends' secrets (but only when that friend's friends are also that friend's friend's friends), the way that friend has told me yours, which is that you like me.

Toaster

Every morning, I make myself a piece of toast. I do not have a toaster. I make it in my oven's broiler. This works just as well, except that my oven does not have a timer, and does not spit out the toast once it has become toasted. So I must remember my toast. This seems simple, but it is not.

In order not to burn my toast, I must think mostly about my toast for as long as my oven takes to toast it. I do not need to think only of my toast, but the majority of my conscious mind must attend to the toast, or I will forget it and it will burn. It will become, not toast, but char. But who wants to think with 51% of their conscious mind (at least!) about toast? Perhaps for a second or two you might want to think about toast, its crunch, its taste. Perhaps even for 30 seconds you might want to think about toast. But who wants to think about toast for as long as it takes to make sure it becomes toast, in order to make sure it does not become something else, something hard and black and inedible (or something on fire and inedible)?

I realize how little I truly want to think about toast (though I want very much to taste toast), because almost every day it burns. It burns because I promise myself to give at least 51% of my attention to the toast, but I do not keep my promise. I am distracted by other things. These are things that I believe are more deserving of 51 or an even greater percent of my attention than toast. (I admit that these things will not burn if I give them less.)

Whenever I begin to do another thing too wholly, too absorbingly, I know I will burn the toast, even if I seem to myself to do so only for a few seconds, a minute. It does not matter for how short a time I care about another thing more. When the toast is cooking it is sensitive to whether I have given it only 49% of my conscious mind or less. My toast seems jealous of me, and will spite me by burning if I do not give it all the attention it requires. Very often, I eat burned toast, because I am unwilling to think mostly about toast for as long as it takes to toast, and I am unwilling to admit defeat.

And because I am unwilling to buy a toaster.