My Selfishness and Selflessness (P1)

It was only the second time Alex had hung out with his new friend Yan outside of school, Alex was essentially Yan’s first real friend, the first person he really had to put everything he learned about being a good person with something meaningful at stake.

The two had just come inside from hanging around in the driveway rushing from the door to the living room couch.

Yan excitedly said “do you want to play DRIVER?”

“Do you like that game?” Alex responded with a neutral tone.

“Yeah it’s my favorite it’s so good” Yan concurred.

“Yeah sure” Alex replied.

Alex had in fact played that game before but he hated it, he wanted to be nice though which as he understood it meant putting others needs and desires in front of his own to avoid any conflict of interests.

Alex occasionally tried to sway the activity at different direction but he never explicitly told Yan how he actually felt and instead by the end of the school year Alex just stopped hanging out with him, secretly having harbored the frustration that they rarely did or played anything he wanted.

Several years later in high school Alex found himself a part of several small friend groups, it was the first time he had to balance plans and schedules between different people and himself.

Whenever he was asked to do something whether it was to hang out or do someone a favor afraid of coming off disinterested or making any of his friends upset Alex’s answer was almost always a resounding yes.

He often already had tentative plans with other people that overlapped, which meant he often had to figure out how to cancel most of them throughout high school, Alex spent very little time with himself, his hobbies, his interests, his schoolwork, his peace of mind, and so on. He often felt diminished and used disproportionately doing things other people wanted or suggested, secretly developing and harboring resentment toward many of his friends and family members.

By graduation he had lost most of his closest friends due to his flaky nature and non-confrontational personality. A couple years later during college Alex found himself in his first real serious long-term relationship with a girl named Emily …

To be continued …