The boyfriend is chillin like a villain at my place right now. Lucky bastard.

So my Magnetic North CD has become the latest victim of overplaying in my car. There's this one song that caught my ear..."Price of Perfection". The whole song is the story about a model Asian girl (polite, Stanford pre-med, beautiful singing voice, etc) who eventually snaps ("found perfection in a bullet hole that gaped at the stars"). I guess that at first listen it seemed a bit melodramatic and stereotyped, but I've always felt that stereotypes don't exactly appear out of thin air. There's usually some basis to it, no? What I was reminded of was that one day in AP government senior year (a "cream of the crop" class with enough seats for about 5% of the seniors at school, hand-picked by the teacher [insert eyeroll here]--still not sure how the hell I ended up in there but that's another story) when for some reason we were playing a game that involved a lot of personal confessions. I suppose it was similar to the game "I have never..." except it was more like "Have you ever..." We started off with ten fingers and with each "have you ever" statement he made we would put a finger down if we "have".

I don't know why we were playing this game. We did a lot of things in that class that I never entirely understood the point of. Including watching our teacher have an emotional breakdown. But I digress.

The one question that stuck with me was "Have you ever wanted to commit suicide?". After he asked that question I watched as well over half of this roomful of bright individuals with very seemingly bright futures (and very bright pasts and presents as well), with embarassed smiles, sheepishly lowered a finger.

Now I don't know if this is normal or not. I don't even know if my friends have ever seriously contemplated suicide or not--it's not exactly dinner-and-drinks conversation fodder. Maybe it's just something that most people go through. You tell me.

Maybe it's the feeling of never being good enough that takes people like this to the top. Sure, everyone else thinks they're doing great, but it's the constant feeling of inadequacy that keeps them doing great. But honestly, what good is it to be doing well if you can't enjoy it?

I know this is a little weird coming from me since I'm pretty guilty of uber-pessimism. It's hard to sort out how which of your shortcomings are real and how which are percieved, though. Am I right?

Wow that was kind of longer (and more confusingly ramble-y) than I intended it to be. Excuse my rant. Perhaps I'm just having an off day.