Self-Centered

Self-Centered: Occupied or concerned only with one's own affairs; egocentric; selfish.

I have been thinking a lot about how selfish I am. Which is ironic, when you think about it, because it means I am thinking about myself which, if I'm correct -- and I think that I am -- is the definition of selfish.

When I was still drinking I ended up at home from time to time, after getting fired or kicked out of school or running out of drug money. God bless my out gunned parents for enabling someone who was not taking responsibility for anything. I was quite good at seizing opportunities that allowed me to mooch off others and save my vanishingly small pile of cash for alcohol. I had plenty of initiative when it came to gaming the system.

One summer they took a vacation in Alabama, leaving me free to run amuck in their house, as I had no job or adult obligations of any kind, even though I was legally an adult and had been so for a long time. To me that meant one thing: par-TEE, par-TAY. I was smoking dope at a friend's house one afternoon -- I don't believe I was getting paid to do this, so technically I shouldn't have listed it as A Job Interview at the unemployment office -- when he received a call from my sister. This annoyed me slightly but I took the phone from him, anyway.

She was too upset to talk to me, and handed the phone over to her boyfriend.
"Horseface," he said, somberly. "I have some bad news. Your grandfather died."

I hung up the phone. I couldn't believe my luck. My parents were out of town for an entire week and this was going to throw a huge wrench into the works, and early in the process. I was put out. I was stunned. I think I believed that my grandfather died without considering how it affected me. I saw the whole fucking mess as clear as day: trying to track down my parents at an RV park in a distant state; pretending I was upset; making up for a squandered opportunity by compressing a whole week's worth of drinking into a day or two; the funeral, a major obstacle to smoking pot.

And I really liked this grandfather, too. He was a character. Probably an alcoholic but an outgoing and exuberant man. I don't think I loved him, and that didn't have anything to do with him, per se. I would have loved him if I was capable of loving anyone but myself, which I was unable to do at that point in my life.

Not a proud page in my life. Not behavior that I try to duplicate today.