Here it is: another blog wherein an average, unexceptional object can send me through a metaphysical tailspin and find me on the other end holding a handbag full of self-loathing and unanswered questions.  This time, it was a cupcake.

There was a cupcake-shaped paperweight in my fridge this morning.  A red velvet cupcake with cream cheese frosting that had hardened into a weapon.  If a home invader were to attack at that point, I could have easily rendered him unconscious by throwing this projectile at his head.  Meredith had bought cupcakes for her office last Wednesday and brought the remainder home to our stay-in dinner date night.  I expressed interest in the red velvet cupcake, though that night, particularly, I wasn’t in the mood for sweets, so she took it out of the box and put it in the refrigerator for me.  Days went by and I never got around to eating it, and this morning I found it in its new petrified state.  I picked it up and felt its rigidity beneath my fingers and knew that it was beyond edible, and with a heavy heart I threw it away.

I felt like a total shit.

Meredith brought the cupcakes home as a gift, a treat, for the two of us, and I let it atrophy and threw it in the garbage.  Who the fuck do I think I am?  Do I not appreciate the gifts that are given me?  And that’s when I realized:

I don’t.

I don’t appreciate things that are given me because I’ve spent so much time and energy manifesting my own desires.  I can’t accept things that I didn’t earn or bring into being through my own force of will.  Particularly since moving to California, I have had very little given to me, and 99% of the empire that is my existence is completely by my own design and blood.  If I want a cupcake, at any given moment, I get a cupcake.  But when someone brings me one out of the goodness of their heart, out of nothing more than love, I can’t convince myself that it’s something I want or need.  Why?  Why can’t I accept the sweetness of my own wife, whom has never come to me with an ulterior motive, who wants only to love me the best way she can?

It’s happened with other things, too, simple things, that tear me apart inside.  Like milk.  She bought me some milk last weekend that I’m sure is expired now because I haven’t had the decency to drink it.  When someone gets you something out of the goodness of their heart, it’s your responsibility to accept it.  All her love is dying in my refrigerator, and I feel like a total shit because of it.

So I leave the house feeling this way and get on the bus where one of the passengers smells as though they have very recently pissed themselves.  There is no room to sit so I am standing in front of one of two passengers in wheelchairs, strapped in for the dangerous commute.  Now I feel like an asshole for flaunting my ability to stand in front of these two people (this has been a plague of mine for years; something is definitely wrong with me) and all I want to do is get away from the urine.  I get off the bus very early, about 13 blocks from my actual stop, and walk the rest of the way.  My earplugs are in and music is pumping into my brain, choking out the outside world, and I notice that everyone I pass is looking at me expectantly.  I think that I was still thinking about the cupcake, about love, about what it is to love and be loved and respect another person, and my face is wearing an outside mask of compassion, and everyone sees me as someone they could connect with or find understanding in.  I know in my mind that I have none for them, and this makes me feel even worse.  I get to work feeling like the most useless calloused piece of shit to ever walk the earth, then turn on the professionalism and drown it all out until the night gets so slow and boring that I can’t help but hear it again, growling somewhere from the recesses of my brain.

And as I sit here, coming to a close, wondering if there is a conclusion to be found in all this self-deprecation, my tongue is telling me that I would like something sweet tonight.  As it seems, I’d like to have a cupcake.

Why do I ever bother thinking?