I am not a good friend.
I am not a good lover.
I am not really a good anything, and I understand that.

I’m selfish, I’m a leech, and I put myself first. A friend of mine told me that her first ever memory of me is me, in a crowd, at a concert, all 6’3” of me standing right in front of her in the front row, blocking her view and stepping on her feet.

This is who I am.

I’ve been reading this memoir written by Dylan Thomas’ widow, Caitlin. Dylan was a self-professed penniless poet, working in the second quarter of the 20th century. He was a lech and he was a leech. In reading a book of his letters, a full third of them at least are pleas for money, with lines—even in letters meant for other matters—like “smokeless and breadless, we await an unhappy week-end”. Even out of the context of outright asking for funds, he would plant the seed. Also, though, there is mention of that when he did have money, he spent it on all of the people around him, in this brief burst of reciprocity. 
That is all I know how to do. This is the only way I know how to live. Taking handouts until I get money, and when I do have money, treating everyone around me.
This is not how it should work.

 I’m like a big child. I’ve never understood the value of money, and so it’s always spent in a blaze. Then, once it’s gone, I have to rely on my friends for support. This drains their ability to care about me, their ability to empathise with me, especially given my put-myself-first nature so much of the time, and the fact that I have emergency money waiting in the wings. My grandmother left me a good deal of money, the purpose being a down payment on a house, finishing university, maybe an automobile. Here I sit unemployed and coming up to a year of job-hunting, living on $100/week from that fund, and it’s become too much. I can’t continue living like this, taking so much from my friends and giving so little in return. The grand gestures never come. I am always so far in debt to those around me that all I can do when I have the money is pay them back, and then go right back into the shit.

It’s absolutely not about the money, though. It’s about reciprocity in general. Of feelings, of shared secrets, of understanding peoples’ emotions and reacting accordingly. I don’t do that. I just puppy-dog myself back into their good graces, temporarily, and then have to do it all over again the next time I make a fool of myself. This has to change. Rather than reacting to peoples’ emotions, peoples qualms with me, I bottle them up, I bottle up the guilt like some kind of Catholic and I carry it with me everywhere I go, until it explodes in this avalanche of self-doubt and depression.

This will change.

Any time I look to good things I’ve done, they’re grand gestures. Paying for nights out with friends, supplying people with money, food, smokes, places to sleep. But they’re so few and far between that they really don’t matter. My camaraderie isn’t good enough if I’m a constant drain, so balls to that. I will do better.

(now count the times “I” is used in that post.)