Oscar Glyde Won't Heal Your Pride

38: Night Before White

DR CHO: "And does that make you mad, seeing people not realize their potential?"

OSCAR: "I hardly realize my own potential. So yes, I guess it makes me mad. I'm mad at myself all the time."

DR CHO: "Why, Oscar? You've got decent looks, decent grades, a few good friends."

OSCAR: "There's a lot more to life than that."

DR CHO: "Tell me, then. What more is there?"

(...)

OSCAR: "Do you know that there's people in the world, right now, who have everything they've ever wanted? Not just the latest videogame or their favourite books. They have a face and body that they actually like. They're too ignorant to begin to criticize their own mind, so they end up content with it. They have friends and things that don't make them feel like shit. People are always going on about how everyone has insecurities and about how everyone is going through something that you have no idea about but that's just frankly not true. There are people who are just content with everything they were born with. You see, that, I don't have that. There are some people in my life who don't understand why I don't exactly... like myself. I can't blame them. I don't completely understand it either. But I wish I could change almost everything about me. If there were a reset button on life I'd press it. Sometimes I imagine a Genie giving me three wishes. I'd tell him that I wish to look different. I wish to have different parents. And I wish to have my ideal set of traits. God, I'm the most selfish person. But that's why I'm mad at myself. Because I'm not the things that I want to be."

DR CHO: "If you had these things, these perfect looks and these perfect traits and these perfect parents, would you like yourself then?"

OSCAR: "I think I would."

DR CHO: "So say you were all that. But say you were someone else. Would you be friends with this perfect Oscar?"

OSCAR: "I'd definitely sooner be friends with the perfect Oscar than with this version of Oscar."

DR CHO: "Would you be as interesting?"

OSCAR: "What do you mean?"

DR CHO: "If you were the perfect Oscar. Would you be as interesting?"

OSCAR: "It depends on what you can define as 'interesting'."

DR CHO: "Let me rephrase. If you had the life you wish you had - if you were born into the body and mind you dream of having - would you be less or more of what you are now?"

OSCAR: "Well, I'd be more. Because the Ideal Me is smart and sociable."

DR CHO: "But the Ideal You would be boring, wouldn't he be?"

OSCAR: "Well if he's the Ideal Me then ideally, he wouldn't be."

DR CHO: "I'm trying to show you, Oscar, that there's a lot more to yourself that isn't meeting your eye. You have to look for the things inside you that you don't want to leave behind. And there's no use dreaming that you could have turned out differently. You can't change how you are as a person. You can only alter certain bits and pieces, and that's something you need to learn to be okay with. The greatest fault in you right now is that you haven't learned to live comfortably with who you are as a person, even though who you are as a person is incredibly delightful. And what a shame. If I were half as talented, open-minded, intelligent, unique and good-looking as you, I'd cry every morning from happiness."

...

[Communications classroom, Atenamal Regional High, 2:14 PM, Word of the Week]

[Enter Elsie]