admitting to averages

i'm sitting outside, smoking a cigarette and feeling the phantom blood pooling in my gums, feeling the pulse of it in my fingertips. i listen to the crickets and the occasional truck passing by on the main road. i'm overcome with that familiar 1am urge to make something of my life, which i know i wont right now. but i care that i feel it. i've been told many times that my big feelings are a blessing, even when they bring me pain. that without the depths of my capacity to be upset, i'd not be able to have the equal depth of joy. for a long time, i believed this. i understood that all happiness is a product of its contrast with sadness, with grief. i advocated this to other people who felt as big as i do. i don't think i believe that anymore. to slightly paraphrase perhaps my favourite ursula le guin quote; "The trouble is that we have a bad habit of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a…