Lost Note in Book

Recently , my sister had finished F. Scott Fitzgerald’s highly acclaimed novel “The Great Gatsby”. She said that his writing style was “Complicated and wordy, but not so much that I can’t understand it.” I was glad she said that because when I was just falling out of that Post-Romantic/Fitzgerald phase I found that he was too pretty for me at times, and for a man, revealed embarrassingly honest things in his writing; which is when I jumped right into my Hemingway phase and became overly cynical and thought myself to be an Existentialist at the age of 15. 

So this evening, I asked her “Would you like to read some more of his books?” . So in offering she quickly said yes, eager to read and enjoy something that I had once loved. The book I recommended was “This Side Of Paradise”, and in reaching to grab one of the two copies I own, I suddenly felt that pang of nostalgia. I was both disgusted and satisfied; nostalgia being a guilty pleasure of mine, I think. I handed her the hard-bound copy that I bought on an impulse and never opened while at the same time taking the tattered, dog-eared paper back that I first bought at a Barnes&Noble bookstore. I opened it, and with it’s sticky notes and penciled in commentary fell out a college ruled piece of paper folded up. I opened it. I don’t recall the date or time I had written it, but I had written the following;

“If I stop caring I will fail and if I fail I lose my vanity. If I care I will look weak and If I  appear weak and empathetic I will lose my vanity. I am at loss either way.” 

I will leave no conclusion to this.