There was a time when Gregory House hadn't felt like the world was ending around him. He remembered when three words meant something good-that they were a declaration of an emotion he was proud to feel, because it justified his place in the world He was a human being, capable of emotions, and therefore, he was happy to be in love.
The three words had twisted into something to be afraid of, because they inevitably meant that something bad would happen. Not immediately, not right away, but they meant that he'd find himself in a bad spot sometime in the future. Because admitting he could love was admitting he could be hurt, and eventually, everyone hurt him.
He remembered a time when life was worth living, when it was enjoyable to be alive. When each day didn't feel like another chore to get up in the morning. When all he had was his dreams, and his dreams were all that mattered. But now, he'd reached the top-there was nowhere else for him to go-not anywhere he wanted to go at least.
He didn't want to go further up the food chain. He'd reached where he wanted to be. He had nothing left to hope for, to dream for. There wasn't any next step. Unless he had a case, he was bored to death, as there was nothing to challenge him anymore. There was no more reason to still be alive.
And yet, through sheer force of will, he was. He'd considered suicide multiple times, but never really tried to follow through. He'd done things that should have killed him, but there was always a saftey net. When he washed down the bottle of oxys with a bottle of bourbon, he knew Wilson would check on him, save him. When he decided to stick a knife in a lightsocket, he had made sure someone would find him. He never really wanted to die.
It was his trying to spite the world. If the world drove him to the point of wanting to kill himself, he wouldn't, just because he refused to do anything that anyone-much less the whole world wanted him to do. He didn't really want to live, but he absolutely refused to die until the world gave in and took him. He wouldn't give himself up.
He had seen the world once, through a child's eyes, but cartwheels had turned to car wheels, and he had grown up. Learned that the world was not a good place, or a kind place. He remembered reading Hemingway in school, and the impact it had had on him. The world broke everyone. There were two truths to life, the world breaks everyone, and everybody lies. Taxes could be evaded, death could be cheated-however briefly. Technically, death could be avoided forever. So long as oxygen pumped through ventilators, so long as they had something pumping through their veins, technically they were still alive.
But everybody lied. No matter how small-often very large. Everyone had something that was untrue, but part of their public face. The blonde, who had dyed her hair for so long, and kept it so meticulously, who everyone believes is natural, because they've never seen her any other way, and she doesn't argue it. The teenager, who pretended to smoke to be with his friends, to fit in, but doesn't actually inhale. Everybody lied. And everybody was broken by the world, because the world was a cold, cruel place that hated everyone indifferently.
He hadn't always thought that. He had been a child once too, captivated by the world around him. He had seen life for the circus that it could be, and not the sideshow that it was. He saw it for his dreams and goals, and not the top that he had reached, the plateau that marked the highest point, the wall that had been hit and could not be scaled.
And as time had passed by, he noticed his friends dropping away, dwindling in number. Even the ones he'd had for seemingly forever-however rare they were, he'd managed to push away to an arms length. He saw Wilson dropping further and further into the background, and he knew he was to blame, that somewhere, he had changed. He wasn't sure if it was the infarction, or if it was the rehab, or getting shot, or electrocuting himself, but he had changed somewhere during his life.
He was still changing, everyone always was. Everyone was coming up with new lies when the world broke them in different places. Everyone was coming up with new ways to fool themselves, to fool others. To hide their shortcomings and present their best face to the world, presenting the other cheek to be slapped by reality.
The world broke everyone, and those it could not break, it killed. And Gregory House didn't know what life was-he'd never had a chance to live it. But he knew that he was too stubborn to let the world break him entirely. He was going to let the world kill him, because he would not break. He'd keep dealing with life's illusions, and the illusion of life, not knowing what it was at all, but knowing, having looked at it from both sides-winner and loser, up, down, and still, that he was too stubborn to let it go.