You walk through a dark hallway in a daze, confused as to how you got there. You are barefoot and shirtless, wearing an old pair of sweatpants, and you realize that you can't remember where you put them last time you wore them. You can't see in front of you, so you use your hands to guide you, reaching out to either side to feel your way slowly forward. There is no sound except the shuffling of your feet along the cold cement floor and the roaring of wind off in the distance.
A soft light appears ahead of you, cold and diffused. You make your way towards it, becoming more and more confident with your footing as it brightens your surroundings.
The closer you get, however, the dimmer it becomes, until at last it is gone and you are enveloped by blackness once again.
Story of your life.
You give up, sliding down the stone wall into yourself. You crouch in the darkness, feeling colder and colder, alone with yourself. With your thoughts.
Of only you knew what you wanted, you think, then you could get out of here. If only you knew what you had.
You've heard people say that loneliness is comforting. It's not. They are full of shit. You've always had people around, some care more than others, but none of them care the way you want them too. Or need them to.
You contemplate your life in that dark hallway, wind roaring in the distance, hunkered down on the cement floor. You think about the life of ruin women have brought upon you from birth. Rejected by your own mother, who decided to abandon you before you were even born. Your adoptive mother who gave you up in her own way, who gave you a shot until your brother came along and became the son she really wanted. Every woman you've ever loved left you at some point, every time for some other man who worked better for them than you, if not on paper than in her own mind.
And that's all that matters really, paper is useless without intent. You sit, wallowing in your own mind, looking for answers that will never come, for there are none.
We live, we sleep, we dream, and sometimes it feels like we will never wake up.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Chapter 5
You know what they say - "that's the way it goes". You've also heard them tell you that "it goes the other way too". You've been told "the grass is always greener", "don't cry over spilt milk", and "don't count your chickens".
Simple sayings from simpler times.
These days, you know that things go by so fast, are so quickly evolving, that it's all anyone can ever do to keep up. There are those that try, who claim that they can, but they just end up suffering from burnout.
Even Atlas shrugged.
So you do what you've always done, which is watch the world go by and try your best to take care of your little piece of it as best as you can. Even then, the bills pile up until you pay them, the dishes stay dirty until you wash them, and the floor you swept just last week needs to be swept again.
You wonder where all the dust and lint is coming from. You're the only one in this house. Maybe you realize that if things didn't fall apart every so often, there'd be nothing to do. Maybe this is harder to think about than the alternative.
There were times when you felt like you were in control, when you didn't feel so helpless. You understand now that this was just an illusion. Maybe you decide that this feeling is why ancients thought that they were formed in God's image, or that the Sun revolved around the Earth. Control enough of the little world around you and it feels like you are controlling it all.
Still, things are looking up. You feel like you're headed for greener pastures. You think you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. But you can only look up so far before you're looking behind you again, every pasture is ringed with a fence of some sort, and roads that go through one tunnel are bound to go through another sooner or later.
Lately you've been sleeping better. But with regular sleep comes dreams. Strange Kubrickian dreams in which you relive parts of your life but with completely different outcomes from reality.
The most recent was last night, in which you are driving the winding, hilly roads on the way home from the bar and the pavement is covered with a thick sheet of white cracked ice. An oncoming car and an uncontrolled skid and you're tumbling end over end off the side of the road. In your dream, you wake up lying on your back looking up at the cold night sky. A lone paramedic is picking up pieces of your body and laying them out on a stretcher. Your face here, a leg there, an arm over there. He's making an exact but lifeless replica of you with your discarded pieces.
He's talking to you, or maybe to himself, or maybe to your appendages, seemingly unconcerned that you are completely torn apart. You can't understand what he is saying, his voice fades in and out and he moves around.
You try to look around, to assess the damage, maybe you don't feel as banged up as it might seem from the collection of pieces of your own body amassing next to you. You can see both of your arms still attached to your body as you watch the paramedic carry one of your arms to the stretcher. You are confused. You can't feel your legs.
The girl from the parking lot the other night appears over you, impossibly large and blocking out the night. She whispers something that you can't hear, a cloud of steam streaming from her mouth. You start to feel pain in your right knee.
In your dream you fall asleep, and in real life you wake up.
And so begins your day. As you make coffee, you realize that it was a purging dream. As you have your morning cigarette, you understand that you are letting go of parts of yourself that you no longer need, or want, or can afford.
This is comforting. It is relaxing. Life should be simpler, and we do so much to over-complicate it. Maybe you consider doing less. You think about selling eveyrthing you owne except your motorcycle and a few t-shirts and pairs of jeans. You consider leaving town, and never looking back. You don't think about where you would end up, maybe because it simply wouldn't matter.
Later that evening you try to keep yourself awake to avoid going to sleep, afraid of what dreams your subconsicous will present you with again. Maybe you don't want to face what's in there, maybe you'd be better off not knowing.
Eventually, however, you drift off. And everything is dark again.
Simple sayings from simpler times.
These days, you know that things go by so fast, are so quickly evolving, that it's all anyone can ever do to keep up. There are those that try, who claim that they can, but they just end up suffering from burnout.
Even Atlas shrugged.
So you do what you've always done, which is watch the world go by and try your best to take care of your little piece of it as best as you can. Even then, the bills pile up until you pay them, the dishes stay dirty until you wash them, and the floor you swept just last week needs to be swept again.
You wonder where all the dust and lint is coming from. You're the only one in this house. Maybe you realize that if things didn't fall apart every so often, there'd be nothing to do. Maybe this is harder to think about than the alternative.
There were times when you felt like you were in control, when you didn't feel so helpless. You understand now that this was just an illusion. Maybe you decide that this feeling is why ancients thought that they were formed in God's image, or that the Sun revolved around the Earth. Control enough of the little world around you and it feels like you are controlling it all.
Still, things are looking up. You feel like you're headed for greener pastures. You think you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. But you can only look up so far before you're looking behind you again, every pasture is ringed with a fence of some sort, and roads that go through one tunnel are bound to go through another sooner or later.
Lately you've been sleeping better. But with regular sleep comes dreams. Strange Kubrickian dreams in which you relive parts of your life but with completely different outcomes from reality.
The most recent was last night, in which you are driving the winding, hilly roads on the way home from the bar and the pavement is covered with a thick sheet of white cracked ice. An oncoming car and an uncontrolled skid and you're tumbling end over end off the side of the road. In your dream, you wake up lying on your back looking up at the cold night sky. A lone paramedic is picking up pieces of your body and laying them out on a stretcher. Your face here, a leg there, an arm over there. He's making an exact but lifeless replica of you with your discarded pieces.
He's talking to you, or maybe to himself, or maybe to your appendages, seemingly unconcerned that you are completely torn apart. You can't understand what he is saying, his voice fades in and out and he moves around.
You try to look around, to assess the damage, maybe you don't feel as banged up as it might seem from the collection of pieces of your own body amassing next to you. You can see both of your arms still attached to your body as you watch the paramedic carry one of your arms to the stretcher. You are confused. You can't feel your legs.
The girl from the parking lot the other night appears over you, impossibly large and blocking out the night. She whispers something that you can't hear, a cloud of steam streaming from her mouth. You start to feel pain in your right knee.
In your dream you fall asleep, and in real life you wake up.
And so begins your day. As you make coffee, you realize that it was a purging dream. As you have your morning cigarette, you understand that you are letting go of parts of yourself that you no longer need, or want, or can afford.
This is comforting. It is relaxing. Life should be simpler, and we do so much to over-complicate it. Maybe you consider doing less. You think about selling eveyrthing you owne except your motorcycle and a few t-shirts and pairs of jeans. You consider leaving town, and never looking back. You don't think about where you would end up, maybe because it simply wouldn't matter.
Later that evening you try to keep yourself awake to avoid going to sleep, afraid of what dreams your subconsicous will present you with again. Maybe you don't want to face what's in there, maybe you'd be better off not knowing.
Eventually, however, you drift off. And everything is dark again.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Chapter 4
Sleep is a vindictive mistress. One minute she is lying in bed cuddled up to you, scratching your back, the next she is gone. You feel like there is nothing more desolate and desperate than deciding at 3:30 in the morning to give in to insomnia and get out of bed, but you do it anyway. You blink hurtfully at the kitchen light when you turn it on to make a pot of coffee, and then the fatigue that comes with insomnia sets in. But it is fatigue without that calm that sleep requires.
So you watch some early morning TV, lying on the couch in a pile of blankets. You feel invisible even to yourself. The darkness outside makes it seem like it's getting close to midnight, but you know that the sun will be rising soon, and the day already feels like it's going to be unbearably long. Maybe you try to remember when the last time was that you spoke to another person out loud. Probably it was Friday night when you went out drinking with some people from work. You wonder if it's too early to text someone for some digital company.
You check the clock in the kitchen, and it's only 5:30. Definitely too early.
It's cold outside, the New England fall has quickly turned to a brutal winter. You can feel the draft through the windows, through the blankets. Time ticks by slowly, but you've become indifferent to its passage. You half-heartedly do some work, curled up on the couch, waiting for the football games to start. When they do, they seem to last forever.
Your teams loses. Again.
At some point in the late afternoon you start to feel better. You start to wish you felt human again. For the first time in recent memory the blankets feel heavy, like they are holding you down, instead of like a comforting womb.
Without thinking about it, you work out. You pay some bills. You put away the dishes that have been sitting in the dishwasher and clean out the sink. You shower and shave and cut your hair, and when you return to the couch you feel refreshed.
You don't remember feeling that way in a long time.
Maybe you remember the incident from the night before. Maybe you wonder what would have happened to the girl if you hadn't been there, an invisible man in her all too visible world. You might hope she's OK, but probably you don't because you know she's not. She can't be. Forgiving someone who punches you in the face might be noble and romantic, but you know it's just plain stupid. There's no taking that back. You can't unfuck a pregnant woman, and while time might dry up the blood, he will never again not have ever struck her.
10PM rolls around and you feel actually tired, like you might sleep. And you do.
So you watch some early morning TV, lying on the couch in a pile of blankets. You feel invisible even to yourself. The darkness outside makes it seem like it's getting close to midnight, but you know that the sun will be rising soon, and the day already feels like it's going to be unbearably long. Maybe you try to remember when the last time was that you spoke to another person out loud. Probably it was Friday night when you went out drinking with some people from work. You wonder if it's too early to text someone for some digital company.
You check the clock in the kitchen, and it's only 5:30. Definitely too early.
It's cold outside, the New England fall has quickly turned to a brutal winter. You can feel the draft through the windows, through the blankets. Time ticks by slowly, but you've become indifferent to its passage. You half-heartedly do some work, curled up on the couch, waiting for the football games to start. When they do, they seem to last forever.
Your teams loses. Again.
At some point in the late afternoon you start to feel better. You start to wish you felt human again. For the first time in recent memory the blankets feel heavy, like they are holding you down, instead of like a comforting womb.
Without thinking about it, you work out. You pay some bills. You put away the dishes that have been sitting in the dishwasher and clean out the sink. You shower and shave and cut your hair, and when you return to the couch you feel refreshed.
You don't remember feeling that way in a long time.
Maybe you remember the incident from the night before. Maybe you wonder what would have happened to the girl if you hadn't been there, an invisible man in her all too visible world. You might hope she's OK, but probably you don't because you know she's not. She can't be. Forgiving someone who punches you in the face might be noble and romantic, but you know it's just plain stupid. There's no taking that back. You can't unfuck a pregnant woman, and while time might dry up the blood, he will never again not have ever struck her.
10PM rolls around and you feel actually tired, like you might sleep. And you do.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Chapter 3
Your life has quickly become a long string of anonymous encounters even less fulfilling than the one at the bookstore. A trip to the grocery to buy coffee and bagels for the next morning's hangover is a flourescent-lit journey through other people's lives, like watching a documentary about the commercial rituals of the American family, shot through your eyes and soundtracked by easy listening music, peppered this time of year with Harry Connick and Barry Manilow Christmas songs.
You wonder if you are visible at all to anyone else as you make your way among the aisles.
You have been here before, and thought these times were over, but they were not. Here you are again, ringing up your purchase at the self-checkout to avoid having to talk to anyone, knowing that being ignored by the teenage checkout girl would be worse than not being noticed by anyone, and worse still is the possibility that she might call you "sir".
A light snow is falling in the dark as you carry your bags to the car. You pull your hood up over your head to keep the snow out, and watch your breath appear in front of you and then dissappear into nothingness. Maybe you wonder what would happen if you forgot to keep breathing. Maybe you wonder how much snow would pile up on your cooling body as it lay crumpled in the parking lot, how long it would be before someone noticed.
As you make your way to your parking spot you notice a teenage couple having an argument. They are standing face to face by the open door of a car, the interior light casting a pale glow across their legs, catching snowflakes as they meander past on their way to the ground. His voice is loud and angry, punctuated by bursting jabs of a finger directed towards her chest. She is sobbing, metallic drops of salty water streaming down her cheeks, shivering in the cold, arms wrapped around her bare shoulders. There must be a story here about why they are fighting in the grocery parking lot, about why she's wearing a tank top instead of a coat in a snow storm, but it's a story you don't want to know.
You've been burned and mistreated by enough women not to immediately assume that she did nothing wrong, which you may have done in the past. You've been through enough woman-trouble first hand to know that while it's never pretty, it's naive to say that a woman never deserves to get yelled at. You hunch into your coat and shiver off the cold and try to make your way to your car. Try to mind your own business.
As you pass them, perpetually invisible, he hits her. Out of the corner of your eye you see him pull back a closed fist and take a swing at her face. In your periphery you see her head jerk back, you see a spray of blood fly from her nose, glistening brightly in the dim light cast from inside the car as it races the snow to the ground, you see her unwrap her hands from her shoulders and cover her face as she falls to her knees. You hear the word "whore" come out of his mouth in slow motion as you see him follow through his punch from the corner of your eyes.
Maybe you've known women to do things and deserve to get hit for those things they did. Maybe you know what it's like to have your heart cut out of your chest by the fairer sex while it's still beating, and maybe you know that your first reaction when that happened was to hurt back, to hit back, to start swinging. Maybe you know that there's still some genetic remants from caveman times that cause men to want to drag women back to the cave by their hair when they misbehave. Maybe you know that women have similar programming that causes them to do these things in order to get a man to drag them by their hair.
How else will they know they are truly loved otherwise?
Deep down inside, however, you also know for sure that's a bridge that you'd never cross. In your soul, you can't abide by that kind of violence. It's one thing to pick a fight, it's entirely different to get physical with someone who can't possibly defend themselves against you.
You drop your bags. You realize that you're no longer going to be invisible. Maybe you know that words can stop violence from happening in the first place, but you also know that once that particular stray cat is out of the proverbial bag, there's no going back. For sure you know that trying to negotiate a situation once the violence has started just puts you at a disadvantage.
Before you know what's going on, he's on the ground holding his face, blood pouring through his fingers. Your knuckles hurt. Maybe they're even bleeding. He's not moving, maybe he's in shock from being unexpectedly hit. You figure you've got a minute or so before the adrenaline kicks in and masks his pain and suprise and he gets pissed. At you.
You turn your back to him and kneel over her, cradling her head and tipping it back with your hands over hers to stop the blood from flowing out of her nose. She's so young, so beautiful in the light cast from the driver's door of their car, even with the blood. The car is running, the driver door bell is dinging, and the radio is playing soft enough so you couldn't hear it before.
Maybe you are about to ask her if this is her car. Maybe you are about to suggest that she get into it and drive away before he gets up. Before you have the chance though, she looks up at you and you see pain and love and sadness in her eyes. No appreciation though. Before you have the chance, she smacks you across the face with a bloody hand and pushes you away.
You manage to stand up and look down at the two of them. She falls forward onto him and is cradling his head in her arms, both of them bleeding from their noses, blood mixing, and they hold each other, touching foreheads.
It would be beautiful and romantic and touching, what with the snow falling on them and all. It would be a scene from a Lifetime movie, except for the blood. And except for the sting on your cheek from her hand. Except for the fact that you are there at all.
You walk back to your bags, a light covering of snow resting on the handles. Groceries cool much faster than a human body. You walk to your car and drive home in silence, and you don't look back.
You wonder if you are visible at all to anyone else as you make your way among the aisles.
You have been here before, and thought these times were over, but they were not. Here you are again, ringing up your purchase at the self-checkout to avoid having to talk to anyone, knowing that being ignored by the teenage checkout girl would be worse than not being noticed by anyone, and worse still is the possibility that she might call you "sir".
A light snow is falling in the dark as you carry your bags to the car. You pull your hood up over your head to keep the snow out, and watch your breath appear in front of you and then dissappear into nothingness. Maybe you wonder what would happen if you forgot to keep breathing. Maybe you wonder how much snow would pile up on your cooling body as it lay crumpled in the parking lot, how long it would be before someone noticed.
As you make your way to your parking spot you notice a teenage couple having an argument. They are standing face to face by the open door of a car, the interior light casting a pale glow across their legs, catching snowflakes as they meander past on their way to the ground. His voice is loud and angry, punctuated by bursting jabs of a finger directed towards her chest. She is sobbing, metallic drops of salty water streaming down her cheeks, shivering in the cold, arms wrapped around her bare shoulders. There must be a story here about why they are fighting in the grocery parking lot, about why she's wearing a tank top instead of a coat in a snow storm, but it's a story you don't want to know.
You've been burned and mistreated by enough women not to immediately assume that she did nothing wrong, which you may have done in the past. You've been through enough woman-trouble first hand to know that while it's never pretty, it's naive to say that a woman never deserves to get yelled at. You hunch into your coat and shiver off the cold and try to make your way to your car. Try to mind your own business.
As you pass them, perpetually invisible, he hits her. Out of the corner of your eye you see him pull back a closed fist and take a swing at her face. In your periphery you see her head jerk back, you see a spray of blood fly from her nose, glistening brightly in the dim light cast from inside the car as it races the snow to the ground, you see her unwrap her hands from her shoulders and cover her face as she falls to her knees. You hear the word "whore" come out of his mouth in slow motion as you see him follow through his punch from the corner of your eyes.
Maybe you've known women to do things and deserve to get hit for those things they did. Maybe you know what it's like to have your heart cut out of your chest by the fairer sex while it's still beating, and maybe you know that your first reaction when that happened was to hurt back, to hit back, to start swinging. Maybe you know that there's still some genetic remants from caveman times that cause men to want to drag women back to the cave by their hair when they misbehave. Maybe you know that women have similar programming that causes them to do these things in order to get a man to drag them by their hair.
How else will they know they are truly loved otherwise?
Deep down inside, however, you also know for sure that's a bridge that you'd never cross. In your soul, you can't abide by that kind of violence. It's one thing to pick a fight, it's entirely different to get physical with someone who can't possibly defend themselves against you.
You drop your bags. You realize that you're no longer going to be invisible. Maybe you know that words can stop violence from happening in the first place, but you also know that once that particular stray cat is out of the proverbial bag, there's no going back. For sure you know that trying to negotiate a situation once the violence has started just puts you at a disadvantage.
Before you know what's going on, he's on the ground holding his face, blood pouring through his fingers. Your knuckles hurt. Maybe they're even bleeding. He's not moving, maybe he's in shock from being unexpectedly hit. You figure you've got a minute or so before the adrenaline kicks in and masks his pain and suprise and he gets pissed. At you.
You turn your back to him and kneel over her, cradling her head and tipping it back with your hands over hers to stop the blood from flowing out of her nose. She's so young, so beautiful in the light cast from the driver's door of their car, even with the blood. The car is running, the driver door bell is dinging, and the radio is playing soft enough so you couldn't hear it before.
Maybe you are about to ask her if this is her car. Maybe you are about to suggest that she get into it and drive away before he gets up. Before you have the chance though, she looks up at you and you see pain and love and sadness in her eyes. No appreciation though. Before you have the chance, she smacks you across the face with a bloody hand and pushes you away.
You manage to stand up and look down at the two of them. She falls forward onto him and is cradling his head in her arms, both of them bleeding from their noses, blood mixing, and they hold each other, touching foreheads.
It would be beautiful and romantic and touching, what with the snow falling on them and all. It would be a scene from a Lifetime movie, except for the blood. And except for the sting on your cheek from her hand. Except for the fact that you are there at all.
You walk back to your bags, a light covering of snow resting on the handles. Groceries cool much faster than a human body. You walk to your car and drive home in silence, and you don't look back.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Chapter 2
When you finally open your eyes, the sun is nearing its late New England fall peak in the sky. It must be around noon. You lie in bed with your eyes closed pretending to sleep.
It's "Suck it up Saturday" you finally convince yourself and get up to toast a bagel and put on coffee so you can have a cigarette. You take a quick shower and pack up your laptop before you have a chance to decide to turn on the TV again. Maybe you check your e-mail first while having your morning smoke, the "Retrieving 10 messages from server" notice inevitably resulting in 10 pieces of junk mail that when deleted leave your inbox empty. You try not to think about what you are hoping will be there, and how it isn't coming, and how you wouldn't know what to do with it if it did show up, marked in bold as an unread letter.
It's too cold to ride today but you grab your motorcycle helmet anyway and throw your backpack over your leather jacket and sweatshirt and ride down to the bookstore cafe to work on some documents due on Monday, knowing that any longer in the house and you'd risk spending another day unshowered on the couch.
Maybe you really want some human contact, or maybe you're just acutely aware of the downward spiral of depression, and don't want to follow that path. Again.
Either way, you find yourself ordering a latte and booting up your laptop at a table in a busy bookstore, surrounded by people chatting and sharing their life with friends, family, and lovers. Surrounded by holiday decoration and price points and music, wondering if this was really the best choice of places to go when it's the holidays that brought your head where it is in the first place.
As your latte cools and you work your way to the bottom of the paper cup, absorbed in your work - life's only other real distraction besides the TV - you look up and catch the eye of a cute girl a few tables away. She's sitting kitty-corner from where you sit, facing you, with a pile of school books and notepads open and pink earbuds tucked neatly into her ears under her long blonde hair. She smiles back at you and looks away shyly, then looks back quickly and tucks her hair behind her ear. You didn't notice her when you sat down. You wonder if she chose that spot in order to catch your eye.
At best, she's way too young for you, probably home from school for Thanksgiving. At best, you remind her of someone she cares about. Someone who isn't you.
You turn back to your work and the smile fades from your face.
"It's got to be cold riding today," she says to you from across the tables.
You look down at your helmet on the table next to your laptop. You consciously bring the smile back to just the corners of your mouth and eyes in order to appear non-threatening, a trick someone you once cared about very deeply taught you, because, according to her, you looked scary and angry when you were concentrating. You look up at the girl.
"Yeah it's freezing. Not sure what I was thinking."
Maybe you aren't at all interested in talking with her, but you can't turn down conversation. It's impossible to avoid flirting with a pretty girl, once that starts it's a genetic imperative that a man follow it through to see where he can take it. Whether he wants to or not.
So you engage in a little small talk, ask her where she goes to school (Boston University), how she likes living in the city, sharing a few stories about when you lived there in a failed attempt to finish school yourself, trying not to think about or give away the fact that at best she was in diapers when you were her age, and then another kid just off the training wheels himself comes in wearing a Gap sweater and striped scarf and gives her a big kiss on the lips and hugs her and you are left alone to your work once again.
Maybe you try not to think about whether or not to her you were that lonely older guy at the bookstore who looked like he needed a five-minute charity friend. Maybe you think a little too much about whether or not she found you attractive instead, while you try to return your focus to the document you are working on.
Your phone vibrates once in your pocket, and you take it out to read a text from a girl you just started seeing. She's apologizing for not calling you last night, explaining she was out with friends and didn't get home until late. You wonder why she's apologizing, you didn't expect her to call. Hoped she would, maybe, but not expected. Maybe you hoped that she'd ring you up in the middle of the night all drunk and suggest that she come over and roll around under the covers with you, but she didn't. Maybe you hoped she would, but you certainly didn't expect her to.
You don't answer her text, instead slipping your phone back into your pocket and trying to concentrate on your work. The late morning turns into late afternoon, and the sun which finally made an appearance today after struggling to break through rain and clouds all week makes its way to the mountains. You realize that if you don't head back home soon the roads will risk turning icy, and you pack up your things and carry your helmet towards the parking lot.
The setting sun took with it the little bit of warmth it brought to the day, and it is damn cold riding back. You start to shiver under your layers, and your wrists between the cuffs of your jacket and your gloves are starting to feel numb. Fortunately you don't have far to go to get back to the relative warmth of your dark, empty house.
It's "Suck it up Saturday" you finally convince yourself and get up to toast a bagel and put on coffee so you can have a cigarette. You take a quick shower and pack up your laptop before you have a chance to decide to turn on the TV again. Maybe you check your e-mail first while having your morning smoke, the "Retrieving 10 messages from server" notice inevitably resulting in 10 pieces of junk mail that when deleted leave your inbox empty. You try not to think about what you are hoping will be there, and how it isn't coming, and how you wouldn't know what to do with it if it did show up, marked in bold as an unread letter.
It's too cold to ride today but you grab your motorcycle helmet anyway and throw your backpack over your leather jacket and sweatshirt and ride down to the bookstore cafe to work on some documents due on Monday, knowing that any longer in the house and you'd risk spending another day unshowered on the couch.
Maybe you really want some human contact, or maybe you're just acutely aware of the downward spiral of depression, and don't want to follow that path. Again.
Either way, you find yourself ordering a latte and booting up your laptop at a table in a busy bookstore, surrounded by people chatting and sharing their life with friends, family, and lovers. Surrounded by holiday decoration and price points and music, wondering if this was really the best choice of places to go when it's the holidays that brought your head where it is in the first place.
As your latte cools and you work your way to the bottom of the paper cup, absorbed in your work - life's only other real distraction besides the TV - you look up and catch the eye of a cute girl a few tables away. She's sitting kitty-corner from where you sit, facing you, with a pile of school books and notepads open and pink earbuds tucked neatly into her ears under her long blonde hair. She smiles back at you and looks away shyly, then looks back quickly and tucks her hair behind her ear. You didn't notice her when you sat down. You wonder if she chose that spot in order to catch your eye.
At best, she's way too young for you, probably home from school for Thanksgiving. At best, you remind her of someone she cares about. Someone who isn't you.
You turn back to your work and the smile fades from your face.
"It's got to be cold riding today," she says to you from across the tables.
You look down at your helmet on the table next to your laptop. You consciously bring the smile back to just the corners of your mouth and eyes in order to appear non-threatening, a trick someone you once cared about very deeply taught you, because, according to her, you looked scary and angry when you were concentrating. You look up at the girl.
"Yeah it's freezing. Not sure what I was thinking."
Maybe you aren't at all interested in talking with her, but you can't turn down conversation. It's impossible to avoid flirting with a pretty girl, once that starts it's a genetic imperative that a man follow it through to see where he can take it. Whether he wants to or not.
So you engage in a little small talk, ask her where she goes to school (Boston University), how she likes living in the city, sharing a few stories about when you lived there in a failed attempt to finish school yourself, trying not to think about or give away the fact that at best she was in diapers when you were her age, and then another kid just off the training wheels himself comes in wearing a Gap sweater and striped scarf and gives her a big kiss on the lips and hugs her and you are left alone to your work once again.
Maybe you try not to think about whether or not to her you were that lonely older guy at the bookstore who looked like he needed a five-minute charity friend. Maybe you think a little too much about whether or not she found you attractive instead, while you try to return your focus to the document you are working on.
Your phone vibrates once in your pocket, and you take it out to read a text from a girl you just started seeing. She's apologizing for not calling you last night, explaining she was out with friends and didn't get home until late. You wonder why she's apologizing, you didn't expect her to call. Hoped she would, maybe, but not expected. Maybe you hoped that she'd ring you up in the middle of the night all drunk and suggest that she come over and roll around under the covers with you, but she didn't. Maybe you hoped she would, but you certainly didn't expect her to.
You don't answer her text, instead slipping your phone back into your pocket and trying to concentrate on your work. The late morning turns into late afternoon, and the sun which finally made an appearance today after struggling to break through rain and clouds all week makes its way to the mountains. You realize that if you don't head back home soon the roads will risk turning icy, and you pack up your things and carry your helmet towards the parking lot.
The setting sun took with it the little bit of warmth it brought to the day, and it is damn cold riding back. You start to shiver under your layers, and your wrists between the cuffs of your jacket and your gloves are starting to feel numb. Fortunately you don't have far to go to get back to the relative warmth of your dark, empty house.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Chapter 1
The TV is on, casting its cold luminous glow into the otherwise pitch dark room. You watch it intently from within your cocoon of blankets on the couch because when you do this it is the only time you can't hear your own thoughts. Instead, you hear the words and feelings and tribulations of others, and you know it's not real.
You turn up the volume until the floor shakes with thunder because then, at least until the next commercial, you don't remember the string of broken hopes and dissolved families left behind in your life since childhood, the people you brought so close to your heart only to eventually and inevitably find that you weren't in theirs. You do this so that you don't hear your own voice in your head wondering what went wrong, where things went bad, what you could have done differently, whether anyone out there will ever truly let you in the way you do them.
Whether that's even humanly possible, or if you are just an anomaly.
Maybe you contemplate suicide. Maybe you picture the pistol against your head, cold steel wrapped around a trigger you would never pull, a phantom utility of silence that you will never seek out.
Maybe you envision riding your motorcycle off of a cliff, a mountain rising high into a desert that you will never see, hurtling into a physical abyss that seems trivial compared to the mental one you live in from time to time. Maybe instead you pour another drink in the darkness, even though you don't want it.
Turth is, you'd never take your own life. Not quickly, anyway.
You don't feel ashamed of this. Instead, you are embarassed that you still feel hope. You haven't hardened against the bitter wind of life. You still want to love, to be loved, to feel joy in your heart. You don't know any other way.
It is who you are.
When the show ends and you trade the couch for the blankets of your bed, smelling strongly of laundry detergent, a string of faces of women, of friends, of family runs through your head.
Maybe you wonder if you were ever special to any of them. Maybe you try to figure out if anyone could ever think you are worth loving, worth dying for, worth sacrificing for. Maybe you think about whether or not any of them ever think of you, lying awake in their beds, and probably you decide that they don't.
You roll over, but the thoughts follow.
You don't remember dreaming, but science says that everyone dreams every time we fall asleep, our subconscious mind trying to tell us what we don't hear it saying when we are awake. Either way, the sun rises in the morning and you do not.
You turn up the volume until the floor shakes with thunder because then, at least until the next commercial, you don't remember the string of broken hopes and dissolved families left behind in your life since childhood, the people you brought so close to your heart only to eventually and inevitably find that you weren't in theirs. You do this so that you don't hear your own voice in your head wondering what went wrong, where things went bad, what you could have done differently, whether anyone out there will ever truly let you in the way you do them.
Whether that's even humanly possible, or if you are just an anomaly.
Maybe you contemplate suicide. Maybe you picture the pistol against your head, cold steel wrapped around a trigger you would never pull, a phantom utility of silence that you will never seek out.
Maybe you envision riding your motorcycle off of a cliff, a mountain rising high into a desert that you will never see, hurtling into a physical abyss that seems trivial compared to the mental one you live in from time to time. Maybe instead you pour another drink in the darkness, even though you don't want it.
Turth is, you'd never take your own life. Not quickly, anyway.
You don't feel ashamed of this. Instead, you are embarassed that you still feel hope. You haven't hardened against the bitter wind of life. You still want to love, to be loved, to feel joy in your heart. You don't know any other way.
It is who you are.
When the show ends and you trade the couch for the blankets of your bed, smelling strongly of laundry detergent, a string of faces of women, of friends, of family runs through your head.
Maybe you wonder if you were ever special to any of them. Maybe you try to figure out if anyone could ever think you are worth loving, worth dying for, worth sacrificing for. Maybe you think about whether or not any of them ever think of you, lying awake in their beds, and probably you decide that they don't.
You roll over, but the thoughts follow.
You don't remember dreaming, but science says that everyone dreams every time we fall asleep, our subconscious mind trying to tell us what we don't hear it saying when we are awake. Either way, the sun rises in the morning and you do not.
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