He

He is not content with who he is and does not know where he wants to go or what he wants to do. He has let his mind, body, and soul disintegrate and is sometimes ready to die. The difference between twenty-nine and eighty don’t seem so different to him. His heavy heart swings low and he dreams of better days, better situations, and better lots in life. He has conversations with himself involving characters and different lifestyles. He speaks to himself as though he were reading the script of a movie; reading down the page each characters voice the same.

He is not content with who he is and does not know where he wants to go or what he wants to do. He thinks about the same woman everyday and can’t get her out of his thoughts. He dreams of her being there and wakes up to the reality that she is gone. He might as well be eighty. He might as well be a widow. He might as well be done.

He feels sorry for himself and wants people to feel sorry for him. It is the kind of attention he has become used to. What he really wants is someone to look up to him and support him on things that he wants to do, though he rarely works hard enough to attain that.

His life is a series of works in progress and nothing ever gets one hundred percent done. There is something to be learned from that…. he knows, but for him it is easier to just take pills and drink from dusty bottles purchased at the local variety store, and despite being an idealist and sometimes philosophical thinker, he cannot live the life he advises people to live. He cannot incorporate his overtly perceived wisdom into the everyday life he lives or the actions he commits.

He has convinced so many people that he is smart but inside he does not agree with them. He does not think he is stupid, but he certainly does not think he is smart. He does not think he is ugly either, but he certainly does not think he is handsome; even though taxi drivers and old women working in restaurants say he is.

He looks at the people around him and does not see the negatives that they live with. Perhaps it is because they hide them so well and perhaps it is because he only looks for the positives and then compares those positives with his negatives and ultimately loses. He wants to change locations again but knows that by doing so he will just be leaving problems behind. No matter where he goes, those problems will eventually catch up to him. He has left his problems behind on a number of occasions and no matter how far away from them he runs they always seem to be there just waiting to blitz their way back into his life.

He is not content with who he is and does not know where he wants to go or what he wants to do. He is exhausted. He cannot find energy. He cannot find happiness because he has not allowed himself to be happy. He has not cleared his mind of all those precepts and expectations that cloud and layer all that is good and wonderful about him. He cannot let go of the past and cannot look forward. He lives his life drink to drink, pill to pill, unintended/intended hospital trip to unintended/intended hospital trip.

He is lonely because he looks lonely. He is sad because he looks sad. He is alone because he looks alone. He is fat because he feels fat. He is not content with who he is because he is not content with himself. He knows all this and yet he cannot even muster up enough excitement to change, to clean up, grab life, and shake it up.

He needs a drink.

A code of integrity has put him in a profoundly different place. At no time in his life has he ever felt so locked in. At no time in his life has he ever been compelled so strongly to uphold his end of the contract. He is bound by two contracts. Both concern a friend of his who argued in his favour and did extraordinary things. That is why he cannot just pick up and leave. As much as his life is a tangle of emotions, selfish thoughts and feelings, at the end of the day he will not rollover and put the reputation of his friend on the line. If his friend loses face in a society where losing face is an embarrassment not only to the individual but also to the individual’s family, he could not even begin to say that learning from the past, brings forth a better future. He has made mistakes before. He had dishonored and lost a good friend and vowed never to let that happen again. No matter where he goes or what he does, because of these contracts, he will not be able to change, at least his location, until October. He could change his life outside of work. He could change his life inside of work. He could change his attitude regarding life, work, friends, society, and the woman. He knows all of this. His energy is perhaps tied up in upholding his end of the contracts.

He and his friend rarely speak anymore.

He recalls the past as a patchwork of moments, visions, and desires. He cannot say for sure which event came first or what happened when and where for every memory. His memories, especially of her, have long since been skewed and distorted by imaginary prologues and conclusions. He has, in part created a mythical past which when thought about at length is either false or exaggerated. Even when he sits down to write he has trouble figuring out what was real and what was made up. Did he love her or was that just a mythical love which only his dream world could know? Could he have lived a happy and full life with her? His honest answer is yes, but his realistic and agreeable answer is no. He cannot even say for sure that he loves his mother, father, brother, or friends. He does not love himself and though in the past he has said that it is easier to love someone else than to love yourself, he understands now that to know any kind of love, no matter what or who that love is directed at, he must learn to love himself; a daunting task for a man who cares little about his now, and thinks mainly about his then.