I was stuck. Not as in I got my leg caught in a manhole or anything like that, but more like something deep in my brain refused to move on. I found each morning the same exact agony, and not once did I feel an urge to expect something.
It was painful, honestly, to go about your day like a soulless corpse. A nod here and there, smiling the same polite smile at the people you couldn't just ignore. That was what you did in any job. You tried to get along with people you wouldn't even bury if they dropped dead in front of you.
I was in my thirties. Thirty-one, to be more exact, meaning that I was already a year deep into the so-called phase of "finding oneself."
There was nothing.
Back in my twenties, I often comforted myself with the occasional motivational video that said your twenties were supposed to be chaotic. It was actually shocking how many resources you could find that justified being useless. Anyway, it was when you survived that chaos and brought yourself to the crux of adulthood that you would supposedly experience an enlightenment.
Well, let me tell you there's no such thing. I'd been miserable in my twenties, and I could tell that a change in numbers wouldn't change a damn thing.
I barely called my family anymore, and whenever I forced myself to go out with friends, I stared out into the distance while trying to act interested in the important stuff being argued about at the table.
Politics. Life. The poor and the rich. Wars. Some distant country that's supposed to be a heaven to live in, but it was either too far away or it was just so cold that you'd only entertain the idea of migrating there, but never in a million years would you actually do it.
I mean, who really cared, right? The shit we talked about was pointless. At the end of the day, we'd all return to our heels and be grateful to be rewarded for all the work we did for who knows why.
So yeah, that whole thing about socializing wasn't worth shit.
Which was why I liked playing games.
Somewhere deep in my mind, I knew this was me trying to escape my responsibilities. Being an adult, a thirty-one-year-old at that, meant that I should be paying my rent, taking care of utilities, having a girlfriend, or even having children, which was supposedly like the ultimate satisfaction you could get from life.
Hell no. I couldn't even imagine growing little versions of me, then having their troubles on top of my own things. I didn't have time for that. I couldn't take that on!
Even thinking about it made me nervous, and not "Could I be a responsible parent" nervous in that way.
Yeah.
I was depressed.
Then again, who wasn't?
But knowing that I shared this agony with millions of people didn't change a thing.
At the end of the day, I'd always find myself wondering the same question.
What the hell did I do to deserve this?
….
It was a Friday night. I had absolutely no reason to go out. I could just sit there on my newly bought gaming chair, play some character who looked like he had everything he could ever have wanted – thanks to me grinding my ass off, of course – and keep at it until sleep claimed me.
But no, for some inexplicable reason, I felt the urge to go out and buy a six-pack. Maybe I thought I'd earned some booze after a week of soul-crushing work, or maybe it took me hours to convince myself to go out and buy beer because I couldn't be bothered to buy it on the way back from work, and now I had to pay for my six-hour-younger self's sins.
Anyhow, I got out. Didn't even change my clothes.
It was raining, which was expected since I chose to go out. I pulled my hoodie up and made myself as small as possible as I scuttled across the street toward the store lights.
"It's been raining a lot these past couple of days, hasn't it?" the guy behind the counter said the second I entered the store, gazing up at me with a sympathetic smile on his lips.
I bet he did that because his boss told him to be extra careful with customers. Don't worry, friend, you don't have to smile at me!
"It sure has," I said as a response, then found my beers at the back of the store. I wasn't about to tell him all that, even if that would probably make him feel good about himself. Instead, I flashed my card, and he took it, as professional as a twenty-some-year-old working in a store could be.
When the payment was completed, a brief pride swelled within my chest, and it was with a genuine smile that I got my card back from the guy.
Paying for your six-pack.
That was an adult thing, right?
Right.
I got out, fingers clasped around the bag, hoodie up around my scalp and working to save my greasy hair from the pouring rain. One turn after another, the lights escaping from the windows flashed around me as I kept at it, my heart thumping in my chest.
Then I stopped. For no reason, I just stood there and let the rain batter down on me like I was in a movie. Except everything felt so real, and I couldn't even have made for a sidekick even if I'd tried.
Cold crept slowly in through my shirt, down across my stomach and into my legs. I shivered.
I was thirty-one years old, and I had done nothing with my life.
Admitting that, however, made things worse.
It was too late now. I couldn't start anew. I couldn't do anything. I didn't even know what to do. Was there even a way to fight against this growing emptiness that gnawed at my chest? How could I actually feel things again?
Why did I turn out this way when my sisters were perhaps the happiest people in the world?
My parents weren't particularly bad with me. I did get hit a lot when I was a child, but that itself was more of a generational issue than a personal one. I had been bullied in school, but I bullied other people too. A mixture of both, as my father often told me, was a healthy thing.
Which now sounded like a load of bullshit to me. Maybe it was that. Yeah. My sisters were in college, in the process of becoming important people. Me, on the other hand, lived with a pair of miserable fools as parents when they were yet to be born.
It wasn't my fault.
Yes.
This was all because of a fucked-up childhood.
My fingers relaxed. I was able to take another step again, dragging myself through the street, back already soaked in cold winter rain. I was about to enter the apartment complex when I caught a whizzing sound slowly growing in volume.
Then people screamed, and thunder growled. Growing nervous, I paused and looked over my shoulder.
There I saw it.
It was a giant plane, and it was crashing right toward me. Or perhaps it wasn't. Maybe it was the imagination of a mind too occupied with keeping things at a distance. This giant thing, though, broke through the layers of protection around it and blasted right into me.
And crushed me into a pulp.
….