first thoughts on paper

A double wide set at the end of a short gravel drive atop a hill.  No lawn, no landscaping, garbage lay around a small wood set of stairs that led to the entrance.  Inside a kitchen, living room, two bedrooms, and a dimly lit bathroom.  Filled with an assortment of whatever was left over from college consumption.  Empty beer cases and wine bottles, a mirror on the table, mason jars full of weed, pipes, bongs, maybe somebody asleep on a couch. 

He woke up every morning and thought the same thing.  He went to bed every night dreading the feeling he anticipated waking up to.  It could be described as a comfortable college life.  One paid for by drug deals and bets won.  Money that came in was easily spent.  College is thought by many and in this case a transition period where one is not yet themselves, but striving to find and become. 

He went to class most of the time, had friends, was social and considered to be a prankster.  But he felt empty.  He had dated girls, done drugs, traveled modestly.  All to fill something that was not there, something he had lost, or had never been there, something that everybody feels they should have.  He was not happy.

If you asked any of his friends they would know nothing of his discontent.  If you asked his family they would tell you that he was an upbeat brother who only tried to make others smile.  But at night he would regularly cry himself to sleep.  He would wake up and eat pills to calm him and sedate him and help him run from the questions he could not answer and the emotions that he could not express.

He was like many his age.  He wanted answers about himself that he could not get from anybody else especially himself.  If you asked him now he wouldn’t be able to give you the address of the double wide.  Numbers and names were blurred into the five years it took him to earn an economics degree.  He had almost added a degree in finance as well but would have had to add an extra class.  Instead he simply told people he had a double major and neglected to add the course.  It was not as if anybody would be checking his transcript or eyeing his diploma.  Or as if anybody actually would care or remember something as trivial as that after he had told them. 

Everything was for appearance, an image that one has of themselves that they want to emit and for other people to perceive as well.  He felt that nobody was actually how they wanted others to perceive them, but you could try to persuade others to see you in the light you try to emulate.

And that is how he lived for what felt for a very long time.  Nobody was allowed in to what he felt, saw, thought.  They could sit next to him on the couch for hours, talk to him, drink with him, pass time, stories, and laughter, but they had no idea what he was thinking, feeling,  or tasting.  And the same for him. 

He dreamt of exploring, creating, writing, but couldn’t never muster the courage to start.  He knew if he started he would inevitably fail and maybe failure was the closest way to explain what he felt and was trying to rid himself of. 

But he started.  And whether it was good or it was bad he had started.  He had re created the feelings he ran from, he moved from, he tried to forget.  And he attempted to remember why he felt that way, where it all came from, who he wanted to be, and how it helped him get to where he was now.  A long way from that place, but not very far from the feelings he kept then.