Here I Sit
Here I sit, alone in this dark cathedral, staring. What am I staring at? Nothing.
Which isn’t much of a surprise, seeing as how nothing I ever did seemed to amount to more than nothing. Nothing. Now that is an interesting concept. Nothing is the lack of something, anything, within a space. But it’s more than that. Nothing is what I feel. At one time I felt emotions like pain, sorrow, hope, love… But now? Nothing. Somebody once called this the “Shadow complex.” Where you feel like you’ve become a shadow, just the outline of something that used to be…an absence of light, form, and life. What would put a man in a place like this? Pain. No, maybe not. I guess I’ve just been calloused by the world. People come and people go, they make an impact, but altogether do nothing but affect these other fleeting shadows that dance on the walls, flicker, and smother. It’s like I’m in this void, where nothing affects nothing, and the walls of this void double in on themselves, collapsing around me into a nothing from which I never return.
The priest left a little while ago, saying something along the lines of getting right with God. It’s a shame I’m not Catholic, but if I started confessing now it would take a lifetime of confessing and then a few for just for atonement. What a funny people, those Catholics. They get to tell all their sins to somebody without having to worry about sounding pathetic…because it’s just accepted that they are.
They
just sit around the table at every meal and talk about what happened to them
today, “my girlfriend this”, “I don’t like this”…it never ends. The
droning in the background that I could once ignore now echoes between my
eardrums. There has got to be something better than this, and these fools
don’t even realize it. Some higher plane of thought, existence, feeling. Just
a moment, when it all makes sense, and you understand why things are the way
they are. Some people say that’s only achievable in death, but then that would
defeat the whole purpose in living. I have to ask myself every once in a while,
“Is this as good as it gets? Are there other people out there who have these
same thoughts that I have, and get so lonely sometimes among so many people?”
Of course there are other people out there like you. That’s rather selfish to think that I am the only person who feels lonely and down on their luck. You just want to feel sorry for yourself.
No
I don’t. That ridiculous. I just want somebody to talk to, to understand my
blight. Someone that understands me: who I am, what I believe in, and what I
want to know.
Come on. Nothing’s ever that bad that you can’t talk to your friends. Nothing. There goes that word again. Dammit. Snap out of it. You obviously have a lot of growing up to do No…you’ve just become calloused and envious of the people who seem to make it without ever thinking deeply and wondering about the things I do. The people who live the simple life. You know better than that. Why do I know better than that? What makes it so that my life is so much harder than other people’s? Stop being ridiculous. You know that your life is easy compared to other people’s. You selfish brat. Straighten up. Why do I listen to you anyways? You do nothing but tear me down with your remarks and “advice.”
What
are you talking about? I’m you.
© 2001 thomas busbee