We Are Still Married

I stare blankly out the window, hoping for a car crash or a robbery, or just anything out of the ordinary, really. Excitement is a fleeting concept, and has been for years. It's not the sort of thing that I can pinpoint to any particular date in time, but rather a gradual slip downhill, the sort that cannot be recognised until it is too late to climb back up. Another day; another mundane collection of half hearted routines. Nothing short of a military invasion could quite rectify this suspended state of nothingness.

Long ago, I lost all of my friends so that I could focus on providing for my family, a group of people who I might be lucky if they call me because it is their birthday. Every few years, a comrade from the past would come knocking, barely able to string together a coherent sentence as they explained that their marriage had fallen apart and they needed somewhere to stay for a while. A few months of binge drinking on our sofa, and they would either clean up and move on with their lives, or, more likely, go back to the wife and children with a new appreciation for their loved ones. Either of these scenarios seems patently more interesting than maintenance for the sake of it, and yet I lack the resolve to do anything about it. How could it possibly be reasonable to run off if I have been willing to put up with it until now?

My oldest friend, Pete, had a similar crisis about two years ago, abandoning his wife and moving to the other side of the country. He and I did not keep in touch very consistently over the last decade, as we both became more withdrawn from anything that did not involve reading the newspaper. He described to me, shortly before his departure, a magnificent sob story of such incredible boredom that he had begun burning himself on the kitchen stove, with a set of accompanying repugnant evidence. Feeling as though his children were ungrateful and his wife had merely settled and made no secret of it, either to him or to her friends, he was left no choice but to run away and never think about any of it again. Though at first I was offended that he never contacted me or anyone else since, over time I became more upset with viewing the results. The way his wife reacted, he may as well have hung himself in their bedroom.

The loyal son had to move back to his paltry and decaying hometown to try and alleviate the ramifications, to little avail. Perhaps I should be careful what I wish for: this was no car crash or robbery, but far worse, a needlessly dramatic episode that lingers on even after the event is further distanced from the present.

People walk past them and smile; and though they may feel pity, or even anger with Pete for having run off like that, she interprets it as condescension, a sort of judgmental 'how could you screw up so badly for him to disappear' line of questioning that everyone is too polite to vocalise. She grows to resent their refusal to bring it up. Is everyone going to keep moving along as though nothing happened?

Unsatisfied as I may be, I am innately an uncourageous person, and so I will continue to read the newspaper each morning without absorbing any of it, and eat the same three meals each day, and leave the television turned on while nobody pays it any attention. If I continue to glance out the window for long enough, perhaps troops will arrive in our small town, declare victory as we all remain in our homes, scared out of our wits, and enslave us as hard labourers for a brutal regime. At least we are still married.

Ecosystem Fragility

It is difficult to explain my preoccupation with Mr. Doyle.

My relationship with him ended abruptly about two years ago. I saw him once after that, and quickly ducked into a crowd of people to avoid a non-acknowledgment that would have been awkward for both of us.

Rarely a day goes by that I do not think of him, however, and though I claim to despise every fibre of his being, surely this cannot really be the case. You see, we lived together, and the things I criticise him for are hardly exclusive to his character, and in fact are similar to my own shortcomings. How can one harbour legitimate vitriol towards an object that never escapes one's thoughts? It is possible, but it sounds very unhealthy.

I liked to pile disgust on his routine: he would wake up each morning, refreshed from a night of enforced celibacy and impassioned discussion about Star Trek with his girlfriend, come downstairs to prepare an English muffin, and return to his cave for several hours to read mainstream websites geared towards university students, a culture he did identify with at least in spirit if not in practice. He would again leave his lair to make a cup of tea, his first of two for the day, followed by another hour or two of online perusing, and then a light lunch. Finally, in the late afternoon, his girlfriend would return so that he could spend some time in the downstairs area, listening to her ramble about her ambitions and, on a good day, making casual conversation with the others who had the audacity to live in the same house as him. Dinner was the highlight of the day, and sometimes, if things were really looking up, they would watch something they had not yet viewed.

It was not always like that. Before my own routine began to wildly diverge from his, he was much more amicable. As the other members of the household also started to explore the outside world, Mr. Doyle was only more and more isolated, until the day that he disappeared almost without a trace, leaving only a brief note explaining how to set up the Internet connection, since he had taken his own router with him.

I never missed him after that, though I was fond of his cat. In fact, the Internet connection became significantly faster, and his girlfriend was the human equivalent of nails scratching a chalkboard, so it was mostly a wash.

If I were to run into Mr. Doyle now, it is indeed probable that I would avoid him with an even stronger sense of purpose than ever before; psychological wellness be damned.

Soulless Crematorium

My blood is boiling; the very nerve of this person... to suggest that I might enjoy myself if I were simply to stop whining. How irrational of me to not recall that everything is controlled by my attitude! Positivity must prevail!

The sort of person providing this type of advice is absent in credibility in the same way that my feet are lacking adequate circulation. Cheers for that one; if only everyone approached life with your carefree mannerisms, perhaps we would have made no progress as a species whatsoever. I'm all for appreciating the silver lining in a heinous situation, but at a certain point it becomes unreasonable to ignore the instinctual urge to completely alter my direction in the (often vain) hope of an improvement in circumstances. This isn't scouring through elephant shit with bare hands in the pursuit of diamonds; it is even more futile than that. Finding satisfaction in the utterly hopeless is not a sign of strength, but rather an indicator of dishonesty. Who lies to themselves like this?

This is not to say that I hold it against anyone. Maybe one has highly excellent reasons to pretend that all is well when the precise opposite is the case, and I am not here to judge, but merely reflect on the observations that I have been presumptuously given. After all, I am not the one sticking my nose into other people's business and suggesting that they need to quit complaining to enjoy the horrible things in life. I simply call the shots as I see them, and if you aren't willing to do that, what the fuck use are you?

There is no need to dance around a potentially controversial statement in fear of retribution, and decrying the present state of things is hardly malignant. Taking offense to such thoughts is plainly unnecessary at best and ruthlessly irritating in accuracy (to take a page from the 'silver lining' playbook). If this is some grand exercise to demonstrate your emotional sensitivity, save it for someone who does not possess any self-respect, as you will be peas in a pod.