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 He and I did not keep in touch very consistently over the last decade, as we both became more withdrawn from anything that did not involve reading the newspaper.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.
