Every day was almost exactly the same. He
would wake up, have something to eat, then shower, look for a job and then
lunch. After that, it would be hours and hours of basically nothing until
dinner. At night and in the morning he would exercise a bit and before going to
bed he would watch something, like a movie or whatever was available. That was
life like for him, even after he had decided it would be different. His
decisions in life had amounted to nothing and he didn’t know what to do.
He had been living there for almost a year and
nothing had happened, nothing at all. Not a single change since his arrival. He
tried to keep it different by distracting himself with movie or by going out to
walk around the city, but that didn’t change anything either. It was a
perpetual movement he was trapped in, a series of actions he repeated every
single day, every week and every single month, no matter the little differences
like weather or things like that. Things didn’t change.
He had tried to change them. He had really
tried but he soon realized that one person couldn’t really change the world.
Whoever had said that in the past was wrong. A single lonely human couldn’t
change a thing in this world. Every major shift had to involve lots of people
with a common goal and a certain organization. And he didn’t have that at all.
He was alone and he depended on his parents for survival. They weren’t happy
for him or anything, but they felt they couldn’t refuse him help.
The money he received as an allowance was used
very carefully to pay for the apartment, the bills and the food. Those were the
normal expenses. He sometimes used the money for distractions, going out and
that sort of thing. In those instances he would have to remember that he was
taking money away for his food. He never minded. Besides, it wasn’t something
he did often; on the contrary, he managed his money in the most careful way
because it was just enough to survive.
But that was the thing: he had been thinking
for a long time if it was worth it to keep on living as he was. He was draining
money from his parents every month, he was sitting on his ass doing nothing,
except getting older and older people have a harder time getting a job. But no
one was giving him a job, not now or before. Not when he was recently graduated
or after his various years of studies all over the place. They had never
acknowledged him as a nothing more than a man that could pick up a phone or
move boxes from one place to the other.
The money he earned for such jobs disappeared
very fast. Most of it was taken away by the health service they provided, which
he never used. And the rest was used to pay debts or bills. Nothing remained.
Those times, whoever, he could grab a little more from his parents money in
order to have fun, even for a short period of time. He would get drunk, go out
and party and just forget about everything in his life and who he was. He lost
himself every time or at least he tried.
He loved going out to dark places with loud
music, wherever they could have alcohol. He even tried drugs a couple of times
but it wasn’t his thing. The point of it all was forgetting his life, which was
pathetic and sad. He was a leech and a waste of space. He remembered that
expression once and it had gotten stuck on his head since then because it
described so well what he thought of his place in life. He did feel as if he
was a waste of space and would have loved it to be different.
But it wasn’t things are as they are and one’s
blind optimism cannot change that. People want every single person in the world
to think blindly that everything is going to be ok but the reality of life is
that probably nothing will be ok. The world itself is more and more violent,
not a hospitable place for actual life to develop. So why should people be
blind to that? Why should be people avoid the truth, instead of embracing it
and maybe then find a solution for whatever the problem is?
Many times, he looked around his house and
carefully planned his last day on Earth. It was kind of like a game he played
with himself when things where a its lowest. He would imagine cutting his
wrists on the tub and having one of those almost artistic deaths, with the
blood tainting the water slowly and also spilling gently to the floor. It
looked almost like a romantic thing inside his head. But it would take too long
and that wasn’t something he was very eager about.
He imagined many other outcomes for his life.
Some more admittedly violent and graphic but others were even more subtle that
the one in the tub. He had a great imagination, which he used laying on his
bed, waiting for someone to respond to his calls looking for one of the many
menial jobs the world had to offer. He had realized a while ago that no one was
going to give him a good job where he could feel like a real person. He was
apparently built to be a slave and he had decided he didn’t mind at all, it was
his destiny all along and that was settled.
Sure enough, he had two jobs latter on: one as
part of the cleaning crew in a hospital and another one in a supermarket, doing
basically the same thing. He would break his back for a pay that was laughable
but there was nothing else to do. However, he decided one day to ask his
parents not to send him any more money. They did ask him “why” but he never
answered, so they just did as they were told and the subject never came up
again, in telephone conversations or when he visited, which was rare.
He
had decided he would survive with whatever he had. His meals were greatly
reduced and he had to move to another apartment, one even smaller in a much
uglier part of the city. He sold some of his belongings too, in order to pay
for the first couple of months. He tried to set aside something every month for
pleasure, such as alcohol or whatever he would be in the mood for. Those small
moments were not of joy but of quiet and a certain peace, which he still
enjoyed.
After some months living his new life, he got
very sick with the flu. He stopped earning money for almost three weeks. When
the disease didn’t kill him, the lack of food almost did. He actually had to be
rushed into the hospital but he escaped it as soon as he could because he
didn’t have the money to pay for a hospital bed. He just bought bread and
medicine and hoped for the best. He was fired from the hospital he worked in
but kept the supermarket job, where they raised his salary a bit in order to
make him do more stuff.
As always, he didn’t really mind. He got
better, or just about, and start working harder every day. The hours were
longer than before and this time he had to work every single day of the week
but at least he was distracted by something. He didn’t have time to ponder or
think about what could have been or what the future may hold for him. Those
were empty questions now and no one care about the answers. He had lost the
will to rebel in any way. He just lived, if that’s what it’s called.
He was eventually fired from that job too. Not
long after that, he decided to jump off a bridge that passed over a highway.
His parents had nothing to keep from him anymore, as he had sold almost
everything except and old notebook he had kept from when he was young, Inside,
he had written a number of stories and he had also drawn lots of characters and
abstract figures. They took one look at it and then stored it away somewhere.
The man became a memory and, after his parents died, it was as if he had never
existed on this Earth.
