In the movies or other people’s lives she comes back and she says it was all a mistake that she wants to be with you forever. You kiss and they cue the theme music. In my world I sit and wait and the dust thickens and the cobwebs grow and I toss back another beer or pill and time distorts so I can make it through another day but still she doesn’t come. After a while I forget if she was even real, the only thing that remains is the pain and the empty beer bottles.

I popped a few tranquilizers--washing them down with a beer--and slowly the world around me became soft and bright. The people on TV were all smiling at me and the colors around them were so brilliant I felt as if I had never seen anything like them before. I drifted in and out of sleep all day and it felt good to relax after so much anxiety. You probably wouldn’t understand, then again maybe you would. Sometimes it is better to be unconscious than to face those things that eat at us, drive us to do things that we normally wouldn’t do. Sometimes it is good just to be high…

So you say that you’ve seen the light but how do you know it is THE light? Maybe it was just a car’s headlight reflecting off a cat’s eye. Perhaps it was the lighter of a crack head firing up her glass pipe. My point is that seeing the light might not be at all what people recount when they have an epiphany. THE light might not be THE light at all but rather the absence of darkness, a whole in the black scenery of life. Another dimension in a world that means nothing…

I am thinking. Yes, of course of you…well, maybe not exactly you but of things pertaining to you. Okay, maybe I’m not even thinking of things pertaining to you but rather of my world in general and you of course are part of that world. Actually, maybe I’m not exactly being truthful on that matter either. You really aren’t a part of my world but rather a person I once knew, so in all reality you are just a memory, not a being of flesh and bone. Since memories are things of thin air its quite possible I imagined I knew you in which case I really couldn’t be thinking of YOU because you don’t exist. There, now that this is settled I can go back to eating my Cheerios...

A lousy week until I turn 40. Obviously it is all downhill from here…or perhaps I was never up on that hill to begin with and my decline will be unnoticeable, chartable only under an electron microscope. I’ve begun for this most unpleasant event to grow a rather scruffy beard and have refused to shave my head to its usual nakedness. I have also ceased all bathing much to the chagrin of those in close proximity of me in the gym. These preparations for this upcoming milestone in my life are my rebellion against growing old.

Who the fuck invented getting old anyway? Why do my mitochondria have to stop working to full capacity? Why can’t I coax these little powerhouses with treats? A box of chocoloates?

This all too goddamn depressing to delve too far into. Perhaps I will just keep up my rebellion and build up a thick crust of beard and dirt and then a thousand years from now someone can crack this shell open and I will be perfectly preserved. Yes, that is what I will do. Thank-you for your time. Your input has been most useful…