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There was never any sense in living, never any sense if you’re really the walking wounded, the walking dead.  There was never any sense in living if tomorrow was today and yesterday was tomorrow. And was there any sense in living if your whole life you bothered to wonder why and how and where and when? I woke up that morning just as I had any other. Awoken from a strange dream where people were people, only they weren’t, where places were places, only they weren’t. The associations seemed to make sense; they just weren’t who and what they were ever supposed to be. I awoke to my apathetic hands removing the still sheets from my apathetic limbs. I awoke to the ticking of the ever-running clock that lay above my bed, to the fan, a wind turbine, always slightly off balance. Was there ever a better age to live? Was there ever a better time than now? There was never any sense in living if my hands would always be the same and yet the people who were touching them so different, so fast. There was never any sense in living if my feet grew so rapidly and never left behind a real footprint, there was never any sense in living if there was never really a memory meant to be made, or a place we were supposed to be. A destination always unreached, unclaimed by anyone at anytime. I awoke this morning to the sun scorching my bed sheets as it always did; I always damned that window for facing east.

I often thought that maybe if I had more to say I’d feel more significant, and then I remembered who I was talking about, thinking about. I did, however, often know that perhaps if I thought less my life would be less of a miserable collection of comings and goings; maybe I could walk one day not thinking horribly of myself, not doubting, not questioning.

It seems to me that to be young is the loneliest time of your life. It’s completely underestimated, the feeling of insignificance youth can bring you. As a child, adolescent, there’s so many things expected of you. You’re being taught to learn, you’re being given goals, or told you need goals, that they’re some sort of intrinsic value which you need to get you by, you’re made out to be this brilliant shining star, until you disappoint them. You’re expected to obey, to have ambition, you’re expected to stay in the lines and not play anyplace far from the neighborhood. And God forbid you rebel or have some sort of path you’d like to follow to make you, not society or your parents pleased. To walk along an unpaved path is to kill your parents’ pride or any sort of faith they ever had. You’re being prepared to live a redundant life, a repetitive life, a life where the insanity will never be allowed to fly free past the boundaries of your soul. You’re preparing yourself for a prison cell. You’re walking, you’re steadily walking and there’s a carrot hanging in the center of your vision, instinctively, you walk towards it. Only you don’t realize there’s a string by which the carrot is attached, it’s transparent, of course, that matters not though, you are absolutely incapable of realizing this thread is here unless you force yourself to think about it. The carrot, well, you’re never going to reach it, and you’ll always be walking, and you’ll be walking forever if you never think. The thing is though, if you don’t think, you’ll never realize it, and you won’t be disappointed, you’ll think,

“Well, I tried my best”

“Congratulations, Joe. Well done.”

But the thing is, you’ll also be oblivious to the fact that you tried, you’ll probably believe you succeeded. They always do, and for those who have been compelled or have required themselves to see that string, they’ll be the disappointed ones, the frightened ones, the cowardly ones even, if it gets that far.

My curtains were the same as yesterday, which isn’t very surprising, even if I was desperate to wake up someplace else. My coffee was made, sort of. I simply had to flick the switch to green to have the aroma arouse my morning, though it hardly did that. There lay my father on the hand-me-down, dirtied cream coloured couch, pupils oscillating, or so it seemed, behind closed eyelids, his feet hanging off the edges with yet a comfortable air, the rising surface tension in a glass of water getting ready to spill its transparent contents all over you. It was early, and I was always the only one awake, which was to be blamed on the rising sun.