Originally posted 14 January 2008

... or some other sappy bit of Americana that fails miserably at capturing anything resembling what true emptiness really feels like.

Driving home, Sunday, when I finally started that way, which I did not want to do, I was overcome by a feeling of total desperation.  Like chasing a fleeing train, hands outstretched to pull you aboard, but you just...
can't...
make it.

And then they're gone.  They're all gone.  I'm left standing in this place, my own fault for not running fast enough, pushing hard enough.  It truly is my fault I've been left behind, and I know this, and that makes it all the more unbearable.  I was driving away from my friends and tantalizing hints at the life that might've been and I called my estranged wife, but she wasn't home and my kids were taking a nap and, hanging up the phone, I felt so lost, so desolate.  I didn't want to go home, back to that empty fucking house that echoes, all too well, the hollow chambers of my selfish, little heart.

I wanted to turn around, right then and there, and go back to Chicago, never to return.  I wanted to curl up on my friends' couch and be told that "everything is going to be alright".  I wanted to take an immediate right and head for Alton and throw myself at my wife's feet and beg her to come home.  I wanted to look up an old girlfriend and likely ruin what was, up until my appearance, a perfectly happy and stable life.  I wanted to go in my house and scream into a pillow until the only thing running from my mouth was the bitter iron of my own blood.  I wanted to cry.  I could feel this desolate sadness welling up inside me, pounding against the back of my eyes and still finding no escape, just swirling around inside my head, howling like the trapped animal it was.

I am just so, damned lonely.

I have friends, one just a short walk away.  I have family, some just across the street.  I have people I can call, have called, almost nightly and talk for hours.  I have a pet I like, and one I don't, and a computer and video games and a lot of good books and art supplies and so many toys that "boredom" should be so far from me that it would take decades for the light from there to reach my current position.  All are but trifles.

When I read those opening lines, about living on an island of ignorance in the midst of black seas, I know all too well this feeling of isolation.  Really, all of us are isolated, to some degree, and some more than others.  It may be that no man is an island, but some of us sure seem to live in pretty remote areas.

I miss my wife.

Yeah, maybe it is just familiarity.  I know who she is, and what to expect of her, and she, me.  Even if most of the time we don't like those things very much, and despite the fact that we fight with such vehemence and passion that I have little doubt blood would eventually be shed, I still miss my wife.  I want to come home to her.  I want to hold her, and smell her, and see her, and make love to her.  I want her to talk to me about things I don't care about, and lie about money matters, and to only rarely clean up after herself or anyone else if that meant I wasn't by myself all the time.  I know the only reason we are getting along is because we are not living together.  I know that the only thing keeping us polite is our children and their future.  I know that she still loves me.  I know I still love her.  And I hate it.

I miss my children.

I do not believe I need to further quantify or clarify that statement.

I miss having friends.

I do not mean that I have no friends, nor even that I have no close friends or friends who are close.  What I miss is having people, plural definitely intended, here, around that enjoy the same things that I do.  I want somebody near-by so I might play a role-playing game now and then, or blow shit up on the X-Box, or play with what are, essentially, children's toys (like Heroscape).  I am so desperate, now, for companionship that I think about people from my past, people who truly are not good for me.  I may be a bad influence on most, but there remain those who are a bad influence on me.  I think about just popping by tomorrow, or the next day, or next week.  "Hi.  I'm lonely.  Yes, I know that I probably upset your life, perhaps forever, and that you did the same for me, but do you want to hang out?"  Or, perhaps, "Hi, I'm lonely.  While I know that, in spending time with you, I would have such easy access to illegal narcotic substances it would only be a matter of time, but do you want to hang out?"

I have let my housework, which I once enjoyed, fall behind.  My sleeping schedule is all fucked up.  It is just such a tumultuous time in my life right now.  I'm living totally alone for the first time in nearly a decade, my job is lost or changing radically, and my wife and children are scarcely a part of my life it seems.  And I still do not seem to have enough time in a day to get anything real done.  More fun being depressed than working through it, I guess.

If I have anything else to say, I haven't let myself in on it, yet.