walking dead

Can they smell the rot that lies beneath my mask? I'm going through the motions, acting out what I remember. The truth is I can't feel a thing, and haven't for a long time. I've fallen to a million sins nobody would believe, I want to fight but I've already lost. I died the day she said "I do" to him instead. The world moves on and I'm the walking dead.

I met a surfer dude today. I could tell from the minute he opened his mouth he had little to offer the world. A quick query into his story confirmed this. Purposeless. Jobless. Careless. But a trust fund baby, so well off and well fit regardless.
  Then I compared him to me-- intelligent. Passionate. Driven. And for all that, nothing to show for my efforts except disappointment.
  Then his girlfriend walked in. The two of them kissed and held each other, causing a deep unsettling in my unconscious mind.
  Herein lies the rub: as he drifts through life without direction he is happy. Happy with her, happy with their companionship, and warm in ways I have never been.
  What has ambition ever gotten me? What has the word "try" or "duty" ever laid on me except hardship and heartache? For 10 years I have been so obsessed with doing what I must, I haven't ever considered the possibility of doing what I want. In the final reckoning neither of us has made an impact. The difference is he is happy and I am not. Instead I am inconsolably lonely.

I never liked the water. So I guess it's ironic that looking back after all this time my fondest memories involve a beach. She was there, of course, but back then she wasn't "the one". She was that girl I'm too good of friends with to love, because back then I still believed there should be a difference. No, back then there was an entirely different " one", for me and every other heterosexual male in senior high. Her name doesn't matter, only the feeling young men got when they saw her. You know the kind...tennis player. Proper, lively, beautiful, put together in all the right ways... She was the kind of girl they write songs about. The year was 2004, the trip was to Florida, and literally everyone was there. For some reason life has to get more complicated than that.

I'm thinking of her again tonight. I hope she's OK. I once had a sixth sense about when something was going wrong for her, even at great distance. This feels similar to that. Maybe something terrible has happened, or maybe I just miss her. Who really knows? I do know she is close to my heart during times of change or big decisions, maybe because I always thought she'd be with me for all them. Maybe that's why my thoughts are with her tonight... I can't say for sure.
 Really I think maybe her absence affects me so because it is anathema to who I am at the core. I am so infuriatingly loyal, the thought of splitting away from someone I'm close to doesn't enter my mind as a potential option. Maybe that's why even after all this time I can't understand or forget

number one

Never let it be said that I ever did things to look out for number one. There is much I could have done that I did not, punches I pulled. Sometimes in the name of sportsmanship, or chivalry, or honor, or righteousness, or duty. I have omitted many justifiable actions, and committed many altruistic ones, in servitude to these values. I have always believed that God defends the just. We don't need to worry about clawing our way to the top. We put our shoulders to the wheel and let God sort out who gets the credit, that's what I've always said and how I've always tried to live. This, to me, is the truest picture of what 'living by faith' looks like.
 But what can I say now? There is only emptiness. God, it seems, looked out for me not at all. I never wanted to arrive at this place--broken, alone, dejected. My desires are spat upon by heaven itself. Everything I work towards comes to ruin.
 Those who walked, not by self-sacrifice, but in self-fulfillment--they have triumphed over me. Daily I watch them stroll away with the positions, people, and things I myself wanted, but did not sieze. What lesson can be learned from this? How can the sum of life be only "look out for number one"?