.: Spandex Days

Self-delusion begins to wane after so many years of seeing such fruit of our laboring. Things that I thought would be mine in my latter years are not present. Less opportunities and time quickly passing. I am at the age where most my age have already found their niche or at least it appears so looking from the outside. Are they just better actors than I? Perhaps. But it is days like this that makes me want to crawl under the covers and not emerge for days on end.

I want to disappear, cease existing, and vanish without a trace. What difference would it make anyway? The school will find a new music teacher, one that is younger and more energetic, less experienced, but less cynical as well. They will find a good Republican Church goer to replace me. The parents will be happy and the students will learn to love her enthusiastic ways. I am a tired has been.

The best years of my life have come and gone. I only wish I had known they were going to be my best years when I was having them. Perhaps I would have taken more pictures or written about them. But now, I have no hope of going to the Utrecht Blues Festival. I have no connections of my own. I have no hope of owning a home near a river and retire among the trees. My hopes for a Doctorate are waning as my energy drains from me in still having the debt to pay for my Masters. I would not work long enough in this life in order to pay them both off. And with no home, no new car, and no hope of bettering my lifestyle makes me feel as though I am nothing more than a burden and extra baggage. Why would anyone be stupid enough to want to help me or love me?

I've been a loser most of my life and will continue to be so. It's just what I was born to do. As hard as I have tried, nothing ever works out favorably in a long-term way for me. Ever.

I have no home of my own, no dog with which to take walks. My walks are few and far between anyway, because I get tired of being alone. Yet, even when I am with others, the disconnection and loneliness remain. I am a soul in a glass bubble and the air is growing less pleasing. I have contaminated myself. My thoughts spin to a point of no return. It is best that I see this and stop fooling myself.

I don't believe that anything will get better and I will not be disappointed. I will accept my plain, unadorned, unloved self and make the best of it. Even if it means watching movies by myself, going to the park by myself, eating my meals, by myself, living alone in a world isolated from all the ones living outside of my bubble. I will be a window shopper in reverse. I will be the one that smiles at another's joy and not be noticed. I will blend in and not speak and watch my days slowing leave me as they join the carcasses of dreams never known.

I will keep my thoughts to myself. And when asked what I need or what I want or what I see or how I feel, I will say, never mind about that. How are you? What do you see and feel and hear? Tell me what it is like to have dreams come true. Tell me what love is like and how wonderful it is to have known success. Tell me how you show love for yourself. What is it like? How did you manage that? Have you always made good choices? Do you have someone to share your life with? Does everything matter to you? Because I once knew that and have forgotten what it feels like. Will you remind me? No, you are too busy. That's all right. Go now and have a good life. I will die here someday and you will not remember me. I will have a pauper's grave.

These are the days that prepare my dirges of tomorrow. I will not lie down yet, but will stand and pretend that I am still a player. But in my heart, I know the dirge will be played for me all too soon. What have I done that I will leave behind? There are so few things; it is pitiful and embarrassing to think about.

As a youth, I had dreams. Things seemed simpler and I believed that I had been born to do something great. But poor choices left me feeling so much more vulnerable to ridicule and my eyes were turned in different directions, so much so, that at times I thought my head would spin off of my body. I don't like failure, but failure has become a friend of mine. He forced himself on me. I have been raped repeatedly by failure.

He proved to me that even with great effort and hard work, you can fail.

Do I dare try to fight again? I can say with more conviction than ever before, that I am growing weary and do not want to fight any longer. I may choose to lie in the bed of my heart and become an observer of those who make good choices and take the chances necessary to gain respect and fortune and companionship. I will watch them as though I would watch a movie. I will let those scenes entertain me until the dirt falls on my face and the flowers placed on my grave begin to wilt.