You urge me to remember, urge me to be free. You beckon me unto you, calling for a dream. I read your earnest words, hear your true belief. I see your lonely quest, feel your impassioned stare.
Do you realize you no longer know me? Admittedly, I no longer know myself. Sand from the falling glass has scoured my bones and the marrow is dry within. There is no replenishment, no new cells to divide. While rebirth may lie beyond the horizon, stagnant sterility festers inside.
I followed a course long ago, one I did not chart but blindly trod. Promises of wishes fulfilled left me naught but an empty vessel, scarred for all to see. The gods and demons I played chess with scattered from my mind. The fancies felt in the stirring winds have all but fled from my eyes.
Experience has marked me, as it does all that live and learn. Foreign shores marked my mind, stripping the American veneer away. Submersed in toil, fantasy became a mere escape. An escape longed for, a different reality I so wanted to be true, but when I cannot reason how to get there, I searched for a closer berth.
Religion promises rewards beyond death, obedience without reason outside the common good. Often preaching members to be superior or the elect, pride in the body seems a mockery of espoused ideals.
You ask me to believe, to say it still is so. I say it may be, but will no more pursue whims I cannot perceive. To believe your dream, that vision I once held, requires quite a leap of faith and all I can see is a chasm with no end.
Yet I do accept you, flawed person to person for the values and qualities each of us hold. A dearer friend I have not had and an inspiration you remain.
Without the light of evidence, a tangible course of action, I elect to stay where I am. My miseries and comforts make a more suitable bed than one I cannot feel. The past still is housed within my head, a darkened orb I contemplate from time to time. I take it out in odd moments of melancholy to remind me of places I never found. The present is a larger, different world, exotic in its own complexity. Even if it is not enough to compel me to stay, at least I can touch its imperfect surfaces.
It is true I live to die, not having made peace with my fate. I still resent a life of work for the benefit of others, still too selfish to worship the ideal of the human race. Enriching others with a bit for me is paltry in the grand scheme and yes, my soul is empty for it. That said, I see no better path, no higher road I desire to tread.
I want no realm, no crown upon my head. I chase no power beyond self determination. I have come to view violence, battle, and other bloody contests as items to be avoided and wonder at my former dreams of going to war. No cause calls to me beyond equality and understanding. Even these I doubt I would fight for. My dreams are of comfort, exploration, and play. My passions dimmed and self directed, my contemplation turns to the mundane wonders of an incredibly complex universe surrounding me.
I travel a course of self destruction, a journey designed to shorten my span. I look for ways to ensure my decades of toil and increasingly failing body are mercifully short. I cannot stand the thought of elderly enfeeblement nor the commission of so much time spent for brief rewards. Lacking the incentive of religion and the responsibility of offspring, I find arguments to prolong my life less than inspiring.
Blunt suicide is not my goal. I have toyed with that so many times, never closing more than gasping breaths and residual pain. No, now I toy with the faint hope of salvation, some miracle saying my old dreams may have some tangible reality through a lottery’s draw. Meanwhile, I tend not to my health so that I flinch at my degraded image in the mirror.
You say you would battle anything in your quest to save me and I feel the true of your words. Know only proof and incentive influence one such as me.
All else aside, thank you for being my friend.
[© 2004 Joseph Wheeler, all rights reserved]