Jim's Day

This is the way you die. Slowly, over many years. You die a little every time you tell
someone you love them. You die every time you check the mail. You die as you work hour after hour at your shitty job. Every moment of every day you are dying, and you know this.

This is the way you die. You die as you lie awake in bed, tired but unable to sleep. Every minute brings you closer to the end of your life.

This is the way you die. Alone and afraid.

You wake up at seven a.m. to the sound of a buzzing alarm clock. You shut it off and sit up. Eyes still only half-open, you stand on unsteady legs, making your way to the bathroom for your morning piss. When finished, you stare at yourself in the mirror over the sink. You turn your head first left, then right, studying your face: hairline, jaw, your eyes. You study your teeth. This is the way you die, spending five minutes staring at your own face in a bathroom mirror. Every minute brings you closer to the end of your life. You know this, because you've told yourself countless times.

When finished examining yourself, you make your way to the living room. Sitting on the couch, you light a cigarette. Bored out of your mind. Every day is like this, every morning spent trying to think of something to do. You can't go back to work, not after knocking three of the boss' teeth out. You're not sure why you did it. It was just something to do. The boss had been talking about something unimportant, you remember that much. You hadn't really been listening; all you heard was a droning voice---no words, just sounds. Suddenly the boss was bleeding from the mouth. The look on his face was one of shock, and you were shocked yourself. You laughed uncontrollably as two co-workers tossed you out the door.

Now you're bored and numb. You take the cigarette from your lips and stare at the burning tip, thinking: Please God, let me feel this. Anything. Just let me feel. As you hold the cigarette over the flesh of your forearm, you think: Please let this hurt. Let it hurt so bad that I cry. Let it hurt so bad that I scream. But when you press the burning cigarette to your flesh, you feel nothing. Like always, nothing. This is the way you die, burning yourself with a cigarette in the hope that you'll feel something, anything to make you feel human. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. Every minute brings you closer to the end of your life.

You have a lot of time to kill now that you don't have a job. You know you should be looking for a new job, that you need find work before your small amount of savings is used up. But you don't care. Somehow it just doesn't matter to you as you walk to an unknown destination. Walking to wherever your feet wish to take you. Wherever you go, that's where you'll be.

Passing strangers on the street you often wonder where they are going.
Sometimes you follow them. Never too close, though; you don't want them to know that they are being followed. Occasionally someone notices, and you quickly change direction. You've often wondered if there is some law against following people for no reason. These days it seems there is a law against everything. This is how you die, following strangers on the street, trying to get a sense of their life because you don't have one of your own.

Today the sidewalks are deserted, there is no one to follow. You will have to find some other way to pass the time, to get a glimpse of life.

When you pass a stranger's house you often have the urge to creep up to a window and peek in. Not in a perverted way, not peeking in someone's bedroom window in the hope of watching them undress. You peek in a living room window to watch a nice little family gathered around the television, or peek in a kitchen window, hoping to see a mother making dinner for her family. Not because you're a pervert, but because you want to see what it's like to be part of a normal family. So you can close your eyes at night and create false memories for yourself. You push out your true memories of your family. Of your alcoholic father whose favorite pastime was kicking you around until you were coughing up blood. Of your cold mother who told you how she wished you'd never been born. Because you'd ruined her life. Just by existing, you'd ruined all her fun. Memories of your brothers who hated you. Of your sister who didn't seem to know you existed.

You lie awake at night pushing those memories out of your mind, erasing them. You
replace them with the mother you saw in the kitchen, the family around the television. There was a boy, but you replace his face with your own face when you were a child. Now this becomes your memory, and it's a part of you. You remember a quiet evening watching television with your family. You remember your mother disappearing into the kitchen, calling out that dinner is ready. You remember how you all sat down at the dinner table as a family, how your mother served dinner with a smile on her face, briefly patting your head as she passed you. You remember a happiness that never existed. You die creating false memories to replace the real ones, because your real memories are too painful. Remembering a family, a house, a town that never existed, because you grew up in a cramped apartment with a family that hated you for no reason. You grew up in a dirty town that you dreamt of leaving. You die remembering things that never were.

You stand alone, staring through the window until it is dark out, until the lights have gone off and the family has gone to bed. You know that they are in there. They are sleeping. Dreaming. No nightmares, no occasional insomnia. You want badly to be in there, to be one of them, to be in a nice soft bed, warm and protected from the world. Safe. This is the way you die, standing outside a stranger's home, wanting to cry but unable to. Every minute brings you closer to the end of your life.

You sit on the edge of your lumpy bed. You stand, pace the room. Restless, so restless. You're tired, but can't get to sleep. You try watching TV, but nothing interests you anymore. You try to eat, but everything tastes the same shade of bland. You're on the edge of the bed again, this time holding something in your left hand. Outside the apartment you can hear traffic on the street. Inside, the bathroom sink is dripping. You are comforted by the weight of the thing in your hand. You think: Please God, let this hurt. Let me feel something, anything. Then in one quick motion you put the gun to your head and pull the trigger. But like always, you feel nothing.

This is the way you die. Alone and afraid.