Lines

Gothic Crisis

I'm not sure when I stopped marking my calendar. I know that once the dates stopped being crossed, I stopped focusing as hard on the number in front of my schedule. It was freeing, a liberation of sorts.

It used to be so compressing, so claustrophobic. I couldn't engage one of my several hobbies on this particular Wednesday, because in 15 hours I would be gearing up for that coming Thursday and its vitriol. A meeting or a flight or a party, a descent into societal madness for a brief dip. A taste of the life I might live were I not more reclusive than a dying rat.

Years of this cycle. Years of marking the calendar. Years of preparing myself day by day for the coming storms in front of me. I thought to myself that it was all necessary because what else was a man to do? If I failed to mark, I might forget. And if I forgot, this tent I loosely call a life, this façade of oilmancy, this display of cards that tells my story, it would all topple. Unceremonious, uninterrupted, unrelenting collapse.

And then one day I stopped.

I'll not lie, I was giddy. I was free, shackles that I didn't know bound my wrists so tightly were now broken away. Distant memories. I finally opened that book. I devoured that film. I called that friend I've been neglecting. Only their voice seemed so distant now, I had wasted too much time. I had entertained vacuous occupational fulfillment in place of true, earnest, platonic love. I couldn't blame them any more than I could blame myself. We were taught to value different things, it's remarkable that I was able to break out of my schemas and find the true path.

A tinge of concern crested over me once the weekend hit as a queer realization entered my mental sea; what if I was too late for most of my friends? Surely I had some left. I had neglected almost all of them truthfully. I began making calls. And like a counter ticking to my doom, I counted down the names. They were all busy, or full up, or just not convinced of my epiphany.

"You've been gone for years, mate. What changed?"

"Nothing!" I return, hopeful and eager to win back their favor. But they never quite buy it.

No matter, I push on. Many books, many films, many games of tennis with the passing challenger. And in this I made new friends, entertained new arrangements, and finally circulated the path that mixed all facets of life I needed. Occupational stasis (I would not be winning over any new favor but I wouldn't be losing it either), recreational breadth, social exploration. Pillars of a life, summed into three bits of phrase. Odd, a bit existential and overwhelming if I dwell, but I shan't.

A few years drip by this way. My social circle has now bloomed into something resembling a healthy, extroverted life. But very odd indeed, the reclusive rat reared its head again. I thought maybe the stress and load of constant work odysseys made me that way, I thought I had left it behind to pursue the newcomers in my book of names. But alas, like an open window in a blizzard, the cold seeps in. Frigid and gripping, I am rooted. I let the phone ring, I let plans quietly slide away, my eyes burn as sleep does not come for me too as the war in my mind wages.

"We'll have to do something some other time, I'm sorry. Something's simply come up."

"No worries, just call us when you're free! Cathy has been dying for another game night. You know how she gets-"

"Yes, of course. I'll talk soon and my regards of course to Catherine."

The phone clicks, and I breathe again.

A few more years, I wouldn't be getting that game night it seems. Like dark tendrils of dismay, I can't shake the reclusion. I haven't left the house save for necessities for months. My reclaimed stomping ground of the tennis courts go free to other strangers. They hold a throne of a dead king, a dead god, whose crown is now rusted and dull. The crags upon my face sink deeper by day, the bags beneath my eyes darken ever more.

My eyes dart around with every noise, I've run out of books and films, I've run out of anything save avoidance. Every pitter and patter need be accounted for, else I believe it is someone breaking in. Daring to look upon the forgotten man. 

"Go away!" I shout, but only the winds against the shutters answer.

Shambling to my bed once again, I catch myself in the mirror. Wispy, gray strands protrude from my head like I've ran through a spider's dear webbing. I'm so caught off guard by the countenance I rub at my head to brush away the wisps. I stammer a chuckle at my foolishness. How many years has it been? At last I grab the phone and shakily dial a number I'm positive I remember.

A voice I don't recall answers. I struggle to get to the point before finally muttering out the question: "What year is it?"

"...Sir?"

"Just, I'm feeling a bit under the weather. Could you be a dear and clarify this feverish and feeble mind?" 

"Ah of course love," they respond. I nod and almost smile at their kindness before I hear the year crash into my ear.

I am ten years off what I believe it should be. Ten whole years unaccounted for. Or perhaps, lost to the slurry of mediocrity I've lived. There's no fathomable way it must be a mistake. I thank them for their time and hang up swiftly before dialing again.

The voice, again, unfamiliar. And again, they confirm the number.

Another.

Another again.

They all confirm it. Time is liquid, I have lost my grip of it, I see it falling between my fingers like trying to hold water or sand. But I didn't realize just how far it went, just how fast it fell.

Was it the calendar? No, it couldn't be.

I run over to my desk where the dusty pages still stay, stabbed into the wood. I kept it there for posterity. And the markings appear to make a face that does laugh at my folly.

"Fool, in trying to escape me you doomed yourself to the inescapability of what I tried so hard to keep away" I hear it say.

I can only shake my head.

Finally, I make my way back to my bed and collapse against it in a heap. Upon hitting the pillow and feeling what feels like the first comfort in centuries, I sob uncontrollably.

What is this madness, time? What is this disease we call life?

It's unbecoming of our stature, it's unheralded by anything we can comprehend, it is so trite and yet so burdensome. How are we to live these lives, these puppet acts of occupational theater, of social dancing and eldritch ignorance of our own true happiness? I dare any one soul to assert that life has no purpose beyond what one can attain in ambition. I may have run out of books, but that is only the finite store I could find. If I had access to all of them, I could read every second of every day, only stopping briefly to make sure I eat and drink and sleep, and I would not finish even a fragment of it all. And throw in my love of film, and what is the cocktail of time to make then?

My tears stain the pillow, it deserves better than my sorrows, than this blubbering mess.

So many people I didn't see to the end, so many paths I never let flourish. And I have only unreliable memories, ghosts and trickery of my mind to further carry out the façade that I lived a life. That I was here.

But I wasn't really here.

I wasn't really here at all. It was all just pageantry. Theatrics. Foolhardy bellowing of a specter.

I fall asleep at last, and dream of only myself screaming.