Sun Diet

Memories of Misery Part 1

I don't need to explain anything. There's no one that cares to ask.

I don't know if my choices matter to someone else. Maybe they do, or did. I really don't think so. How do we collectively, as a species, convince ourselves that everyone cares about everything about everyone?

I feel my phone go off in my pocket.

I love you.-Ellie

That'd be something.

I love you too is what I respond.

It's ridiculous. I am ridiculous. Another lie. Lies are easy, I avoided them for so much of my life. Being honest, being morally responsible, takes effort. A literal physical, guttural effort sometimes. When you can avoid it in its entirety, It feels foolish. What I should say is I live in the past, Ellie. I live in a still frame. My brain remains in one certain place. Or maybe I would let my words, my truth dig even further, say I have been reminiscing on what it is like to be punched in the face, Ellie. Getting hit right in the fucking face, still able to feel the guy's knuckles on my cheekbone. And I remember what it felt like when it's over. I thought it was kind of funny how it just ends, and then what?

Ellie doesn't love me.

My wife is dead. Definitely a contributing factor as to why she may feel that way. An unexpected result of death.

I had barely talked to anyone before she passed, now I talk to everyone it seems like. A hellish lifestyle.

I'm unrecoverable. I will never come back from this feeling. My insides are burning, just fucking kill me.

A silent mantra I repeat to relax. Usually does the trick. I have very few tricks these days, I don't know what happened. Another message comes through.

Want me to come over?-Ellie

My heart does not stretch. My soul is as rigid as steel, I know that now. This is something I had to learn. Longing is not love. It is a common belief that the love we have for someone can stretch the boundaries of life. Understandably so, in my opinion. People have always strived to break certain boundaries, good or bad. But ultimately, this is a horrific lie, and a terrible misunderstanding of what love is. Love isn't something that can exist only within ourselves. It's not something as easy as holding on to memories. It's closer to someone bleeding out in an alleyway with a knife in their stomach. Without someone to inflict it on, violence does not exist. Love is no different. When someone ceases to exist, we cannot love them. What we know as love is a connection, the intersection of a hand and skull. You cannot fight a ghost, you cannot love one all the same. Everything after, whatever is after, is just make believe.

Yes. I replied.

What else have I learned?

If I walk back and forth in this room just over two hundred times, I walk a mile. That's the most significant piece of information I have gained over the last year. It took a pitiful amount of time to calculate that number. I'm not even sure if it's right, but it doesn't matter. It is not like I am counting as I pace the length of my living quarters. I don't count. I don't talk. I don't cry, not anymore since I realized my aunt and uncle could hear it from the living room. I just go back and forth like I'm on a track. I walk for hours sometimes, wall to wall. To say it out loud sounds maddening but it's not. After the first few months my legs hardened up to stone, I barely feel it at all now. Afterall, there isn't much else to do within the confines of this space.

There's a knock at the door, "You want noodles?"

"No."

"Alright, did you eat already?"