Smile

Chapter One: Nothing

They say that you are responsible for your own happiness, but I don't really see it that way.
So many things in my life have kicked me down over and over again, and everytime I try to be happy it fails.
Maybe you're responsible for your own happiness, but you aren't responsible for the downfall, and that brings me to my personal downfall.
In retrospect, my college graduation was the best day of my life.
I had a degree in sociology now, I finally did something with my life, but it turns out I didn't.
No one hires someone with a degree in sociology.
The next day, I came back to the same run down apartment I had been living in for years.
The 12 story apartment complex in downtown Dirtville seems nice at first, but it's infested with cockroaches, horribly underfunded and worst of all: cramped.
I was trapped, metaphorically and literally, in this beatdown room.
My girlfriend was the only one with a job, but she worked constantly and we never really saw each other unless she got home early.
I was miserable, alone, depressed, and on the last handful of my medication which were the only thing keeping me alive.
What could make me happy? Nothing. Nothing could make me happy again.
I was a dog in a cage, a mouse shredded by the claws of a cat yet still breathing, I was nothing.

As I sat alone in the apartment, I glanced out the window.
Cars flooded the busy streets, rats scurried across the pavement outside and there was this smell of rotten meat that marinated the air.
It was 6 PM, when suddenly there was a knock at the door.
"Dale," my girlfriend, Aubrey, called from the other side of room 608, "There was a shortage of customers at work today, they let me home early."
"That's great, honey!" I replied, admittedly excited to spend the rest of the day with her.
I sat down on the couch with her, as we cuddled up together and watched an old horror flick.
I had become desensitized to the violence on screen, either that or the effects were too old to give off the illusion of reality, but she was still frightened.
The hours went by, and soon enough it was 9 PM, the time that she normally would get home if she didn't leave work early.
"Isn't this great?" Aubrey asked me, smiling as something horrific happened on the screen.
"It is," I responded as a car door slammed outside, "I just wish it would last longer."
At that moment, the door to room 608 swung open, and Aubrey walked inside.
"How was work?" I asked her as she moodily tossed her purse onto the table.
"Same as fucking always," Aubrey stated as she took her coat off, "My boss being a total dick and you not answering my calls. What the hell do you do all day, Dale?"
"I sit here..." I responded truthfully,
"I sit here everyday and pretend you're home."