Lament: A Fictional Short Story
My home is by the ocean now. I always wanted to live near the ocean. It seemed to me that my emptiness, my loneliness would be fixed by the fullness of the ocean. All the rivers run into the sea, and because of that I can see that it is never empty. I once wanted to be like that; to never be empty, lonely, broken. You see, I live here because the sea is now my only friend and I am all alone.
As I said, I used to flee from the loneliness. A quiet room would create a disquiet within me, driving me into the comfort of friends. But sometimes I didn’t find comfort. I now perceive this: we look for comfort in those stronger than we are, but I was stronger than them all. How can you find comfort in the weak who have greater need of you than you of them? Even the most virtuous of men haven’t the power to heal broken hearts or comfort others; I believe that now.
Those in my world used to tell me that in friendship and romance I could be fulfilled. They used to say that it was in possessions or money that I would find meaning and I believed them then, too. But then, they said it was in friends because that sounded more righteous, less shallow. The appearance of really caring is quite important to the bourgeoisie; really, the appearance of anything good is more important than its actual presence. Often when you do well, no one even notices. If you just look good, then notice or not, there was never an investment of energy, strength, or effort in the first place. Actually I used to believe that, too. There are a lot of things I believed that have failed me. They’re so far away and unimportant to me that I don’t even care to recall them, now or ever again.
I am an old man. My skin is wrinkled whereas it used to be young and smooth, tan and handsome. There was a time when women loved me and I loved them. (I was quite the Dorian Grey then, wasn’t I? At times there was not a single woman whom I didn’t have the power to say no to. By the world’s standards, I bore every characteristic that a successful person required; and I was successful. I didn’t do it for myself, however. I now know that I did it for the satisfaction of being recognized as a great person, as if in the recognition of the weak, the strong could find fulfillment; but they cannot.
When I was first married, my life was going in the right direction. I was a student working for my degree in literature. An innocent lad, I wanted to write stories and maybe teach a class or two on the side. In my dreams I could see myself sitting in a tall house by the ocean as I wrote my next book, watching the waves crash over the stormy sea as I dreamed of lands far away and then wrote about them. That was my dream.
My wife had dreams of her own. Her name was Dina and she was a good person, but I never really knew romance with her. Marrying her was a smart move, because she was such a wonderful person. I never let love lead me, I just used my head, and for a year I was in bliss, enjoying her sexual comfort as I pleased, but I never saw her eyes, looking far away, wanting someone to really desire her, and that person wasn’t me. Instead, I found out when it was too late that she was having an affair with one of my teachers, my teacher for god’s sake!
When I found out, I tore our apartment to pieces and I let out everything that was inside of me. And then after I told her to leave, I locked the door and pulled out my .35 pistol and just cried. I wept like a child, but it was more out of pity for myself than for what I had done to drive her away. I was broken and bitter at her, but being the introspective person that I am, I reasoned it aside and in my heart I let her go. I didn’t even try. This thought alone has left me brokenhearted, wounded, and regretful. I just told myself that it would be better this way, that she wasn’t nearly as virtuous as I thought she was. I had been wrong. I know that now. I was the one that was wrong. She wanted me, but I didn’t care. I was too involved in myself. The old man that I am, looking back, I wish to God that I had tried to do something: anything! I hate myself for my lack of effort more than any other thing I ever did wrong. It was wrong for me to not even try. Oh, her memory is sweet, and I miss watching her lie there, staring at me, waiting for me to look at her and connect. I can still see her lying on that blanket in the park, the sky a darkening blue-purple hue brought on by the setting sun, contrasting with the dark green of the grass, the images still so vivid, only more romantic now.
Caroline was next, and our marriage was good. I thought I’d learned my lessons. I told her I was young when I married Dina and because of that I was allotted forgiveness for whatever mistakes I thought I’d made. Caroline believed me, and I almost did too. She wasn’t what I would call a good person, but I kind of liked that. You see when Dina left, I said goodbye to virtue. I said goodbye to Lewis and Schaeffer and the reasonable clarity they spoke with. I embraced the existentialism, the writings of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. I read Bertrand Russell too, even though I truly thought he was a fool. I guess I just used his idiotic writings to somehow justify the way I decided I wanted to be.
I said goodbye to the blue skies and the comfort long ago. I instead saw the skies and somehow I tried to tell myself that there is no one there. No one heard my prayers, no one saw me, and when I was by myself outdoors, in my house, in my car; anywhere. I was utterly all alone and that world was my own self-indulgent playground. Of course, once again, I was wrong, as usual. But how do you convince an impetuous man who is practically just a kid that he doesn’t see the big picture? You can’t, the wisdom just has to come to him in its own time. There are some things that people just decide for themselves, and I had already decided before I had any reasons that God did not and would not exist.
When Dina left, I was a new man. But Caroline would be different. She wanted to be with me and I decided to try harder this time around to be romantic, to be passionate. What was missing in my last marriage I would give ten-times over. Our marriage lasted eleven years.
Those were glorious days to be alive, I do remember! During the day we would go to the park and walk slowly, hand-in-hand. At night we would get drunk together and lay out in the backyard watching the stars until we were too sleepy to keep our eyes open, and then slowly drag ourselves into bed and we slept until the late hours of the morning.
Five-years into it, she became pregnant. We bought children’s’ toys, moved into a bigger house and made a room for the baby. Caroline was happy to be pregnant, but her eyes (I know this now, but not then) bore deep sadness, a great need. One day in July she came to me and told me that she was “living for God now” and that she wanted me to go to church with her, but I laughed at her and mocked her faith. I was convinced that I would tear her down from this pedestal, this holier-than-thou attitude (I didn’t see her heart or understand her). Every Sunday morning when she awoke for church I would say terrible things to her. I thought I could remind her of all the things she did wrong and why she didn’t deserve to go to church.
I was terrible! And now, I dare-say it, evil. I am sometimes ashamed of myself, but I would give myself even more reason to be ashamed in the coming days. Once September came about, the leaves had fallen from the trees, covering most of the ground in a reddish-brown quilt, and the sky was nearly always dark it seemed. I drew myself back into what I deemed to be a silent, thoughtful, and existentially fruitful period of my life, concerning myself with thoughts of the frailty of life and how man could have invented God. That September proved to me that life indeed was frail. One night a rapping at my door brought me to the pit of agony that I would spend much of my life in. Caroline and our unborn child had been killed in a terrible head-on collision with a semi-trailer. I experienced so much guilt over my torment of her! I never once in those days regretted her decision to be religious, but I really didn’t believe it was true, either. This moment seemed to only confirm my unbelief in any type of god. If such a god did exist, he was the god of deism, setting a world in motion just so he could watch the little people scatter and scream: a type of cosmic experiment.
I now had my dreams a reality. With the life-insurance money, I bought a pleasant home in Northern Maine that overlooked the Atlantic. From my beautiful house, I had the peace that I thought I had searched for and the time to concentrate on my writings. Within a year, I had a publisher for my first book, The Brightest Blonde, but no satisfaction. I had written a sentimental collection of tripe and lyrics that I had written for the pop crowds, but not for myself. I wanted to make money and have the love of the people. And I got all of that. I made number one on all the best-seller lists. People bought my book in droves because the magazines told them to, and the newspapers did whatever the critics in the magazines said. So here were a handful of critics who decided they liked me, and because of that over eight-hundred thousand people bought my book. The ironic thing is that no matter how many people bought my books, I would never have their love, because they did not know me… me and my book for the masses.
No one came with me; no one wanted to. I had been so drawn into my own bitterness that I could no longer talk to my friends without snapping out at them. I selfishly thought that they were going to solve my problems, and thus I stopped listening to their problems. Sometimes I accused them of wanting to take my money. And when I moved, I packed the moving van on my own and had to hire strangers to carry the heavy things. By this time I was growing older, a man in his fifties, my hair graying and my legs aching far more often. I was glad I was doing physically easier work, and I had time to womanize again.
Just as I wrote books for the masses, I communicated with women. I never shared myself, but I charmed them as I could never have imagined earlier in life. I told them wooing words and made them feel special. I would often have sex with them, but they would go home that night, usually, and I would only hear from them, if I called them back. None of them loved me, they just admired my fame, they wanted to be a part of something magical, just like I did. The thing is, I was just as lost as they were. So here I was, a lost and desperate man, lonely in my relationships and utterly and completely empty inside.
And then I decided that I didn’t care if anyone loved me. In my pessimism I knew that relationships did nothing for me. I had so much money from The Brightest Blonde that success didn’t matter anymore. And so, I wrote for months, I locked myself away and only showed myself in public for a bite of steak or the local wine cellar, where I bought my storehouse of luxurious drink. I never bought a bottle for under $100, and I always made certain that it was a dark burgundy, because the bitter taste somehow matched my life. Consuming bottles of wine almost nightly, I took comfort in the foolish luxury of it all; I swam in its fullness and I desperately wanted to drown in its emptiness. I was a drunken, foolishly ignorant and happy man, and my innermost person said that this was a glorious time to be half-alive.
I may have had times of brightness or happiness, but in this place, we all see our past through the glasses that history creates for us. I now see the joys that I experienced in life as nothing more than faux paus, mistakes in life that didn’t belong there. And thus, in my memory, they are erased and glazed over. For me, all of life was hell. I never even tasted heaven, and I never really wanted to; such a decision would have been far too costly, for I have always been my own.
I now live in a downward spiral of lonely desperation. At every moment, I grow more aware that existence does not end and that there is no comfort in sight. I cannot be redeemed, and I cannot be saved. My time of opportunity for that came long ago, and I refuted my need for it then through logical arguments, and they were valid arguments. Somehow, I do the same thing now. It is remarkable that I have the collective ability to even form cogent thoughts in this place from where I now tell this story over and over to myself, day after day. Each day, I wrestle and fight with that One whom I have always despised: for hiding Himself from me, from withholding Himself from me, and for taking away all of the things that I loved in life, but now my life is over. I spend each “day” wrestling and fighting, and I have done so for aeons and ages: possibly millions of ages, at this point, and as I stare ahead of me, I realize that only a second has passed.
There is no one here, and I fear there will never be. I am in a state of infinite loneliness, and exist absolutely alone. There is no time for sleep here, yet there is nothing to do. There is nothing but memories and regrets. My sins no longer haunt me, but instead seem to me as my declaration of liberty from the God who keeps me in this place, never to show His face and never to even show me the damned mercy of a drop of water!
I think over the only things I now have: memories of myself. And so, I run over my life again, as I endure the agony of true loneliness over and over again. I know that this loneliness will never be cured, but perhaps there is a hint of humanity and love in my story. So, I start at the beginning: “My home is by the ocean now. I always wanted to live near the ocean…”