Solitary

Feeling broken; alone; useless. It's hard to feel anything but, at times. It didn't always used to be this way. Or maybe it did. I just don't know anymore. In my youth, I was never needed. I'd walk home from school - where I would spend the vast majority of my day talking to no one - and catch a couple of reruns of some random show... maybe "Who's The Boss?"... maybe "Star Trek: The Next Generation". At just after five, Mom and Dad would get home. Mom would be in a horrible mood every day, without fail, and spend the next hour or so in the kitchen preparing dinner for all of us. Dad would immediately retreat to the TV room every evening after work to play his guitar. It was never admitted, but I'm convinced a big part of this is because he just wanted to avoid Mom's I-haven't-eaten-all-day-and-now-I'm-pissed-at-the-whole-world wrath. He'd just hole-up in the TV room and crank whichever part of whichever song he was learning how to play that day. And since he was practicing, he'd usually put the song part on loop, playing it over and over... sometimes for hours at a time. This, of course, not only annoyed me, but also sent Mom into a deeper fury night after night. She'd stomp angrily down the hall, swing open the TV room door and yell at him to turn the music down... or off altogether. Then she'd huff and stomp back upstairs in a foul mood. This was routinely followed by Dad mumbling something like "bitch" to himself and continuing to play his music... if not louder now.

To avoid this embarrassing circus of a family life, I would spend as much time as I could in the peace of my own room. My room being next to the TV room with all of the music, it wasn't always quiet, but at least it was mine. I mostly just tried to lose myself in video games. They seemed to take me away from all of the drama I wanted nothing to do with. This domestic dynamic seemed to happen nightly. For years. It was like clockwork. And this is what was put into my head. This is what I assumed marriage was; two people who clearly made each other miserable and couldn't stand being around each other. Somehow, I had been relegated to a bargaining chip; a common ground between two factions at war. It might have been easier with the understanding and support of a sibling, but of course that was never in the cards for me. Instead, I would have to deal with the guilt of being the burden of both parties alone. If not for me, they could have just split and easily both gone on to find other partners who actually made them happy. But there I would continue to be... fucking up everything as usual.

Skip ahead a couple of decades...

Here I still am. Continuing to feel like a complete fuck-up. Continuing to feel like everything is my fault. I still feel alone. I still feel like I'm not needed. I still feel like I'm just in the way.

Sometimes I wonder if these are the only things I can feel anymore.