My oldest friend whom I’ve known since we were in third grade is getting married to a wonderful woman sometime in 2008, and I can’t help but marvel. It seems like it was just last week we were playing Wing Commander II and listening to the Cure, the Smiths, Soft Cell, and Front 242, or walking up that godforsaken hill while playing some weird word game. There were all those hours spent in front of the Commodore 64 and the 8-bit Nintendo. There was Robotech. Voltron. Bastketball in my backyard. Junior high football. Watching movies at the AMC in Burbank. I could stop and reminisce for hours on end, and my memories may be astray. But it all goes by so fast.

It has been a year already since hope skittered across the ice in my heart, leaving as quickly as she came, or so it seemed. I lose track too easily. The hours melt into the days. The days quickly become weeks. Each time it hurts less, and I worry about that. It’s like frostbite. Or gangrene. When you stop feeling anything, when your toes are numb, that’s when you’re in trouble. But I won’t let that worry me too much. As Charles Bukowski said, “If you don’t have much soul left and you know it, you still got soul.” The days fade into twilight, then come alive again with the dawn.

How is it that a simple smile can make my soul roil? Knowing it means nothing, and trying to let it lie still. But in the suffocating, claustrophobic depths of my soul, there is still a part of me I haven’t killed yet that hopes beyond all hope.

That way lies folly. But still.

We spin around on this patch of soil, this little ball of clay that we call a planet, day in and day out. Each breath I take leads me closer to the grave. But I grow weary with the journey.

Will there be a day where I can stare out to the horizon from some lofty summit with my true love beside me, and think to myself, how far I’ve come! Will there be a day that is not a desperate clawing struggle to keep the shadows from dragging me down back into the darkness, where I’m not climbing with all my strength, all my might, for mere survival? Where I’m not gasping for air to breathe?

I just want a place where I can lie down and be still. Where I can rest and set aside this weary burden that is my soul, if only for a moment. Just one single moment of tranquility. Just an instant of time, where my mind is free from all care and worry.

Just once.

If I just had one single memory of joy untouched by grief, then I might not suffer so. But everything that I touch seems to crumble and fade, and the sorrows outweigh the happiness.