Watch the World Fly By

It’s late in the day right now, must be close to noon or maybe two-thirty as I wake up and stare at the ceiling in the dark of my room. I think about the vastness of people, their thoughts and ideas, their experiences and memories. All of the potential of a single person to influence others around them and push those decisions into the future. Just, in general, all of the social connections that people make day-to-day with each other, crafting the intricate web of interdependence in society at large. I’m not one of those people. Not only am I such a useless and specific mix of traits that no one but myself could possibly fathom relating to me, but even if someone did I swear that I would fail and somehow sabotage that relationship, as if I were a soldier on some forlorn battlefield long ago and shot the first vaguely human shape coming out of the smoke left by the artillery bombardments of no mans land not realizing until it’s far too late that it was the only friend I’ve ever had in the trenches. Sitting up I look around the apartment I live in and the thought crosses my mind that I had planned to spend my remaining years here, dying of old age and stiff joints. Although I would’ve already considered myself dead, but, as I can only perceive time in a linear fashion I still have to wait for that time to arrive.

Traipsing past the piles of clothes on my floor, along with beanbags and comfy blankets I think back to when I first moved in and thought the apartment always seemed too perfect. It had a great view of the surrounding buildings and nearby highway. I always expected that one day someone would leave a note on the door that made sure I knew that they were going to start building a train system just outside my window. I can almost hear it now, years of my life would be engulfed in the cacophony of yelling and drills and hammers on metal until one fateful day the construction would cease. Then and only then would I remember that they were building an elevated railroad and now my once perfect apartment is forcibly vibrated like a paint shaker by the passing of the five o'clock express. From that point onwards my life would be trains, trains in lieu of days and months, trains would worm their way in and become an intrinsic part of my identity, everything for me would be trains. But luckily that hasn't happened.

I haven’t properly introduced myself, but I don’t plan to. I’m just a forgettable person, so I don’t tend to bother with introductions.

I'm hungry, I'm always hungry when I wake up. Checking the fridge I open the takeout box and find a day old bacon cheeseburger from a mom-and-pop shop that delivers. Putting it in the microwave and quick-starting it by pressing the button with the number one, I think about how the styrofoam box definitely isn't supposed to be heated like this, but it’s too late now, I was always going to fall victim to the microplastics sooner or later. I look towards the main room, where my phone sits on a wireless charger next to my computer. It doesn't light up with new messages like I hope.

I would hardly make an impact on someone so much that they’d want to talk to me. Not even a neuron in their brain would recognize that I’ve said a word, but it's always been like that and I’ve grown used to it. So much is decided for us on this planet based on millions of decisions that millions of people made millions of years ago long before any of us filled our lungs with our first breath of stale hospital air. Most of us would like to think that what we can control is what kind of person we are, and yet even that is decided for us as well. The actions of our parents are imprinted upon us from birth, mimicking what they do teaches us what we are. And what I am is better unseen and unheard, a bother, something to be shooed away and left in a dark room illuminated by the static of a screen. I can’t complain, the evolution of the screen has been steadily growing with me, and unlike me, it's only been getting better. I’ve been on my own for a while, at least since I was seventeen, I think, as such living on my own I tend to save a lot of money on my energy bills relative to some of the people I talk to online, since my eyes have adapted to the absence of light, other than that from my computer monitors. The power button on my computer, the keys, and the mouse are all cold to the touch, it’s been hours since someone has touched them…they must be lonely.

Through those monitors I see the world, I see the thoughts and emotions that people on the internet have, and they're all terrible people. I can’t help but continue to interact with them, because it’s all I have. Between bites of my burger I click through the grocery store website, wondering if I’ll purchase anything more than the same things I always choose. I reorder the same thing I did before. These days I only shop somewhere if I can get it delivered to my doorstep, years ago I used to only leave my domicile for quick short bursts when I absolutely needed something I didn’t have. The supermarket became the only time I would talk to a real human, but as much as it meant nothing it also meant everything. Watching everyone’s gaze leering at me and shifting away as soon as I would turn only to feel them boring into my back again was a bit much for me. Most of the whispers I would hear from people were not kind to my appearance, and I don’t blame them, I hardly take proper care of myself but I’m healthy enough to avoid doctor visits in a clinic. But at this point that’s the only time I assume they’re telling the truth, the people I mean, everyone lies constantly unless they’re insulting you, those are people telling you how they really feel in any kind of unfiltered sense, unless drunk I suppose. Drunk people don’t have the mental capacity to lie most of the time. But now with the multitude of services available to me that deliver those things that I would make quick trips for, I never really need to leave my house, save for the times when I need to send trash down the chute.

Generally it's a whole thought process of feeling like there's not a point to doing anything because I'm such a terrible person, or the world is filled with terrible people. Maybe I’ve got a bad sample size, although the internet is the most perfect forum in the modern world. No one is properly concerned with pleasantries and the anonymity really makes it easy for us all to speak our mind truthfully. I double and triple check everything I see related to the news cycle and even the reporting outside of the conglomerate media and still I’ve yet to see a person who tries their hardest to make life on this planet easier for even one person other than themselves. It may be hypocritical of me to judge people like that, but to speak plainly: I accepted a long time ago that I was working below my ability. The potential was there but everything I could find some crumb of pride in was just the best of a bad menu because someone, be it myself or some unfathomable ancestor of mine, chose poorly. I could've been good, but I blew it. And the problem is that I care, I care so much and I wish desperately that I didn’t. I can’t pretend that I don’t care, nobody has ever wanted anything more than I want the things I don’t have.

Discordant thoughts consume my mind as I hopelessly scroll endlessly on social media, only occasionally checking the messages from my emotionally close, yet physically distant friends across the U.S. until I hear the noise that signifies that my neighbor in the unit across the hall from me has returned from the bar. Laugher from him and laughter from an unknown woman pierces straight through the static and into my sense of self. Keith, I think my neighbor’s name is, is better than me in every way. Everything that I lack, he has in spades, though this goes both ways. He has what I want, an extensive social life, to return home every weekend with another beautiful woman on my arm, a handsome face, an athletic body, and a well maintained apartment. But he and I occupy very different ecological niches. Statistically someone has to be the old man who dies alone in their house and isn't found until weeks later, and by then their viscera and death liquids have already soaked into the floorboards. Normally I’d muse that humans are the only form of life on Earth with the ability to defy nature and bend it to our will, mainly to our detriment just as much as to our benefit. All other animals are locked into the natural balance of the ecosystem, but humans opt out of such trivialities. But in this instance, staring through my peephole and faced with the apex of society I can’t help but feel out of my depth.

Days pass just like this, I sit physically alone in my apartment, the lights from the streets and the other buildings on the street are the only things that peek through my blinds, casting their sharp pillars of light across my floors. The daytime sun isn't strong enough for something like that, or maybe it's just because I happen to be in the perfect unit where the shadows from other taller complexes cast just over my own windows so as to shield me from the rays. There is some solace gained from the small community of people I call my friends. The handful of them are spread out across the country and luckily for me none of them live in my city, so I’m not obligated to leave my abode…ever really.

As fate would have it, late one night when I was feeling particularly down and I forgot to re-order my medication, I gathered my trash and stepped out into the fluorescent lit hallway, hearing footsteps but knowing I was off my meds tonight I brushed it off, it’s not the first time I’ve hallucinated them. But this time it was an actual person. I have no clue why, I time my trash delivery specifically when no real person would be awake during these hours in order to avoid having to converse with the vapid and cruel people of the world outside my room. But the footsteps had drawn too close, and while I always could have dropped my trash on the hall floor and dashed back inside my safe zone I was paralyzed with the knowledge that I was wrong, someone was awake and returning home at this hour. Frozen by my feet in place, my body shaking and anticipating what kind of person would come around the corner.

As they rounded the corner and I realized that it was Keith, I think his name is, some polymerization of relief and embarrassment washed over me, as if I had suddenly woken up in a crowded classroom in nothing but my underwear until noticing that I was at least also wearing shoes and socks.

“Heyoo. You’re the mysterious neighbor that no one ever sees, guess I’ve got some different kind of luck tonight.” He said to me, a slight chuckle leaving his lips as the words trailed. His posture was slouched, rather I’d describe it as though he forgot that his bones were meant to give him a shape that allowed him to stand up without the assistance of the nearby wall, which he heavily leaned into.

“Is that so?” I said, immediately regretting that I replied, inviting further conversation. When he spoke again I found myself thinking that I should just go about my business and ignore him, but somehow my disdain for the rudeness of people compelled me to be polite.

“You wanna know something, I should take you out to some kind of party or banging club one of these days.” He said, sliding down the wall until his bottom landed on the floor.

“Nights, I think. Most social gatherings like what you describe tend to happen after the sun goes down.”

He laughed, and then as he fumbled with his keys said, “Yeah I think you’ll be a big hit. Has to be better than holing up in your apartment all the time, right?”

“Well, no. In there I can do whatever I want, not beholden to the societal conventions and whims of the vacuous people that would surround me, were I at one of those parties or clubs.”

“Who’s stopping you from doing what you want out there? Maybe don’t get naked in public but I thinks that you are limiting yourself in a…what's a big word…arbitraridy way…nailed it. Love to stayed and chat but, I gotta…hit the hay. Stairs really took it out of me. I can already tell tomorrow’s hangover is gonna be legendary”

I stayed silent but waved goodbye. The interaction consumed my mind all night. Late in the night, or early in the morning if you'd prefer since it was closer to three or four in the morning, I laid across my beanbag chair, arched in a strange way, thinking.

That was it, I thought, the door to normalcy swinging open and shining with a golden, well more like a yellowish-white, fluorescent glow. I argued with myself for a while but came to the conclusion that I’d rather not have that door hit me in the ass and shut behind me, locking me down into my tomb. A disruption to my “routine” for one night should be good for me. With my mind made up, I planned to catch my neighbor, Keith, in the halls once more soon to solidify those plans. I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep, important to note I was still laying arched over the beanbag chair at this moment.