Die Alone

“Die. Alone.”

Slurred advice

given to me by a drunken

mid-forties engineer

while I’m freezing

at my roommates company holiday party.

Strangely somber

(unsolicited) advice

from a Santa hat wearing guy

who

judging by the three empty glasses in front of him

had plenty more to say on the matter.

Against my better

still sober judgement

I decide fuck it

this should be entertaining

and I ask drunken Gandhi

“what do you mean?”

He says

into the dregs of drink number four

again

“Die. Alone.”

but what he said next

would plague every decision I made from that day forward.

A weighted pause

before an almost whispered exodus

of pain riddled understanding

he said to me

“die alone,

before you settle.

Never settle.”

Words probably printed on some inspiring

bullshit poster

hanging above your unmade bed at home

never

have these words wrung home

as much as they did

coming from a man

searching for a silver lining

at the bottom of a cheap bar glass.

Eyes haunted

by a failed marriage

littered with warning signs.

He said

“you

have fucking WORTH.

But if you let someone else define the amount of it

you will always be a glass of half empty

shitty whiskey

waiting

like some accessory on The Price Is Right

for someone to guess what that worth might be.

He said you’ll always be running

chasing

some version of the future you can see coming

but can’t quite reach.

Because you stopped to rest

in a city called

“Well At Least I’m Not Alone Anymore”

and decided that “it didn’t quite fit for shit

but it’ll do.”

You settled.

You said you never would.

But you settled.

You shot for the moon

so you could at least land among the starts

but the stars

aren’t the fucking moon!

They’re just burning gas

and chances are

they’re dead anyway.”

He said “I’m sorry kid

this life

ain’t gonna be rose buds and Cheers

but that’s no excuse

for taking the road

that doesn’t lead to overcoming your fears.”

He said, “I knew it was wrong.

That we didn’t fit together

like Nintendo game cartridges

in Playstation disc slots

we weren’t apples and oranges

we were stagnant rivers and spilled oil.

We didn’t compliment each other

only took two problematic beings

and made them worse.

But I thought

if I could build up a dam tall enough

we could at least keep our mess contained.

That with time,

we could sift through the bullshit

and find meaning.

But I found

that when you build your walls up with excuses

there will always be cracks

waiting

to be filled by the shit that’s really missing.

When you don’t know who you are

you find yourself saying things like

‘She’s not that bright

but hey she’s easy on the eyes.’

‘He’s not that romantic,

but at least he’s not violent”

He said “when you find yourself making a list of pros and cons

ask yourself

“am I still on my way to the moon

or am I just playing around with an old flame?”

I didn’t know what to say.

To take back the hundreds of times he must have asked himself

“who am I

to want more than this?”

So I just said

“I’m sorry.

Love

can be a tragedy.”

He said, “she was never trying to hurt me

she was simply being who she could be around me.

I hurt myself

by thinking that if I commit to an script

with an actress I knew didn’t fit

that the ending would somehow be different.

Kid

you only get on shot at this

and I know

I may seem like a drunken mess

but I know the difference

between good enough

and true happiness.

Don’t wait for a divorce to teach you this.

You have WORTH kid

but you have to find it for yourself.

Otherwise

you wind up an exhausted engineer

forty years closer to the grave than when you started

fucking freezing your balls off

at some shitty holiday party

that settled.

Never settle.”

Well I still didn’t know what to say

so into the silence

I just said “thanks

can I get you another drink?”