Beginnings and Ends

Denny looked around his room, the same room he'd been living out of for years, and saw something he never saw before: failure. He didn't live a horrible existence. No, but it was wasted. He made good money, but spent it on nothing. The last time he'd been on a vacation was years ago. He was not a workaholic, relished his free time, but had nothing to show for it.

Five years, he'd been there. At first, it was a compromise. He would live and work there because a man needs to make money. Graduate school wasn't for him. God knows he had enough of classroom stress for four years already. Kindergarten, grade school, junior high, and high school were easy, a walk in the park, but college was different. He couldn't skate by and still ace everything. He took on a difficult major and to his surprise, it was difficult. He also found he had no love for it, but by then it was--or at least it seemed to be--too late.

When he graduated, he got one job offer and it wasn't a bad one. If he accepted it, he would move five hundred miles away from home to a new state. It was either than or stay home and try to find another job. But it would mean becoming a burden on his mother and that didn't sit right with him when he had a job offer staring him in the face.

So, he took that job, and five years later he was still there even though the his deadline for finding new employment expired 2 years earlier. It was this sense of temporary permanence that kept him in limbo. He rented a room in a house when he could afford better. He let broken down boxes and other items accumulate, with the notion that he would need them all soon when he moved. He built very little personal connections because who needed them when you were only there short term? Who needed roots?

Five years later, he looked around at his room and saw it unchanged from when he came. He took account of his life and saw it unchanged except for a larger bank account. The things that mattered didn't change. There was no one in his life. He'd gotten used to it, having just a few friends, going home every couple of months, watching old friendships back home weakening. He was a ship with no anchor, or rather a ship that refused to set anchor because it felt it would leave port at any moment. But there is no plan, no new destination. In truth, when he looked closely at himself, a bitter reality emerged. He was lonely. He had gone through the motions for too long and he now feared it was too late to get back on track.

In elementary school, teachers asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up. No one really had any clue, not really, but they had a general time line. In Denny's time line, he should have already been engaged, or at least in a serious relationship. He should have been in a job he loved, or at least cared about. He would not be spending most of his free time home alone doing nothing even though he claimed that was what he wanted. If someone asked him now what he wanted to do when he grew up, he would stare at them and not know what to say. If someone told his young grade school self what he's become, the younger version of himself might come up to him and smack him on the head and tell him to snap out of it, that he was ruining his life.

Denny looked around his room and these thoughts swirled in his head, trying to coalesce into some original solution. But he could see none. He had to look for it. He packed up some things, loaded the car, and drove. With no destination.