Just don't leave me alone, he thought. Just don't leave me waiting here for you to return. Don't make me sit and wonder when you're coming back. Don't make me be the one that does all of the hand wrenching, all of the nail biting and nervous breathing. Don't make me, you can't make me. But there he was sitting in an empty room waiting for her to return. How many times had he tried to prevent this very situation. The situation of caring. Heart beating for someone else. Who can know, how can anyone know that every time your heart beats for someone else, their's beats for yours? There is no way of knowing. You have to go on faith or the actions of that other person. You can't read minds can you? Of course you can't, some people can read body language but Jack wasn't someone that could do that.
"You're coming back, right?" He had said half-joking but with an air of seriousness. Was she indeed coming back? How many times had he pushed the worry back and back further into his mind? He would worry and then talk himself out of the worry. He would pick up the game controller and start playing and let the hours pass by. By the time he looked up at the clock he would realize that he had wasted the entire day. He had accomplished nothing. He would turn off the console in disgust and make a half-hearted effort in cleaning up the apartment. The trash would be easy, do that. He would run around collecting all of the garbage from each room adding it to one bigger trash bag. He would run it outside to the dumpster and come back in and look around. Vacuum, that will be easy. He would vacuum for five minutes, not even picking up shoes or pants off the floor, he would go around them. There, that's done. Wipe the counters. A few quick wipes. There, that's good. It looked like he made an effort.
The problem is that it doesn't occur to him until he is in a panic. When he is at ease he is too much at ease where something like effort is too much effort. He'd rather screw around accomplishing nothing until there are so few minutes left in the day he has to cram it all in, all the cleaning in a last ditch effort of sweat. When she would come home the room had the illusion that it had been cleaned, that he had been trying hard all day long to make the place nice for them. In reality he didn't give a shit. Does that mean if he was alone he would live in filth? He didn't know, that's why he needed her to always return.
Do not leave me alone. He needed just enough to live each day when he was alone. He needed about ten dollars a day. He could live off of that. A few donuts here and a few sandwiches there. He could live on cans of chili and ravioli. He had done it before but he didn't want to do that again. To sit still in that place, to not do anything but feel air on the hair of his arms. He could do that. He could be nothing but a tree. He could blow in the wind. Where was the effort in that? Did a tree have to think about creating oxygen or did it help the world just by being? Why couldn't he do that? If he were just to be, to just stand there and sway in the wind, he would be a lunatic. A loser with no hope for any future of any kind. Didn't he want to accomplish things? Of course he did. He just didn't know how.
How do you accomplish things? Is it as simple as doing them?There were times in the past when he stood and breathed the air outside and the way things felt, the slight chill made him think about his childhood, a different time and a different place. If only he could go there now. When he was a child he could walk a few miles up the road and find different places he could drift to. He could play games at an arcade with the few quarters he had in his pocket. He could buy ice cream at a local drug store for thirty five cents. He could do whatever he wanted. He chose that day to sit on the corner and watch the cars go by. A purple bug, a red sports car, a white van. He was only existing in this place and watching it happen. Watching it pass him by.
"It's because it isn't real." He says to no one. "Wasn't real." This place is an illusion meant to make him feel alive.
To be a tree, leaning and green.
