I Looked into the Mirror.
Through all of my job searches, life failures, and desperate attempts to manipulate the world according to my flimsy attempts to “do better,” I recognized that my life was starting to fall apart around me.
My friends from various jobs disappeared with every position. My high school friends had dipped their toes in the water of friendship and gotten scorched. I tossed Gregg around like a baseball, not really wanting to be alone but not wanting a liar in my life. And Gregg’s friends – including Barry and Kim, who lived next door – were part of what I considered to be the Loser Clearance Bin.
So once again, I was completely and utterly alone – just like I’d been in Larry’s world. Except this time, I’d created the life I thought I wanted. With no responsibilities, I had a very flexible schedule and I used all of my free time – which was all of my time – to drink and do drugs.
I spent a lot of time at the dark bar at the end of the street – the one that served me my first drink after months without any alcohol. The one with the broken screen door and the tiny glass block window glowing through the solid brick wall. The one with a handful of bar stools and a jukebox in the corner. The one with no name, no theme, no identity, no way to distinguish it from any other bar in the entire world.
I drank with people who, like me, drank solely to escape reality.
At this bar, no one talked about current events, about politics, about the weather, about their families. No one talked about anything. We sat and smoked cigarettes and stared at the ashtrays and guzzled our beers and didn’t say much to one another, except to declare loudly, as needed, This is a great song! or Who played this fucking song? or Gimme another one, will ya?
Nothing outside the bar mattered.
I drank at this bar because I felt safe there. Once in a great while someone would strike up a conversation but I knew I would be leaving there alone, just like everyone else.
A dozen times a night, I’d stumble into the bathroom and toss myself onto the toilet, resting my head against the sink with the rusty drain, cooling my forehead. I’d spend a moment there, trying not to think.
But then I’d stand and have no choice.
I looked into the mirror.
I saw a face I vaguely recognized, hair askew. My unsmiling face stared back at me.
I leaned in closer to the mirror and zoomed in on my eyes: hard, cold, unblinking and lifeless, a void of blackness that bored into my core. There was no sparkle, no color. My eyes were dead.
I stared harder, begging there to be something inside – anything – but those cloudy circles were painfully, excruciatingly empty. I stared until I was sure: Yep, I thought, nobody’s in there at all.
I did this every time I stepped into the restroom alone, testing myself, looking for some sign that I was still alive, that my soul had not been permanently eradicated.
And every time, I found nothing in those eyes, in that mirror, on that wall, in that restroom.
Eventually I would tire of staring; I’d blink once or twice.
Then I’d turn the loose knob and open the door, enveloped immediately by smoke. I’d walk back into the dingy room, sit back down at the bar and order another beer.