alone

The distance seems to grow with the length of time between visits, between words, between conversations, between touches. His connection with the outside is thinning, stretching, a gossamer veil whipping in a wintry wind, cold and brittle shattering if handled. The warmth dissipates diffusing into the swirl, the scatter, the frenzy of the blizzard, a storm of frozen losses. He is obscured in the white, the blank, the blur. Icy cold tendrils sleet slickly thickening the veins, crystallizing the cells, the neuronal pathways. His electro-chemical responses quicken, heightened in the deep freeze, subzero conditions freeing the conductive circuits of the brain.
Cold, calculating, emotionless, he reaches for the warmth of familiarity but it has outpaced him.
Family surrounds him their voices full of easy speak, welcoming, heartfelt meaning, honest interest, and wishes for closeness. He yearns to fulfill his share of camaraderie. He converses, sharing the details, what little there are, of his life, his days, hopes, dreams, feelings, but he cannot let go, cannot let them see the truth. He stands alone in room after room after room full of the people who love him, care for him, want the best for him and wish him well, and he cannot feel them. They are so far away.
The frigid fog thickens, becomes a solid haze, a physical barrier preventing the body, the senses from penetrating, he collapses into himself, retreating further, the glacial, arctic reaches enveloping his soul. Entombed he withers, a dry husk, arid and desiccated, a waterless desert of a man, the tundra wastes him, he wanders lonely, a solitary figure.
Man was not meant to roam the existence of the White Bear. Man is social, a creature of many, legion. Yet this one roves the teeming city streets amongst crowds, huddles in mobs, searches in multitudes and is isolated. A consciousness without union, association, relationship. It seethes within turning on itself, swirling in endless spirals, churning weirdness, phantasmagorical strings of images, insights unshared, theories undeveloped, beliefs untested and unquestioned, truths unrevealed, it twists and boils and spoils, an unfettered arrangement of mind fomenting its own demise.
He severs each moment further from the reality he knew. The past is forever removed. He no longer remembers who he once was. Like looking the wrong way through a telescope the world is gone. Light-years distant. All is the room. The room is all.
The needs consume! All powerful encompassing desires unrestrainable uncontainable unrestrictable they fester fever foment friction fire burning he struggles and will never win the eternal battle if he ever stops fighting but its so fucking hard. He wars constantly with urges. Incomprehensible wants. This. That. The other. They’re never enough, there is always more to do, over do, keep going, he always does, until the end is so close, so close, but somehow he survives. Chicken, done that so often it’s a joke, choke ditto, stopped breathing that too, heart done stopped a few times too, liver is sick, lungs are doomed, and mind just doesn’t really care. The needs consume they eat! Gnawing away at the core, grinding the teeth, dissolving the rot, feeding on the wounds. He just keeps waking up.
The man has tried death but it eludes him as much as peace does. Every attempt has ended in failure. Immortality is his curse. Overdose, leaps, stunts, car crashes, insanity, disease, sexual roulette, result in simple illness, minor sprains, costs, debt, and tolerance. The great Black, the final hurrah, the dirt nap, the void, the loss of 21 grams, the Great Vindication, the chance to spit in Gods Eye. He finally gave up; he loves those he cannot speak to. He does not wish to hurt them. So, he just keeps waking up.
And so he lives, day to day, most are worse than the rest but a few oh so few are good. He drags his body from bed, he smokes, coughs, pisses, shits, drinks coffee. Keeps himself informed which adds to the anger, the frustration, the pain, the sheer futility of being human. The distance increases. He speaks, and the shoreline ebbs further from him. He digs his axe in to the ice, chopping at it, reach the water, swim, paddle, make it back, but its so fucking far....he struggles in the frigid waves, they topple over his head, he gulps, sputters, he has never been a swimmer, and the cold, the black, icy depths grip, muscles cramp clench convulse seize he gulps he sinks hypothermia shivering quivering where is the warmth the closeness the family the friends the lovers the people the world now?
Why is he alone? He is surrounded by the voices of everyone. They echo across the globe, in the architecture, the literature, the artworks and music, the songs, the cultures, the landscapes and cities, the animals and the pets, the children of his sister and the squelches of magnetic fields from planets and moons and stars. The light of creation fills a universe eternal and yet he is alone. 50 trillion neutrinos pass through his body every second sharing his life yet he is lonely. His world vibrates with virility, explodes with existence, yet he cries alone. Isolation lingers, a pall of apathy looms overhead like a halo.
He does not believe in God. Many have told him he needs God. They say God would fill the emptiness, the void inside; that the love of God would end the suffering, end the loneliness he feels. He wonders, not often, if this is true, but if a world of real physical beings cannot break through then how can an imaginary, ephemeral, supposed God reach him. The emptiness in him is not the lack of God, of that he is certain.
This man believes in science, the possible, the testable, the provable, and the theoretical. He has read details of his prognosis, he knows what his medications do, how they work, the changes they make to the chemical processes of his brain. He recognizes the difference in himself when he is taking the meds or not. He knows the reason he spent all those years self medicating. His choice of ‘meds” just acted quicker, and had more immediate and powerful effects. They were also highly addictive. He believes humankind will survive the crises of the coming decades and achieve wonderful things. He does not believe in himself.
There is no afterlife.