The Third Person

He bought picture frames for a life he didn't lead.  He knew his present wasn't quite the life he was looking for, but he had some sort of hope that contentment would somehow arrive to him as a gift from the future.  In the meantime, the frames lay barren in his empty apartment.  In truth, the space was far from empty, at least physically.  Posters of past adventures and handmade prints from relationships long ago plastered the walls.  Any wall not lined with art held a shelf for books he intended to read or movies he couldn't wait to share with someone else, someone who cared about his taste.

On the outside his life was so far from empty that it was not uncommon for him to hear longing words of envy from acquaintances and strangers.  

"Wow!  I wish I was artistic, but I don't have a creative bone in my body." or "You rested all weekend?  What a life!  I don't even know what that means anymore."

But rest was just one of the words he used to keep people at a safe distance.  He had come to learn long ago that a weekend composed of naps, Netflix, and nights in was far from restful.  Rather, it was mostly restless and very rarely what he wished for himself.  Still, he stayed inside and hoped against hope that his life would suddenly change from the outside.  "Fake it 'til you make it," they always told him.  Another cliché he often heard was the old adage that it's "better to ask for forgiveness than permission," and as much as he wanted to believe that, he couldn't detach himself from his superego long enough to live it.  His mind, though clouded most of the time, was full of shoulds and should-nots, more so than woulds and coulds.

Maybe if he ate more he would be able to find some sense of himself again.  Maybe there was some sort of regimented routine that he needed to find in his life to put himself back together again.  He would sometimes ponder these thoughts but they were mostly futile.  They'd either lead him aimlessly through ruminiations like runaway trains or become vaporous nonsense that quickly molded into forgotten dreams.  There was nothing to write home about because every conversation was the same small talk, only with a different face.  No one wants to hear the silent meanderings of a solitary singleton, he would tell himself as a pretty face walked across the room.