Misery Means

On my journey to the great land of California, I befriended someone who showed me what misery means.

The long straight hair that reached waist, "grunge" exterior, the soft "V" between his brows, the downturned corners of his mouth, lack-luster nails that show signs of weather (or lacking in vitamins) married incomprehensibly, yet fittingly, his flawed wisdom and scarred compassion.

His forever chase after acceptance, lasting loyalty and unconditional love is like a lone kite longing to touch the ceiling of a grey sky ... when will it end?

His residence is disorientingly dark, as if he resolved to stay in the darkness because no matter how much light he turns on, it is still a black world. The gloom sticks to him inside and out. It is everywhere he can imagine, for it is like an eternal darkness that has dawned on his psyche.

And what did I do for him? Nothing, at best. I felt the lamp of hope I bore snuffed out. I felt like my light dimmed. In the darkness, I felt small and helpless ... even useless.

What should I tell him? That everything will turn out great? As much as I can tell myself that, I didn't have the heart to tell him, for fear that I would swipe away even the smallest shred of dignity from him. Why, you ask? Because he already believes that doom has befallen him. Because this is the only "truth" that he can count on ... but it gives him stability. I wasn't sure if I should, or could, uproot that.

You see, good news and bad news are good and bad depending only on how one receives it. And because of this faith in the darkest of fears, his unhappiness and joyless life has almost been prophetically pre-determined.

I felt minuscule in his sadness. In pink and red Valentine's Day festivities, the glittery City of Angels is somehow ladened with pea-soup colored melancholy in my eyes.