A Mess of Self-Pity

 

Since the last divorce,
Two years gone by now,
And I have forgotten
How to be social...
Forgotten how to connect
With new people...
Smiling faces sometimes...
I have little to no trust left...
I don't remember how to do small talk...
I've forgotten how to be 
Acceptably fake 
In the typical social sense...
I don't know how to feel comfortable
Around people anymore...
I used to have no problem being myself,
But now I fear that
Being myself
Wouldn't be desirable...
I have gotten to know myself better,
With age,
And I've always been "weird"
In an endearing way...
Awkward charm...
My opinion of myself
No longer identifies with the endearing
Part of that sentiment...
I don't trust
What they might want from me...
I don't trust that they won't use me...
I don't trust
That they will accept me as I am...
I've got things about myself
That I do love,
But they seem to me
To be superficial things...
In other ways,
I actually sometimes feel like a
Genuinely horrible person...
The first tears in a while
Are starting to trickle out
As I write this...
I'm being honest with myself...
About what I'm feeling...
And it is terribly uncomfortable...
I feel alone...
My closest and oldest friends
Live hundreds of miles away...
And, for those who are geologically closer,
I have trouble motivating 
To drive just 60 miles if it's not for work...
I can't get a hug from them 
At a moments notice...
Some, not at all...
Same with my family...
I have somehow taken myself
To some foreign land
And gotten stuck in amber...
Maybe more like a tar pit...
It's hard to breathe 
When you're starving for touch...
At this current moment in time
I am sitting in a chair next to what could very well be me
At 75 years old...
Morbidly depressed...
Unable to motivate
To even want to get out of bed...
He can, he simply doesn't...
He has friends and family who care,
But who don't know what to do,
And their efforts and care
Are visibly exhausting them...
And I don't want to be that man...
I don't want to turn into that man
Lying in that bed
Trapped inside his own mind...
He's my Ghost of Christmas Future...
I don't want to give up on life,
But I can see the temptation 
To do so...
He's not suicidal,
But he's giving up...
And the worst part
For me
Is that I totally understand
What he's feeling...
How he's feeling it...
I've actually almost been there,
A time or two...
I don't want to go back to those places
So full of desolation
And solitude...
I don't want to be that man
Wasting away
In his bed
Some twenty odd years from now...
But I fear it.