The Cosmic Waiting Room

A Story by Zac

A short-story monologue about depression and a jaded view of life from a young age.

How do you define what it means to be a man?

How do you decide what it takes to measure adulthood?

I'm on a collision course with life, and no matter how much I try to stop it, life is coming; and it is inevitable.

I'm only 21 years old and I feel as if I'm going to live forever,

every single breath I take does nothing but drag me closer; closer to 'the end'; closer to infinity.

Every day, I breath in a world that wasn't made for me; or better yet, that I wasn't made for.

How do I do this?

How do I become the man that everybody expects me to become when life constantly takes a liquid-diarrhea s**t on my heart?

How do you live when life makes you miserable?

I am a Shaman living in a spiritless world, and this place breaks my heart.

This place we all live in is awful, it smells like defeat; life looks like failure.

How do any of these people learn to enjoy themselves in this s**t-heap we call life? Life may be unavoidable, but enjoyment is definitely optional.

Life is simple when you're a person, but I'm only a shadow and shadows aren't alive; therefore I cannot live.

I can't live in this box, this matrix we call society; each day is like downing a gallon of chlorine; a slow-acting train-wreck.

How am I supposed to do this?

Do I flip a switch and all of a sudden emerge from the cocoon of apathy as a fully functioning member of society?

Please, somebody help me.

I'm already 80 years old, only nobody can see that but me.

I've already learned in my 21 years what takes most their entire lives; life is terrible, and the only thing that any of us can do is try and make it a little bit less-so.

So, where is there for me to go from here? What is left for me to learn?

There's nowhere left for me to grow or aspire to; there's nobody held up somewhere with a magic wand, waiting to grant meaning to my life.

There's a saying that 90% of success is just showing up, but what nobody ever mentions is that 90% of people show up just because of success.

Why do I see life the way that I do if nobody else is willing to hear about it?

We're all just wasting away in some cosmic waiting-room, counting down the seconds until our number gets called; but I'm the only one willing to admit it and my ticket is void.

So why am I here?