Wow. I never thought it would come to this. I'm sitting in my high rise office I rented years ago for vanity purposes and I can see the sun setting in spectacular fashion over west Dallas. Only it's not.
I am not here. The sun is not mine. I don't even know what planet I'm on. I fear to speak because I'm not sure the language I use will be understood by the natives. What is here that's actually here? These people I see running around, what are they on about? They are possessed with a knowledge I do not have. So many move with an invisible urgency.
It's like something broke in me when I got word I was finally a billionaire. Why should that have made a difference between all those years when I had several hundred million? What was it I had been holding back? Part of me wishes I could go back to that earlier time, but even if my money count went back down I see now that last piece of innocence is lost forever - just like my self-betrayal of the Woman of Fabric. "You're nothing to me now, Fredo."
I've searched high and low and come up empty and dry. Each day is a series of meaningless acts done to perpetuate another day of meaningless acts. I'm sure I'd be widely mocked as the Bored Billionaire were anyone to find out about my inner dilemma but this is a prison beyond my understanding. I actually saw a movie the other night with a guy in prison and those shots of him inside his cell, I knew exactly how he was feeling. It felt scarily good to connect. At the time I told myself I must be delusional. But that is more real to me than what I see here before my eyes.
Institutionalized by my money
I'm at sea with no land in sight. Nor even knowledge if land exists on this orb. I could be saving myself decades of misery by dying now. Or salvation could be just around the corner. It's hard to imagine a more exquisite torture being devised, this agony between living hell and imagined heaven. I feel I've reached a stage where I'm mentally catatonic, and that ushers in a new dawn of despair.
The Howard Hughes syndrome makes much more sense to me. Just squirrel yourself away and forsake this world upon which you've been placed. Nothing here means anything to me any more than some microbe on Pluto. These other humanoids who seem so pressed to make an impression, I believe they are misguided. It would be very dangerous to follow one of them. This globe is nothing but a giant ant hill of blind activity that knows not where it leads.
I've ceased my search to find use of my many millions. Like Tolstoy's Pierre, every idea seemed brilliant until I actually tried it. I'm wholly imbued with this sense of uselessness or futility in any direction I go. I give a million to the homeless shelter but nothing changes for me or them. I've dreamed of building things to "look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair." That too fell to the sword of folly. Love, hate, passion, apathy, inspiration, manipulation - it all leads nowhere. I thought...
I guess I thought I'd find something. Some morsel or... But there's really nothing at all. Be born, waste time, then die. Some will call this self-pity, as if I'm denying myself an answer. One thing I've observed: if you're in an economic prison you're left only to imagine what life might mean and be good with that imagined meaning. But I who have been free of that my entire life can harbor no such delusion. I'm faced with this reality of a vast nothingness of disinterest. I look over the world and it interests me not.
Where is escape? Do I blackout for a few hours in an alcoholic haze? Where does that get me? There is no physical destination that can save me. I've actually bought houses I've seen featured on the wealth channel. I was excited right up until I owned them. After that I felt like a trespasser and all the Italian marble seemed no more to me than mere cold rock. Five times I did this, much to my shame.
I realize now no one can hand me a solution. I really tried to make that work. All anyone does is tell you what works for them or wished worked for them - but that's them, not me. I am helpless as my ship sinks silently into the ocean depths. I could scream in horror but who would hear me? In fatal secrecy I think back to the Woman of Fabric as I fade to black. I wish she could know of these final thoughts were she to find me in my resting place deep on the lightless ocean floor. Though I don't know where the "other path" could have led, it's obvious she'd see me and think, "What a waste."
Yes, that much is real. Shit.
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