Main Character Vibes

After the puff settles

Typically for Elias, weekdays were ceaseless and interminably wearying. Nothing Instagram Post worthy. Not even a Snapchat story. Despite what he would attempt to paint online, he would feel as if he was sentenced to live the same day over and over again with exhausting and suffocating predictability. Like being in a prison whose rigid walls were constructed by an unpliant daily routine. But as the clock struck five and he began his trek through the dusky city streets, the walls of that prison were being dismantled.

Elias suddenly noticed that he was carrying his gym duffle bag. He had no recollection of him gathering his workout clothes in the morning. But three years on autopilot leaves a mark. He had just quit his job and he had no patience to see all the same worn-out faces in the same worn-out place. The people at the gym would make him feel like an imposter for some reason. Unintentionally. The gym itself felt so alien, so suffocating now that he strayed out of an old familiar world.

Luckily, he had what was left of his weed. A celebratory session at High Park to collect his thoughts was in order. Novelty begets more novelty. More life!

As he walked throughout the city, Elias thought it wise to begin preparing for his looming conversation with Tilly by turning over different scenarios in his mind. The different scenarios of how to effectively break up with Tilly while taking the path of least resistance when doing so. His task was difficult. He wanted to balance two competing, and seemingly contradicting, interests. The first was that he wanted it to be a clean breakup, amiably executed, like a cardiac surgeon's splitting of two hearts in tandem. The second was that he did not want to regret things left unsaid. He wanted to avoid those hauntingly regretful moments of 'I wish I had said so and so.' It was a delicate situation that required both finesse and diplomacy.

The late afternoon sun hung low in the sky as it lazily blinked behind fleeting clouds as if flirtatiously winking at the people in High Park – sun, shade, sun, shade. Under this strobe light effect of the sun and clouds, Elias sparked his joint. He took a few deep drags on the secluded bench that overlooked the pond until his eyes drooped and he began to sway like a reed in the wind. Life felt like it opened up and he found himself thinking, obsessively so, 'why did I accept this for a long time?'

But he did remember that there were fleeting moments of rebelliousness during his dreary morning commute to work. Moments throughout the past three years where he found himself wondering whether there was something more to life. But he had always ascribed his frustrating questioning to the intolerability of depression. Something his therapist was all too eager to validate and even to attempt to medicate away. The usual suspects; Lexapro, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, Prozac, Celexa...key ingredients of a well-balanced diet of your everyday millennial. Unfortunately, the void of depression subsumed the efficacy of such pharmaceutical tools. Elias's state seemed to be much more profound than psychology; it was more of a philosophical malady than it was psychological; occurring at an existential state.

The abrupt absence of warmth and daylight was recompensed only by the fire of the sky in the half-hour that preceded twilight. The skyline of towering buildings looked like black silhouettes in the foreground of a dimly simmering sky that was faintly burning orange. The city itself was transformed into a city of shadows. And then suddenly there was red. The small pond at High Park reflected the red sky. And they both reflected the panic that was bubbling.

Elias, fully in his own head, forgot he was holding the joint that slipped from between his fingers to the ground. His mouth, parched like sandpaper, moved twice without any sound. Thoughts rose from the depths of unexplored places in his mind like a raging sea. For the first time in his life perhaps, there was stillness. Real stillness. He could hear his own thoughts: 'Why did I accept this?' But if you stifle that internal voice, once it finally gets to speak it won't shut up...driving you mad. Torturing you with the pent-up energy that you've stifled.