Hopeless Me

Garbage

he had lived like garbage.

Although his childhood was perfectly average, his failure on the high school entrance exams cast a long shadow over the rest of his life. He quickly fell into a self-destructive cycle, shutting himself away from the world well into middle age. His parents weren’t particularly wealthy, but he leeched off them nonetheless, a parasite producing nothing valuable of his own. That’s certainly how society would have described him, anyway, but that’s not how he saw himself. Even as he approached the age of fifty, he still felt like he had a chance to do more.

His cause of death was most likely starvation. Living his life as a shut-in, the food had eventually stopped coming. At his usual meal time one day, nothing had arrived. No matter how hard he stomped on the floor or how loudly he yelled, there was no answer. Yet even then, the thought never occurred to him to go downstairs and check. He was like a baby bird in spirit, knowing only how to open his mouth and wait for the food to be placed there by someone else. Even a life-threatening inconvenience was still just an inconvenience.

Two days passed without food. He finally forced himself to stand. Stepping out into the hallway, he made his way downstairs for what must have been the first time in twenty years. Dragging his overweight body as best he could, he reached the living room.

The television had been left on, and his mother was curled up on the couch. It was his first time seeing her in a long while, and she looked much older than he remembered. Had she always been so small? As that thought crossed his mind, it was immediately blown away by anger. He was furious that she would be sleeping in front of the TV while he was starving.

"Hey, Ma! Where's the food?!"

There was no response. When he shook her to wake her up, a shiver ran through him. She was unimaginably light and offered no resistance.

As a result of his self-imprisonment, his family had fallen apart. His mother, left alone to care for him and the house, must have reached her physical and mental limits. Of course, he hadn't recognized any of his mother's suffering. All he cared about was his own comfort.

And then he died. It sounded insane, but he couldn't even make himself leave the house. There was some food left at first, but once that was gone, it was all over. Never mind going out and working, he couldn't even bear the thought of ordering online if it meant having to see the person who would deliver it. People often say that when faced with death, a human can manage anything. But not him. That was it.