Waiting One

Waiting One

‘It’s 3:30’ William thought to himself. His feet were resting on the ground off his porch; the porch was small, just big enough to let someone in the house and that’s about it. It was his house though, it wasn’t big and it wasn’t fancy, but it was clean and it was his. He practically paid nothing for it was the golden thing about it, his own place that he could do whatever he wanted with, and with all the rooms he needed for kids or his wife. There could even be a room for relatives if they needed a place to stay.
He pulled a cigarette from the old folded Marlboro pack in his pocket and placed it in his mouth; he lit it and took a hard drag. He smoked now because he wanted to, almost like there was no longer a need to but just a lingering force of habit. Putting the cigarette pack and the lighter back in his jeans pocket, William looked up at the street light not so far from him, he watched it flicker in the night air. It was just like life, each flicker represented a life being dropped and one being reborn. Some were longer than others, some barely existed at all. But what was the difference between the flickers, was it the shorter flickers lives that were cut short, or lives that were lived until a natural death but nothing was done in that existence?
He took another hit from his cigarette and tapped off the ashes onto the ground below him. The ashes hit the ground and faded away from sight into the blades of grass. Fading away…kind of like his life. He hadn’t done anything with his life, or nothing that he wanted to do. All of his dreams had never happened. Rock star…no, director…no, actor…no, it seemed like everything was a no. The only thing he could ever pull off well was his ability to build things.
Taking another puff William looked down at his hands, the scars and bruises were all there from the houses he built. Each one told its own story and each one of them was always a reminder of what exactly it was that happens in life. His body was like a journal, and each hair and each scar were like a story to tell, a new entry to share with someone else. If only he had anyone to share it with…
Waiting waiting waiting…that’s all he ever did. Waiting for quitting time, for food to heat up, for someone to notice him in a way that wasn’t simply looking at him, but into him; but no one ever did. He waited his entire life to meet that certain someone that his mother always told him existed in the fairy tales. But no one wanted to get to know him like that; who would care for a guy that’s only ambition in life was doing what he wanted to do, right?
Fighting the tears he flicked the burned out cigarette out into his yard and watched it fly away. He watched it fly off and land near the telephone pole with the streetlight hanging from it.
It flew away from him and landed somewhere out of his line of sight, just like life had. It was funny; life had always seemed to make sense to him. You’re born, you go to work, and you die; that seemed to be the cycle of the world. But no one ever explained to him the importance of every day, how each and every day was a period to accomplish something for you. Whether it is to walk a little farther in your daily walk to explore somewhere on foot that you hadn’t before, or if it was to write one more page in your book, whatever it was it was important that you made the most out of every day. But no one tells you that, all they tell you is how special you are and how much good you can do for the world, they never explain how you can even attempt to get an idea of how to do that, but simply that you can and should try.
“I tried, I tried to do something with life…it’s not my fault I wasn’t good enough to get it done right?” he whispered to himself. It was self reassurance, the truth of the matter is he didn’t know if what he was doing was right or not, and he had a good reason to. Why should he believe that he did well enough when it wasn’t apparent if he did anything if he had never done anything right in the first place? It seemed like he missed a big pep talk in the auditorium or something one day where they explained how to be good at life and how to make the best out of everything. What was the secret? Why couldn’t he understand why he didn’t achieve it? Maybe it was because he had bad genetics. But it was too easy to blame his life on other things, the real fact of the matter is he just wished that someone would have been there to experience life with him. To be around him when everything went wrong and help let him know it was going to be okay.
“It’s time to stop blaming myself. It’s time to stop putting the blame on anything. I lived a good life. I never once cheated someone out of what was theirs and I never once did a half ass job. I built beautiful houses for people to live in and that’s good enough for me. So what if I didn't change the world, so what if I wasn’t someone who made a huge dent? If everyone made some sort of huge change in the world then the people who did make changes would seem like nothing. If a simple carpenter made a difference everyday then it would make people like Gandhi look like nothing.”
William stood up and looked at the light up on the telephone pole; the light was glowing strong and bright. It looked peaceful, it looked like home, and it looked like everything was going to make sense for once. The light shined a bright white that seemed to encompass the entire outside’s darkness in its ever glowing existence. The light flickered itself off once more, and William was gone.