(no subject)

[lt_shea62truck]

"You'd be surprised how many people violate this simple principle every day of their lives and
try to fit square pegs into round holes, ignoring the clear reality that Things Are As They Are."
― Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

At what point does one look at one's own existence and realize that it's gone to complete shit?

Is it when Franco catches you drunk off your ass, making a fool of yourself in public, and you can't even remember what you'd done (pissed in the bushes, puked in the cab) because you'd blacked out the moment your face hit your mattress?

Is it when you get angry at the Probie for reading a goddamn book? And not so much reading a book, but actually making sense when he tries to explain it to you? Who gave him the right to have his life figured out, when you can't even tie your shoelaces in the morning because you're too hungover to see straight?

Is it when you call out your best friend in front of the entire firehouse for being a fucking hypocrite when he tells you that he's concerned about you? Tommy, the guy who drank away his beautiful family, and who calls you his brother when he only just beat the shit out of his own blood sibling? You're going to get help from him?

Or is it when you drop your bottle of cheap vodka on some train tracks, and you stumble down to fetch it because you really need your fucking vodka, and you find yourself staring at the third rail, listening to its electric hum, and thinking that it would be so easy to end it all?

Or maybe it's when you get into an argument with a homeless guy over who has the shittier life?

And he tells you that you win, loser.

Because your beloved wife left you for another man and took almost everything you had in the divorce. You then fell in love with an incredible, gorgeous woman who was a hooker, but one of the good ones, because she didn't make you pay until the end. That's when she stole your entire life savings and left you near destitute. Then when you're at you're lowest, you wander into a porn shop, and find her face on a triple-X DVD.

You're a joke.

A pathetic. fucking. joke.

So go ahead.

Kill yourself.


***


It was almost four o'clock in the morning when Kenny knocked on an apartment door.

Tommy opened it.

"Lou...? What's goin' on?"

Kenny hung his head and couldn't meet his eyes.

"You've gotta help me."