I am a wreck. I’ve damaged both of my thumbs, and I only have two.

I’m sleeping more, eating more; it’s clearly depression, the same that had me sleeping little and eating less a few months ago. Oh, you fickle friend, Depression.

I told my friends and family that I moved back to Texas to be closer to them; to reconnect with family. As a man staring down forty, it’s important to have a family, a network, a group of trusted loved ones. But they don’t trust me, and maybe I’ve forgotten how to love them.

I’ve become feral. I was on my own for far too long. I learned how to live without them, and to prevent new familial bonds from forming. Nothing sticks. I’m teflon. I’m oily, flat, granite. I spent so much time with nothing that I learned to live off of it, so now I need nothing.

I can’t connect with family, can’t make friends, can’t allow anything to mean anything. I just sleep and eat and work and drink and disappoint people. But is it my fault? I never taught anyone to expect anything from me, so if they did or still do they made that decision without consulting me.

In my dreams I make plans, notice lesions on my body that aren’t there, fret about the present and worry about the future. When I wake, I live in a consequence-free state of perpetuity fueled of necessity. I sleep because I have to, I work because I can’t afford not to, and I wake the next day because I have to. I don’t have a choice. Earlier today I signed a lease for another year in this apartment, and while reading over the clauses noted there’s one stipulating that I can’t die. How convenient!

I was joking with a co-worker yesterday about the lies we tell when we’re away from work to get us out of responsibilities in the home. “Dishes? I do dishes all day at work and you want me to come home and do them? Why?”

I, of course, took it further. “Aunt Lyla’s wake? I spend ten to twelve hours a day attending Aunt Lyla’s wake at work and you want me to come home and do so? Why?”

It was funny in the moment but I look back and realize what a desperate cry for help it seems to me. That I would use hyperbole about my work responsibilities to cop out of anything resembling humanity during my actual life. That I would sweep it all under the rug to just sleep and eat and get back to work.

That working is the only function I feel I haven’t a good enough lie to shirk. But living is just too easy to avoid. I don’t know why more people don’t do it more often. Oh, they’ll tell you they miss you, but no one will come to find you. Because they’re busy sleeping and working.

I’ve been an outside cat too long and I can’t live inside with you. I do occasionally bolt in from curiosity, but soon after I piss on everything you’ve attached to and begin mewling for release. And don’t you dare fucking touch me.

It’s lonely being misunderstood, but exhausting trying to make oneself understood. Best to lie and sleep.