I’m going to tell you a true story about a boy who left, and some things that happened before that.
He was small and delicate, not that it matters. He had pale blue eyes, frail lungs, and no notable talents. In truth, he had been disappearing for many years now. He was a boy with one arm in a dream and two legs in the grave, even at nineteen. He felt that he had been born into the wrong galaxy.
Time slid harmlessly off his back as he passed through it, unconcerned. He ate time. He hoarded time and stuffed time under his bed and piled up boxes and boxes of time, as though it cost nothing, as though he would never run out. He would not look the future straight in the eyes.
“What are you doing?,” people asked him.
“It’s not like you care,” he said.
“What will be left for you?” people asked him.
"I don’t know," he mumbled vaguely. He wasn't really there at all. It's hard to carry a conversation when you're hanging half-in-and-out of another dimension. Right now his legs were in a different universe than his arms, all numb and floaty. His fingers were trailing through the ocean, fish darting between them, one ear all the way on Jupiter, he swore he could hear satellite signals.
Without aspirations or ambition left he took solace in victimhood. His victimhood was a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, carefully sewn together over the years. It was a blast shield five feet thick. It was his identity. As long as he could do no wrong, other people were merely props, cast in the play of his martyrdom and written out of the script when they became inconvenient.
And he hurt people. Without even noticing, the boy left a trail of hurt people behind him. He didn’t think of himself as cruel, but other people were the dust he shrugged off as he went away. He often hated them. They had done something to him, always something, and he collected injustices like soccer trophies.
Listen: in the end he was not cruel, but he was a hypocrite.
“Why does nobody understand me?” he asked.
“Because you haven’t made any effort to understand us,” people said.
“Why am I alone?” he demanded, floating weightless.
“Because you have chosen to be,” people said, and he would not believe them.
The real world was not enough for him, and so he was left behind. He was gentle and kind but he was a hypocrite, and soon he would be gone altogether. In truth, he chose to fade rather than fight. He was a dreamer and he was a coward.
“I guess it was inevitable,” said those who had loved him.