The Search for Eternal Nothings

I sit and stare into my coffee cup, watching intently as the milk and cream swirl around as if they're playing a game that I'm not invited to understand. I watch intently until the swirls get caught up in the vastness of the dark liquid and vanish before I even have a chance to figure out their intimate game. I taste the coffee for the first time since making it and gasp a bit, not quite ready to come to terms with the bitterness that’s embracing my taste buds and flooding my senses. The sweetness of the milk and cream has been completely overpowered by the harsh flavor of the coffee. Sometimes I feel like that milk and cream, caught and consumed by this game called "Life"; everything within me that’s good and pure being stripped away by some cynical game maker who never once gave me instructions as to how to go about playing.

I’ve been pondering for days about the meaning of life, about how we’re all just existing here in such close proximity, such lonely proximity. I finish my last bittersweet sip of coffee and wonder why I’m feeling so lost in this chaos of eternal nothings. I pick up the newspaper, flip to the third page, and read through the names in the obituary, wondering if these people once felt the same way I do. I read the names carefully and wonder if these people have found meaning for themselves outside of the game of life.

Did they find happiness on the other side?

Is the game worth playing?

What would they say to me if they were here right now?

I wish I could ask them why we continue on, playing a losing game as if there is something more to it than bitter cups of coffee and newspaper articles on lonely Sunday afternoons.

Is this game an opportunity or a punishment?

Do we get to decide who we want to be, how we want to live, and where we want to go from here, or were these things already decided for us long before we ever came to exist?

Why is this game board so profoundly beautiful as much as it is cruel and disappointing?

Perhaps there truly is no meaning; maybe that is the game maker’s plot twist. We are so alive, yet so alone; so free, yet so bounded by the very limits of ourselves. We go about the game making all of these “important” decisions, tricking ourselves into believing that they’re actually going to change an outcome that’s already been decided.

Just then, I hear a knock on my door. I open it to see you standing there, raindrops settling on your cheeks like a lovely array of tears, holding a red umbrella at your side. You ask to come in, and as I busy myself in the kitchen making coffee, I can’t help but watch the way your eyes linger intimately around the room, soaking in everything as if you’ve lived here your whole life. I set the coffee down in front of you as I listen to you go on about the weather and how your wife is still pestering you about finding a new job that’s closer to home. As you talk, I find myself glancing far too often at the wedding band around your finger, feeling a dull ache every time I remember that the girl you go home to every evening isn’t me. I sigh to myself as you pick up my newspaper and read through the sports section, staring at the ring again; how many times must I remind myself that you and I are nothing more than childhood friends? Even when we dated in high school, everyone knew that we’d never make it past graduation. They told me that you were destined for greater things than the small town you grew up in, but I never allowed myself to believe them. Deep down, I always knew that the day would come; the day you realized that you were a wildflower, hungry for freedom from everything you’ve ever known and destined for the finer things in life, and I was a tree, forever stuck wherever my roots happened to be planted.

I still remember the day you called me and told me she was the one. How I cried and begged whoever was in control to take me out of this wicked game. The way I didn’t sleep for weeks because every time I closed my eyes I saw the way that everything she was and is was everything that I could never be.

The music never seemed to be loud enough.

The bed never seemed to be warm enough.

The world never seemed to be promising enough to give me a reason to stay.

I still remember the day you showed up at my door, diamond ring in your pocket and a smile on your face; the kind of smile that I was never able to give you. We sat over a cup of coffee in my living room and I listened to you tell me all about her. She seemed so perfect for you, that by the end of the story, I think that I may have fallen in love her as well.

I swear my coffee always tasted bitter after that day.

On the day of your wedding I stood at the back and tried my best to be happy for you.

God, how hard I tried to be happy for you.

Finishing the sports section, I snap back to my senses as you shuffle through the rest of the newspaper articles and scan them earnestly. I smile, thinking about how many times you have come to me whenever you have something important to tell. How many times I’ve watched you flip through my newspapers and drink my coffee just before telling me something that you’ve entrusted only my ears to hear.

Something about your mere presence is sweet like milk and cream; something about you makes me want to continue playing this stupid game of life just so I can be next to you longer, even if I can only be next to you as a friend and a past lover. I laugh quietly to myself as you begin to tell me things I know you’ve never told anyone else, not even your wife, and I decide that my little world of eternal nothings might be worth living for, after all.