He wasn't born of his own will. But then, nobody is. Some two people, for one reason or another, reach into the recesses of the world waiting for life, and pulled out a baby, squawling and resisting into the world, so they could grow up with it. Then they sent it to school, decided where he would go, what he would do. When he reached teenage, he found out that he didn't have to do all those things, and promptly didn't. Just like everyone else. But he didn't feel strongly about it, and in this atleast he was a bit different. He didn't care at all, he stopped caring when at 14 they told him he couldn't go out for something- it was something as small as a movie or dinner- and instead of saying I will go, like some healthy competitive spirit, he said Not like it Matters, like a defeatist loser instead. Right then, they could've told you what he was going to turn out as. His parents could've known if they'd just been looking, but Are you Smarter Than A Fifth-Grader was on. He didn't stop asking after that, like the Buddha or something, but when the answer was yes, he went unexcitedly, and when the answer was no, he stayed, also unexcitedly, maybe even slightly glum, at first.
As days went by, they decided his asking for less and less things meant that he was turning into one of those anti-social types and repressing his natural self, so they started sending him out perforce to do things, meet people, socialize. He didn't say anything, he just went. Went quietly and came back quietly, hardly anyone noticing him, noone remembering him. He didn't know how to socialize. If someone had told him what to do exactly and when, he might have. They let him wing it, and he didn't. He just felt tired all the time, weary of everything, weary of not caring and of feeling bad that he did not care, and bad that it hurt people around him, and sad all the time. weary of everything. At school he had a friend or two. They talked of things, avoided talking about themselves much because they thought it might repulse each other. They needn't have feared it, they couldn't have talked of themselves even had they wanted to- they wouldn't have known what to say. And it wasn't as though there was much anyway. The days rolled by, the clouds rolled by, the cars rolled by, each having as little effect on his consciousness as a bad metaphor on someone taking dope. Far from mattering, he probably didn't even notice.
He applied to college because everyone went to college. He tried for the best because his parents were normal, nice, competitive people. They wanted him to do the best he could. He wanteda girlfriend. From what he'd heard of them, he thought one might understand his problem and snap him out of it. He didn't get one, maybe because of the antisocial thing, maybe because he didn't know any who'd ever noticed him, maybe because there was something else wrong. Aura or some shit like that. Anyway, he didn't get one, so he just sat around hoping that like in the movies, one might fall on his head or in front of a car nearby when he was walking on the street. None ever did. He thought that might be because the people who got together that way were completely incompatible and didn't want to meet each other in any way whatsoever. They were telling Love that they could handle their own lives, thank you, and it had to prove them wrong, two at one go. He, on the other hand, was begging Love to interfere. Or Hormones, at least. He'd admitted their power, so they had no more use for him. Ironic. He did go to college. You find all sorts of freaks at college, he'd heard. He went out with four that he'd seen giving him looks. He did things, tried things that were supposed to be fun. They weren't, but he didn't care about that either. All of his girlfriends broke up with him because they thought him cold and unfeeling, though he was ok in every other way. They just couldn't see inside his head. He studied pretty well, passed out, got a standard job. His parents were terribly proud of him. They stuck up their noses at the doom-prophets. He met another girl. This one loved him without wanting to get inside his head. He married her because she loved him, because she insisted and overcame his scruples. He tried adventure sports. Travelled. Was involved in a bad road accident which he didn't engineer, although later some people wondered. He went to work every day, came home at seven every night, she made lunch, he made dinner, they got their own breakfasts. He cleaned, she shopped. They worked it all out. One July morning, he went to work, came home, walked into the kitchen, washed his lunchbox, took out a will he'd made and had attested by two coworkers at lunch, put it on the table under a paper-weight, wrote a suicide note on a paper he left on the hall table, went into the living room and checked if there was anything good on tv. There wasn't, as usual, so he cooked dinner, then took out the sleeping pills from the bathroom cupboard, leaving two behind for his wife to take that night, went into the bedroom, and swallowed them down with the glass of water he'd kept on the bedside table.
His wife came in. She threw her keys on the table, saw the note, picked it up and read it. Then she read the will beneath it. He'd left everything to her. The note said- I'm killing myself. I'm sorry girl, but I was just so bored. With love, Your husband, John. She nodded once, then went into the next room and called the police. It all went off without incident.