Six hours of sleep between the Tuesday I woke up and the Friday it had become. I didn’t even notice, or maybe rather, I never remembered noticing, but somehow, every second became a minute, and an hour, and a day, each moment equally meaningless. They where not worth remembering. There is a pressure behind my eyes now. It’s been there for some time. It hurts, the numb kind of pain, the kind you don’t enjoy, but don’t particularly hate having. This morning I could find no solace in the last aspirin I ingested before I had exceeded what the bottle has informed me is a dangerous dose. I’ve never tested the boundaries of aspirin before. I’d never had any intention of over dosing; I’m not emo like that. It’s just as well, it was my last pill.

There are any number of things I could be working on right now. Derelict pages strewn across my bed, waiting for completion. Once upon a time I might have spared them more than a passing glance and a disapproving frown. Such great promise. I had promised myself that someday I would be something great. The thing about someday is, someday is not a real day. It is not Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday. You can not schedule for someday.  Only foolish men wait for pretend days, and I am a foolish man. I can not pinpoint the exact time it had happened. When I outgrew my boyhood. Or denied it. This is what I used to wish for, everything I wanted to have someday. The right job, the right friends, the right apartment, the right girl. This was my life. It wasn’t worth remembering.

Yesterday my office called. I never answered the phone. I wonder what they’re thinking. I wonder if they’re angry with me for not coming. I wonder if they know that I’m not coming back. I’m sure someone suspected… but I suppose such an assumption might be an arrogant one. Everyone thinks that someone is watching them. Looking over their shoulder, reading your work, calculating your mistakes, documenting your downfall. The truth is, my friend, no one cares. No one cares what you are doing right now. We’re all judging each other and none of it really matters. I may laugh at you when you stumble down the stairs. I may think to myself, man, that person is clumsy. And you might be embarrassed, that I am laughing at you from the sidewalk above you. You where never trying to impress me, why do you care what I think? You shouldn’t, because the truth is, I don’t really care either. By the time I have gotten home, I have forgotten all about you. It wasn’t worth remembering.

I need to get out of this apartment.

And I do, eventually. Such a beautiful Friday, the streets are emptied, cleared away by the midnight hour as ghosts of men stumbled home from the bar. Drinking away the bad times, the endless office hours, sauntering home to the lives they gave up their lives to have. I pity them, and myself, for a moment. I would be him someday, whenever that may be. The muted lights of downtown beckon and I wander aimlessly through the narrow streets to the subway station. Blinking streetlights substitute for the stars their perma-dawn blots out; how romantic. Maybe someday we will see them again. Someday…

The booming wind of the train interrupts my thoughts as it rushes into the station, letting it’s handful of passengers pool out onto the platform and shuffle past me. I can’t see their faces, they couldn’t see mine. They would not remember me. The open door of the train invites me in; it would have been rude to decline such a generous invitation. Stepping aboard I scan the empty seats for a suitable place to sit and sit down. The woman across from me smiles to me as smooth I out my jeans. I hesitate for the moment it takes to register that her greeting is to myself, rather than another I might not have seen. I smile back to her as she tucks her wild red hair up into her unassuming hat.

“Where are you going?” She asks me.

“I don’t know…” I frown as I pocket my hands and brood over my answer.

“Me neither.” She grins. “Would you like to go there with me?”

I relax against the seat and shut my eyes, and together we ride until the morning light leaks through the decadent windows, beyond the terminus, and into tomorrow. And together we will arrive.

Someday.