Slowly, bit by bit, everything is being taken from me. I have lost so much, but I have not lost my want of the things I’ve lost. I have not lost my want of more.

I look at the people around me and wonder, is this what they thought being an adult would be like? Is this what they imagined their lives to be like when they grew up? Are they okay with this? Is this really all there is?

Is having a job and a family all it takes to make a regular person content? Does the guy with the brown bag lunch walking into work ahead of me ever think about his legacy? Did he ever want to be President of the United States or did he know from an early age that was never going to happen for him?

I never knew I couldn’t be President. I am not a regular person. I don’t mean that in a conceited way, as if I’m somehow above the regular people; I mean that I am not like them. I do not fit. I never have.

I spent fifteen years opening up to someone–so very close to open in the end–only to have him disappear. My family died. My future died. My trust and love died. And I look at the middle-aged man dropping his middle-aged wife off at work in a beat up Toyota, and I wonder why they can have that and is it enough?

I wish I couldn’t see that there should be more. I wish I didn’t know what the sky looked like so that I could be content simply with the earth. I want to be a regular person with a brown bag lunch getting dropped off at work without a longing for more so fierce that it hurts. I am envious of their untortured souls and all the things they haven’t lost. I feel like I am in this world, but not of it.