Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Who could possibly know the road on which our lives will take us? All we have, us humble, inane beings, is fortune, faith and future. We must sail the ship of our destiny, whether the waves be choppy or silky smooth, and hope desperately that our craft will not sink.
He always had such a strong personality, outgoing and coming on far too strong. He led everyone around him to believe he was unloving and unlovable, whether to avoid the possibly painful aftermath of falling in love or simply because he believed it to be true, I shall never know.
What could be more agonizing than to have watched him crumble? To watch him do so alone, I suppose. Without the comforting hand of friendship, nor the guiding light of love. And that he brought it all upon himself! What folly had bestowed him for him to imagine that life would simply pass him by? It was as if he believed that as long as he took nothing seriously, not serious could happen. He paid a deep and painful price.
I bear with me every day the weight of his mistakes. The load of this upon my shoulders, much resembling the dark, heavy gloom of guilt, makes my spirits sag. I bear a responsibility that I cannot escape. And even though he is a grown man, experienced enough to know what is right and wrong, I feel the throb of remorse deep within my soul.
And I do love him, I suppose, with an incomprehensible passion, one of which I will never understand and he never even knew existed. Shall I ever forget the day he told me that, just once, if he felt confident in my loyalty his whole life would run smoother? I put into him expectations he could never live up to, and yet fooled himself he had grown beyond. When he inevitably fell in the stiff asphalt of reality, it was he that suffered, not I, while my mind and heart grew furious with disappointment and flaccid with resignation. My dreams were his doom.
As result of this, I realize now I never knew him truly, and that he never knew himself. He knew only what he should have been and become and thought and experienced, never allowing himself the moment to feel what felt real to him.
She tells me it isn't my fault, he was grown man. I know this is true of course, I know this was all his own decision.
But how else does a father feel when burying his own son?
I long for just one last wish—one final hour in which everything would be resolved…
Just to know what he felt behind those blank, hollow eyes.