The Last Performance

 As I sit here contemplating the next steps I must take to secure my own future and the imprints of the rest of my days upon the substrate of my life, I feel isolated and alone. Gone are the feelings of hopefulness, joy and glee of her smiles, visions of a family together, the plans for my now uncertain future loom over me like a closing curtain on an overplayed stage... the backdrop of my decisions, or indecisiveness haunting what's left of my marquee performance. 

Robbing what's left of my sanity and my passion in these moments, my thoughts collapse...

Thick, red velvet curtains cloud the audience from the view from my weary position. 

Gazing downwardly at the worn planked stage floor, I am saddened....for I sit alone on my tattered wooden stool, forgotten and erased. My name long since removed from the emblazoned billboards and posters of everyone's life.

Is this my last performance?

For I keep arriving to the stage, every single day, but alas there is no music, no orchestra, no lighting, no audience. 

I play along, shrouded in the aged garments of my character's role, but oblivious to the fact that the theater is closed, boarded up and left abandoned... I exist only in the darkened shadows. 

I surmise that I have remained here hoping, praying, believing that the audience would return if I performed well enough, if they missed me enough, if they longed for something I possessed that was of some intrinsic value, something left to hold onto to, that I was something worth remembering and loving.

Alas, I am not. I never was...

Nothing really matters...

I am but a memory of my fleeting brilliance, my abdicated potentials and my forsaken dreams...

Outwardly, I am strong, bearded and tattooed. Bold, passionate, vigorous even virile....

Inwardly, I weep for the ones that I have lost. The moments, the memories...

I shoulder pails of tears for the torture, the pain and the abuse that has been levied upon me...

I weigh and measure the multitude of fears, insecurities and the assumed realization that at my age I don't have much left... both to offer and what's remaining in the proverbial hourglass. 

Sigh...

But the performance must go on...

For life isn't about one's pity or circumstance.

It is about the next step you take, the next decision you make, the next fear you face.

Even in my pain, I will continue to love, to mourn those I have lost, the ones that deserved so much more than I had to give, and to be the man, and more importantly the father that God intended for me to be.

Let the curtains rise...