Primordial Reflex

Everyone has their place in life, or something that they are meant to do or want to do... somewhere they excel.

Despite the reflexive defiance to being stereotyped, everyone fit in some developed stereotype, a path walked by many before them and to be followed by many after.

But a few people roam the earth lost. Despite having desires, they lack the will to achieve them. Wrecked by self-doubt, lack of ambition, a lackadaisical attitude to life, or some other personality flaw, they are seen as the lowest of society, often with an innate pride despite having nothing to back it on. The divergent.

That is not to say that these divergent have no skill; in truth, some either never find or never develop it. But it all backs up to deep-rooted problems with their childhood.

Tyrone was one of such. Despite growing up like every other child, there was always something different about him, always something that didn't fit. He had a lot of skills and could be placed with different kinds of people but he was always too much to squeeze into any box.

As a child, like every other child, he was full of the desire to be independent, not to do whatever he liked but to be responsible for himself.

Like other children, he wanted to grow faster, not to have the same power as adults but to be responsible for his decisions.

As a teenager, he wanted to be free, not so he could dance and party but because he knew he was incapable of walking the path adults thought he could.

Like other children, he hated going to school, but only because he felt he could learn more, be more, and do more than school offered to teach.

All of this made it so that despite his ambition to be great, he could never truly find any adequate place to direct his focus.

Now in his early twenties and a high school dropout, he felt lost, like the witness to a painter working despite being within the painting himself.

Picking a job wasn't easy, becoming a taxi driver was a result of ridiculous circumstances he never predicted for his future as a boy. Despite looking down on the job, he saw it as a means to an end, a path to survival when nothing else worked and so he grew to enjoy doing his job. But getting up in the morning to start was difficult. As was battling with a crippling depression no one around him could understand.

Such were the circumstances surrounding his loneliness that came to be a fundamental determiner of his personality and identity.

****

January 4, 2024

It was a day like all others and the loneliness in the air was slowly starting to fade as his heart bubbled with anticipation for the coming rain. Every year was the same, and he had no idea why, but the winter seasons from the ember months into the new year were the most difficult of his life. And on the 9th month of every year, he wondered if he would make it through alive.

But here he was, in bed, the beginning of a new year. It was still that period after the festivities where everyone was superstitious. Where laziness was permitted partly due to the exhaustion from months of jolly but mostly due to the belief that one must not start a new year focused on work. As for why everyone believed this, Tyrone had no idea but he knew he must get up.

As he did, taking a quick cold shower to clear his head, he picked up his car keys and headed out trying to be as quiet as possible so as not to wake anyone. It wasn't his routine every morning; he usually needed more prodding from his guilty heart to leave the house in the morning, but today felt different.

Getting into the taxi, he took in a deep breath and started the engine. As he waited for the engine to warm up, he turned up the heater to clear up the fog in his windshield. Part of him knew it would be best to wipe down the windshield with a towel, but he lacked the will to do that right now.

His job always felt wrong in the mornings, the world felt wrong and many times he found himself weeping in solitude at the fate that had become his. Not today though, he had long become aware that as soon as he got on the road, all of his worries, fears and self-pity would disappear so today, he simply sought to skip the feeling awful part.

Knowing it was still too early to put the car in gear, he did so anyway, pulling out of the driveway and onto the street. It was going to be a long day, and to save himself the mental torture, his mind slowly began to delete or more accurately, suspend aspects of himself. It was a self-defense mechanism he didn't yet realize he had.

His awareness of time, curiosity, his sense of self, thoughts in general, family, and his desires.

In place of those were expectations for the day, getting held by the police for whatever reason, fear; buying a snack for lunch, excitement; meeting a troublesome passenger, fear; getting harassed by 'street boys', fear; running out of fuel mid-trip, fear; not making enough money, fear; getting into an accident, fear; car breakdown, fear; flat tire mid-trip, fear... the fear was infinite. But what choice did he have?

The taxi system was easier than he'd seen in some movies. He simply drove on the road, stopped for whoever hailed him down, and was heading in the same direction he decided was his route. It was simple. He just had to go a few trips back and forth until the day ended. To do that, he had to not get attached to anyone he met, meaning until the day ended, he wasn't human, and he didn't care; he couldn't be, and he could not afford to.

With these thoughts in mind, his new day started as he got on the main road, it was going to be a long one.