Orange Fear

He was good man, he could be kind, he could be elegant. He had a warm soul, and sunny smile. When people looked at him they wanted to be his friend. Despite his faults, and despite mistakes that he had made in life. For a time.

The only person that couldn't forgive him for all his vice, his errors, and his disappointment of what he had allowed himself to become, was he. Because, he knew deep down that he could have been so much more. And only because of fear, did he never allow himself to become anything he wanted to be.

It's not something to be easily shrugged off, nor should one assume that they have an understanding of this fear, this is a fear that coils deep, and can choke out the spirit of dreams, without ever knowing that it was there.

In this he took a small amount of pride, he had discovered his fear, and he had, for a time, tried to over come it. He had simply failed, because he never countered his fear with the only thing that can truly overcome it. Which is love.

He had had love in his life, but that was before he had identified his fear, that orange, dark fear, that pushed all those that could have truly loved him, away. So, in the middle of his life, he embraced the fear, assuming that it was too little, and too late, to ever hope for becoming something that he would be proud to be.

And when the fear completely over too him, that's when he allowed for the debauchery to reach extremes that he had never thought possible, when he was still fighting the good fight. Now, instead of wit, he had verbal abuse. Instead of a smile, he had a sneer. He didn't even notice the difference, and when the last of anyone who had been in his life left him. He felt glad, for he knew he was righteous in his failure.

A person can feel as if they are spending their life on a scale, between accomplishment and failure, a good and a bad. And a person can think that their life is about the tip in their own personal scale. And once the tip happens, it is impossible to turn the other way. So they are vindicated in the actions of negativity.

The scale is always weighted in this mentality, towards failure. Towards despair.

When all the people in his life that were good, left him, he had to destroy more of himself. He needed to completely eliminate any and all sparks of hope that still plagued him when he was least expecting it. In the shower it would happen. His mind would wander, towards a happy hope, where he had a love, where he enjoyed his day. Where he could feel the sun on his face and be happy. Where he could be whole.

That's when the drugs became excessive. That's when the diseases would be contracted, and never repaired.

In his minds eye, he saw himself as a battered hero, misunderstood and unloved. The latter two were correct, the former was delusional. He was no hero, he wasn't even a anti-hero. He was a shell of a man, a self proclaimed hopeless case, that deserved no pity, and received none, unless he begged to strangers.

On his fiftieth birthday, he was told that if he didn't change his behaviour, he would die a slow painful death. He tried to convince the doctor that he had been doing that since he was born. There was no pity there.

Sometimes, in a person, no matter how dark they get, no matter how great their fear. A spark can become a fire. It can be called Divine Intervention by the religious. Somehow, though, when he reached what he would normally think of his glass being half empty. On his fifty first birthday, he became aware, that he still had maybe twenty five good years left. In which he could do anything he wanted.

His smile was the first thing to return. Brighter than it ever had before. Day to day choices are what tip the scale, day to day choices are what can allow a person to realize that there is no scale. There is no balance, there is no measurement, other than what effort is made.

For the first time in his life, he knew how to overcome his fear. All by himself. Like he always wanted to. Completely alone, after wreaking havoc for all of his adult life, he became a good man. Instead of begging for pity, he begged for forgiveness.

Everyone forgave him, but to his great dismay, no one accepted him back into their lives. It's easy to forgive, it's hard to trust. A lesson that he learned too late, but he accepted it, and moved on.

He never found love, but he did give what he could for the rest of his life towards helping others overcome their fears.

He only lived for another ten years, and died of heart failure in a restaurant, giving advice to a young man, who didn't hear a word that was ever spoken to him.

He grew irate with the boy, he had never met anyone so much like him before, in all his years of helping people. The more he tried to help the boy, the more the boy pushed him away.

It was more than his heart could take. He died trying to save the boy, he died trying to save himself.

The boy was a good boy, he would become a decent man, an elegant man. Whose smile would always light up a room. Except for a fear in him. A constant, dark orange fear, that would coil around his spirit and force him to stop before he started anything. He thought that his life was a balancing act, between accomplishment and failure. And that it would always be weighted against him.