Wounded in time-copyright Robert Fullarton 2014

Wounded in time--unfinished piece

copyright Robert Fullarton 2014

I once knew a man who was addicted to many things, bad things, the kind of things that ware a man out from the inside to the shell. Prescription pills were downed in glasses of vodka like an animal, sexual urges were met once a week with an exchange with certain local “loose” women. The neighbour to his left was a roaring alcoholic with a penchant for long drawn out rambles about “the good old days”. The neighbour to the right was a gambling addict and the neighbour to his right was addicted to the foul brown liquid we call heroin. 

The man I knew, ran the shelter for the homeless, he was kind (carried his convictions wherever he went and wore his heart on his sleeve) he would care for his elderly mother every week –cleaning and completing household tasks for his ageing mother- with no reluctance or promptitude needed, but with an act of faith in what he loved and believed in. The man was humane, he was unique on that stance, he would stoop and rise to the needs of many colleagues, tried to see the good in everyone, be it the dour girl at the supermarket checkout or the old man that shuffled like a wounded snail up and down the neighbourhood garden, the need to think and feel was there. Perhaps it was this great need and depth to feel, that left him exposed and often easily hurt when his faith in humanity was shaken, but the acts of cruelty he would encounter from one workplace to another. Not everyone shared his mind frame and he learned that early and the so-called tender years of early manhood.

“We are struggles that breathe and work for a living”, said an old man he once met on a chance occasion on a park bench in the inner-city park.

I think the old man meant in the twilight of his years that the weakness, imperfections and pains of humanity are universal, no matter who we are.

He would go from being a man of strong inner convictions –wheeling and opening doors for semi-crippled old ladies- to a man of deep doubt and inner corrosion (when he would become the cripple and he would need a carer himself)

When he downed his pills –into a state of social catatonia- the alcoholic, the gambler and the heroin addict would each simultaneously be doing the same –the addicts would weep while they gorged and lost themselves in the moment.

One day, when the sex addict was leaving his house, he happened to meet the alcoholic next door, who happened to be locking the front door at the same time.

The faces that exchanged were somewhat stripped of their glow and beauty. These faces were shaken and their demeanour was somewhat tightened by a static sense of anxiety.

“Morning”

“Morning”, said each man to each other.

“The flowers are certainly blooming well, aren’t they?”

“Yes, summer has finally arrived, after a hard winter.”

“Damn it was hard winter.”

I know what you mean! Hiccup”

The alcoholic himself had once been a concert pianist, talented and with a wide-open future ahead of him. The sex addict had once been a novelist with a wide-open future like his neighbour –but he like his neighbour had never known love and when the wounds of love came around to take his life, he capitulated to the fears that took him day and night. The gambler was once the heir to an estate left in equity as a legacy by his parental guardians. He as he stated, “sold his wife” for the casinos of Las Vegas, the betting shops and the way of the world. He said he loved her more than anything in the world. I asked him “why?” and he said, “People used to say to me that I was perfect and that I was a great man. I couldn’t take the compliments, and once I started gambling for the costs of my mortgage, I couldn’t stop! I put my entire life on the line and the fears within me took hold.”

Life is long for some and in time a lion will become a lamb and it takes time for the strong to be weak, at the wrong time and the wrong place.