iWalk Alone

I paced along the dark, deserted streets of the city.  The city I had always lived in, the only home I had ever known.  It had never used to have been this dark and empty.  But I couldn't remember for the life of me the feeling of being warm, loved.  The chilly night wind buffeted my tiny frame, and I shivered, drawing my jacket ever closer around me.  Why was I out, alone in the middle of a late autumn night?

A month.  A month ago they had started dating.  They had finally realized that they were what they had always wanted.  Every day the sight of them together would wrench my heart out of my chest and then somehow brutally mutilate what little was left of my tattered soul.  I couldn't stay near them for more than a few minutes at a time.  So lost in each other, they didn't notice me drifting away.  They didn't bother noticing me.

A week.  A week ago we had stopped filming iCarly.   We had lost a ridiculous amount of viewers, and Carly blamed me for not keeping the enthusiasm up on the show.  We had gotten plenty of comments saying the show wasn't funny anymore because I had lost all of my usual energy.  That was when we had decided to shut down the site.

Two hours.  Two hours ago I had gotten the text from my best friend, telling me that the two of them had finally taken it to the next level.  I couldn't take it anymore.  I felt like the world was trying to kill me slowly from the inside out.  What had I done?  Had I really done anything to deserve this?

Now I strolled along the grey cement sidewalk, without a notion of where I was going.  The paved streets were bathed in the soft glow of the streetlights; my hunched shadow, now my only companion, rotating each time I walked past one.  Occasionally a car would cruise by slowly, but the sleeping city's streets were completely quiet save my shallow heartbeat.  The cold night air helped to clear my head, but my mind still throbbed from the knowledge of my two best friends, and what they were doing right now.  I shuddered, hiding the fact that I was about to emotionally break down.  But hiding it from who?  From myself, of course.

Why couldn't they see what their relationship had done to me?  I had dark circles under my eyes from tossing and turning every night, my golden curls were now always a mess, and I almost never showed up at school anymore.  I couldn't bear to be anywhere near them.  My two best friends were all I had ever had, and probably all I would ever have.  Now I was alone.  This feeling of emptiness and loneliness…  I felt like it's all I had ever known.  I didn't remember what it was like to be truly happy.  All the energy I used to have, the way I was always just high on life, it had all been smothered.

And now, walking through the all-too familiar streets, I thought about them.  They would never break up.  They were the perfect couple.  Freddie had waited patiently like the good little nub he was, and he finally been rewarded.  Was this my fate?  Was this karma for every bad thing I had ever done to him?  Was I destined to fall for a guy who could never love me back?  Who I could barely admit to myself to liking?

Thinking back on it all, I had always been alone.  As soon as Melanie left, I was alone to take care of my mother.  Carly was my first real friend, and I was eventually halfway willing to consider Fredward a friend.  But had I ever really expected those friendships to last?  I wasn't a likeable person.  Melanie had gotten the nice-girl genes.  I was annoying and selfish and heartless and cold and unfeeling.  And now I could add alone to the list.  I honestly didn't know where to go from here.  I wasn't any good at making friends.  I guess I gotta deal with the solitude until somebody takes pity on me again.

Sighing, I shook off my depressing thoughts and glanced up, immediately realizing where I was.  The Bushwell.  I cursed my feet for carrying me here.  I stood in the alley behind the building, drenched in darkness, involuntarily gazing straight at the eighth floor of the fire escape.  At that point I very nearly lost it.

I contemplated climbing up there.  But there was no reason to.  Then again, there was no reason to be outside at all at 3:30 in the morning, roaming the streets of Seattle.  Was there really any reason behind anything?

I hoisted myself onto the dumpster and climbed the endless-seeming fire escape stairs to the eighth floor.  By the time I got there, my calves were aching and my I could see my shallow breaths in the night air.  I sat down on the sill of the window that looked in on the dark hallway.  I remembered the night I had spent here a couple of years ago.  I had been much less alone at the time.  I had somehow managed to convince myself that the people in my life cared about me, and for months after that, that maybe someone could actually love me.

But now I could see clearly that my life had always been screwed.  I never had a bright future.  Before they had started going out, I never looked toward my future.  I thought my friends would always be there to help me, to make sure that my life would turn out all right.  Now they had forgotten about me.

I couldn't believe that they had never thought about how their relationship could potentially affect me.  I knew I was tough, but no one wants to be a third wheel.  Of course I wanted them to be happy, but them being together had sucked all of the joy out of my life.  I couldn't keep watching them together and pretending to be okay with it.  But what choice did I have?

Shivering in my light jacket, I got up and walked back down to the street level.  I was still breathing, my heart was still beating.  I was obviously still alive.  I wasn't the ever-gleeful Sam Puckett that I had once been, but I knew that I could keep going.  When times were tough, which was more or less all the time, I held on.  I dealt with whatever life threw at me.  I had done it before.  I could keep walking… alone.  With only my shadow for company and the sound of my heart urging me home, I walked alone, unloved, my aspirations still crushed.

Guess this is why they call it the Boulevard of Broken Dreams.