"Christ, I'm exhausted."
Me and my brother were playing hooky from yet another ridiculous list of 'dig-a-ditch fill-a-ditch' jobs.
If you're at my parents' house, for whatever reason, and they're doing something- you have to be doing something perceptably useful. Only... my mom's not the most well adjusted to-do list maker on earth. We had just spent three hours cleaning out closets, only for her to walk by and tell us to make a throw-away pile, and then put the rest of the junk BACK into the closet since there was nowhere else to place it, and they wouldn't have a moving truck for another month.
That's nothing, I'd tell you about the time me and my brother had to vaccuum the walls, but there just isn't time for that kind of madness tonight.
So we were drinking beer on the back stoop waiting for someone to remember we were here... and had a pulse, so we were more than qualified to re-shingle the roof.
When my brother opened with a rather unexpected question
"Are you happy?"
I blinked a few times
the beer fizzed and bubbles popped in that awkward eternity.
This wasn't really what we talked about.
Normally it was insane plots, government, projects, jobs, our parents.
He doesn't really do that "concerned" thing.
I mean sure, my life had been kind of at a screaming low-point, and he's the best brother I've ever had... but I didn't think my situation warranted such a loaded question.
For a split second I wondered if his question was a reflection on his own life. That my piteous quandry was the measure of happy, or at least getting by. That if I could say "yes I'm happy in this RAT HOLE STINK SHIT HELL I CALL LIFE!" then he would do fine with whatever was bothering him.
I mean, times were getting thin...
unbearably thin.
And when I really thought about it, it was such for both of us,
and I was a prat for hogging the pity party.
So I answered
honestly.
I coulda lied,
I could've gave him what he was desperately fishing for...
but there it was.
No take backs, no pretense.
"No,
but I'm getting there."
