Sometimes, you slide into defeat, sometimes you jump into the pit with both feet

I knew a guy named Dan. We were both from the same part of New York but we met here in Hawaii. I have always asked questions of people, trying to understand what I was missing that kept me from making friends. “What brings you to this place,” I had asked him. We shared a dirty and tiny room, and we each had use of a deflated air mattress. Mercifully Dan was asexual. In fact Dan was not much of a participant in life other than getting his disability check, handing the check over to a trusted dealer who was stable enough to be around for thirty days, and smoking crack off of that money for the month. He lived this way for years. (I saw him recently, bedded down on Maunakea Street in Chinatown, and he looked like the abominable snowman, he was so hairy. But years ago, he was at least inside and not sleeping on the pavement, grim though it was. He told me:

My fiancé was killed in a car accident. That was it for me. No more life.”

Dan, lifelong addict, former licensed electrician

Some people give up and they know it I know the feeling of wondering if I could have seen the future years ago, would I have fought so hard for this?