A friend in need
Then the sorrow will come
You started into the world screaming in useless baby talk that you did not get your bottle of milk sooner, or your mother was still too weak to comfort you after your drug-induced birth. All the doctors would lazily say their congratulations and hand you over to your mother, who was still crying with relief that you weren't a mutant. For 9 months in a womb, all she wanted was that you weren't deformed and to get out of her. The expression on her face is a mix of overwhelming joy and a hint of worry over how she was going to pay the hospital bill. The nurses don’t care about you, you were only of a thousand others that day that were born in that particular hospital. It doesn't matter geographically where you were born. You could have been born on top of Mount Harvest, or you could have been naturalized in a chemists’ lab. Your fate would have been the same, the future would still have taken place.
You were taken home at a fairly moderate cottage. One kitchen, one living room, two bathrooms, and one bedroom for two ponies. You grew up inside a large baby bed until you were old enough to break the gate off your crib. Then you went on to make your life mission to tear up anything you see and learned a life lesson in which you should never put electrical appliances into your mouth.You also learned to never climb up a dresser at midnight to wake your sleeping mother or else you
would fall off and break your teeth. Two hours later, life is normal except you can't talk like you used to.
Your mother's regular habit for raising you was to lock you in your room when you were upset because she couldn't deal with the stress of a child. She was not a bad mother, she was just new. She made you the most precious thing in her world. She would work most of the day at the local candy store in order to support you. You wished she was more active in your life, though you understood the sacrifices she made to give you a better childhood than she did. In truth, you were a spoiled brat with lots of toys, much better off than any filly/colt your age. You always got whatever kind of toy you wanted without a moments thought of where it came from.
You never had any real friends to talk to and play with. When you were a little kid, you were always afraid of developing relationships with other students at your school because you were worried that as soon as you did, then
you will have to move again. Your mother likes to call you a “gypsy”, because you were always moving.You never staying around for more than a year at a time. When you became an adolescent, suicide almost always crossed mind, even though there was nothing to be depressed about. To everypony else, you just seem to be in a mad-at-the-world mood.
The topic of religion didn’t much appeal to you. You believed in God, but didn’t attend church and was hard put to openly admit it. But since you believed in Pony Hell, you didn't commit suicide. All you saw was black –and – white, never gray. You were, in dictionary terms, an extremist. You either did something all the time or never did it. Some exceptions were that you once
tried a cigarette. You knew all the health hazards, and only smoked that one time to see what it was like.
The only thing that you were addicted to was caffeine, but so was 99% of all ponies at that time.
Although you faced many difficulties, school was not one of them. In every school you went to, you were a good student.
You never fought, you never skipped classes, and never even had a detention. The only problem with school happened in kindergarten. You were emotionally depressed and missed a lot of school due to your parents divorce. The school refused to promote you and had to repeat kindergarten. Ever since then, you have been a year older than most kids, making friend-finding even more difficult.
Your speech predicament had revolved into a major communication issue, making you see a school speech therapist every year since kindergarten. Every year, there would be fewer students needing assistance with their communication issues. You would feel embarrassed. That is, until in the eighth grade, you said the hell with it and skipped so much school that you failed the class. You didn't have the motivation to even try to fix it anymore. To you, as strange as it might sound, you tend to be understood better . To you, you don’t believe it because you like to simply things so you could understand it. You come to the radical solution that your problem could not be helped and also rationalized that no one can ever understand you. Only to your mother could you be understood about 50% of the time, and much to your annoyance your mother would correct you every time you said something
intelligible that you just knew was perfect. So you tend to not say anything that is too hard to say to avoid being embarrassed, but you ask,"To whom?" As you said, feeling friend-deprived, that you are a loner, a misfit, a colossal disappointment to the eyes of the public. People will never say it, but you know what they are thinking. That being a loner is a worse act than terrorism, that other people can’t believe it that somebody, anypony in the world, could be so separated. At least with terrorists, you are interacted with them, even if it gets a little too close for comfort.
But from aside all that, you get along fine with yourself. Everybody says that is the only thing that matters.You must like yourself before you could like anybody else. But if you were counting, you would be at level 1 because although you decided you could live with yourself, you have not yet interacted socially with the other members of the most public club in the world. To you, all the parties,clubs, and even foreign slave-auctions would be off limits. The world as you know it would be shrinking as every single day goes by without incident, without drama, without a friend. You are the minority. The minority made you, molded you into imperfection every day.
You were in a pretty bad situation. You can see the world without being in it. There is something about you that wants to break free from the ghostly prison that no one else can see, but you. You have the tools to break free, but consistently decide not to. The world sees you too, and sometimes even knocks on the door in your world. Then, you have two choices, to open the door and embrace the newcomer, or hide in the cupboard in your kitchen to wait for it to go away. It might be a lunatic with a machete or it might be the pizza man , but it is a risk you would never ever take. Until the day you took it.
You could have met her in a coffee shop, or through online dating, but it doesn't matter as the beginning would be all the same. You could accidently knock her down on a crowded subway and notice each others existence for the first time. Or, you could have met her through a friend’s friends’ friends’ exboyfriends’ something or other, and slowly begin the love process. You hating her, she to you, you forgive and make up.You may get hit by the pitcher and take first base or hit a grand slam on the first date, but the end result would be a relationship that would result in heartbreak. But the good news is that if you survive the first 40 years without continual madness, you have a reasonable shot at a good life with your new mate. The bad news, however, is that about half of you would be divorced within five years, either due to idiocy or simply being too immature.
In the beginning, things are great. You and your fillyfriend/coltfriend share a pizza once in a while, or saw a crappy movie you went to see only because it had Prance Pitt on the cover. She smiled, laughed, and occasionally kissed you . Well, being in love
doesn’t mean the world is perfect. Everything else is in ruins, the eternal pit of sadness and self- destruction that you are forever stuck in. The would-be promotion, the check that got lost, the wasted life of scum who mugged you.You think the world could be so pure, so delicate and so fragile that you are heartbroken. You might become homeless by neglecting the rent, or you might be able to sustain a permanent living space, but with the problems of today (and yesterdays) economy, it would be unlikely. Then, if your parents are dead, you would have to seriously risk your relationship with your spouse. The pressure and guilt-ridden treatment that
would stain your love and also be a factor in your everlasting hate for each other. Or, in another case, you will crawl back to the place where it all got started. You would be treated like the 10 year old you are, insecure and subconsciously sealing your fate to be seclude from everyone.
You hear the stories. You read the newspapers or watch the News. You know that statistics of living happily forever after and reality. And the truth of it all could be too much to bear. While lying in bed with your spouse, you momentarily think of the
world’s problems, then decide their are nothing you can do to help solve the problem. When you go out, you ignore the pleas of the street people; you keep walking and avoid eye contact when near a collection agency. You mutter curse words under your breath every time somebody asks you where to find a local Wal-mart. Everyone is out to get you, no one can be trusted, you identify would go unnoticed. All you want is that your name would never be forgotten. There are too many people with lost names.
You will come home one day, finding all your clothes and things on the sidewalk. It is clear what she wants. Grieve-stricken of being dumped in such a manner, you wonder in the direction of a sewer. If life gives you rotten peaches, then you make matters worse for yourself. You go to the sewer, perhaps looking for sympathy from the nasty water, looking for a method to this madness
which is your life. A rat will wonder by, looking for scrapes on the floor that could determine if it will live or die tomorrow. The
rat would remind you of someone else you know, then cry when you realize it is yourself. You have never reached a point so low.
After being ridiculed, starved, and having a rat as a best friend, you don't care people think. As a common beggar, they expect you to be dirty and appear pitiful for the dimes of their 100 dollar breakfasts. Your clothes have become stained, wrinkled, and dirty. Your hooves, which once had the strength to punch yourself to keep from crying, are now so cramped and swollen that it gives up on you. You die in the trash can, your body giving up after weeks of starvation, and loneliness. Your only gesture that you're dead is when two bums off the street fight to decide who gets your only horseshoe. You die a victim of a plague that you once ignored and shunned. You died a product of the world, as everyone around you go on with their lives, whether rich or poor, that everyone is doomed. Everyone else will die a product of the world, as the sunshine finally goes out.