It has been over ten years since my last relationship. The last one ended on a very cold note—almost like a corporate firing. We talked about it over lunch at our favorite bar. I didn’t see it coming. It was on my birthday. What was I supposed to expect? It happened all of a sudden without any clues.

I’ve always been very wary about commitment. If a woman doesn’t call me back in a matter of, let’s say, ten minutes, I start getting really worried. What if she doesn’t like me anymore? Maybe she’s talking to some other man. Maybe I said something she didn’t like. Or maybe I did something she didn’t like. Whichever way, I turn to stone. I don’t call her back. Instead, I wait for her to respond. And she does, usually, when she’s still interested. But it could take several hours. Several crucial hours.

That’s how I am with relationships, not just romantic ones. A friend could turn his shoulder at me for a while, and I’m left wondering whether he has lost interest. There goes another friend. I’ve burned many bridges in my life, most of them unintentionally. But I’ve burned enough to where I can’t get across to the other side.

Maybe other people have done the same thing. There’s no way I can be the only one.

I isolated myself in my thirties with alcohol and marijuana so much that I fell out of touch with a lot of friends. Some of them went on to celebrate their careers and where they belong. And I still feel stuck. I miss those friends. But now that I’m sober, I wouldn’t know what to do with them. It was as if drugs and alcohol were what stitched us together.

And now, for all I know, they’re still drinking, but I don’t know for sure. I haven’t spoken to them in years. The only proof I have that they’re breathing is through social media. I see the pictures they post of themselves enjoying the good life—or what appears to be the good life, a facade. Who knows what inner turmoil they could be facing?

I could always unfriend them and it wouldn’t make a difference. They have my number. They can call me, but they won’t. And I won’t call them because they won’t call me back.

Relationships, as a whole, are healthy. My therapist encourages me to make new friends, but it’s harder at my age. I have to join hiking clubs and that sort of stuff. I can’t just go to a hangout and mingle with the young crowd. There’s something about my age that invites no one. Or maybe it’s just me who doesn’t want anything but solitude, who doesn’t want to burn any bridges. All I know is I don’t want to be dumped at a corporate luncheon ever again.

I’ve given up on being happy. What does happiness even mean?

About three years into therapy, my psychiatrist told me that I shouldn’t hope to be happy. I don’t remember if hope was the right word. But I think his point was that happiness is just temporary.

Instead, I should’ve looked for satisfaction. Satisfaction lasts much longer, and one can be satisfied by one’s life, not happy. That sounded much easier because happiness is indeed fleeting, and satisfaction can last a lot longer.

People tend to look for happiness.

“I’m not happy.”

“You don’t look very happy.”

“Why am I not happy?”

“I should be happy. I have X, Y, and Z. But I’m miserable instead.”

I’m miserable because I’m not satisfied.

That psychiatrist was brilliant. He’s dead now. He died from some sort of cancer that he wouldn’t disclose about ten years ago. I remember he would take frequent trips to the bathroom, and I thought, “Wait a minute. He’s going to the bathroom on my dime. I should be outraged.”

But out of politeness, I never brought it up to him. I usually left his sessions upset at him and myself, but those sessions would usually leave me satisfied, not happy. I won’t get into the details of what we talked about. That was between me and him. I remember the last time I saw him. It was at a hospice where he was dying. His teeth were black. Most of them were missing. He said some things to me that weren’t nice, and he demanded money in cash for our session, so I had to drive to the bank and withdraw it before I drove back and gave it to him.

I remember sitting in my car afterward and telling myself I would never see him again. I felt like some sort of criminal after what he’d said to me, like someone who’s antisocial. I’d always been a loner, but I felt very alone, sitting in my car, about to drive home.

Yes, happiness is a lost cause. I’ll never be happy. Sometimes I’m satisfied after a great dinner at a restaurant or after a book I’ve read, but those moments are rare. I guess satisfaction is as difficult as happiness or close to it at least. But the pressure is off. I’m not pressured to be satisfied. People don’t come up to me and say, “You don’t look satisfied.” They would say, “You don’t look happy.”

Something either satisfies me or it doesn’t. It usually doesn’t. And then I’m left unsatisfied and disappointed, unhappy, let down, depressed even.

I would leave the casino feeling that way, losing hundreds of dollars at the slot machines after being ahead. Let’s say I won over a hundred dollars at the machine. I felt both happiness and satisfaction. But I wasn’t satisfied enough to walk away with the money. I got greedy. It wasn’t about the money. It was about the adrenaline rush of being satisfied by the winning. So I kept playing and playing and playing until I lost everything down to a few pennies. I left the machine, dejected, exploited, and most of all, unsatisfied.

Forget unhappy. There’s no such thing as happiness. Maybe I’m happy for someone else. I sure can’t be satisfied for someone else. That sounds impossible.

But anyway, those are my two cents on the illusion of happiness.

I was always the new kid, growing up. We moved around a lot, so I was the one who sat in the back row. The teacher would introduce me to the class, which I didn’t want. All the kids would give me weird looks like I was the weird face in the crowd. And it was natural for the new kid to be picked on. New kids did look weird, not like the rest of us. You saw the same average faces every day at school until one day a fresh face came sneaking in, trying to be unnoticed. You felt compelled to hate the new face because it was unlike yours and your friends.

I was called names, from Ben Dover to Fat Boy. And that was when kids didn’t attack me like angry birds. I used to get welted in the shower by wet towels.

Kids who weren’t even popular would come up to me.

“Hey, Talbot. You want to fight?”

I would keep my head down on the walk back home from school in Florida, trying to disengage.

One kid pushed me to the grass. I was taught how to fight: to aim for the nose, the throat, the stomach, or the balls. But in those moments of fear, the strategy never came to mind. I just stood back up, brushed the grass off my knees, and continued walking.

“I said, ‘Hey Talbot, you want to fight?'”

I just kept ignoring the kid and walking home because I’d missed the bus—not that the bus was any more pleasant. Kids used to chant my name, Ben Dover, all the way to my stop. All I had to look forward to was tomorrow when it would start again.

And waiting for me at home was another bully. He stood over six feet and provided for us. But man, he had a temper. I never knew when he would self-destruct. My mother never knew either. But if one of us did something or said something he didn’t like, he would blow up at us.

Junior high was hell. High school would be better. I wasn’t picked on, I was invisible. That was good for what it was worth.

When I was in elementary school, I wanted to be the famous center of attention. But junior high had taught me not to be that. I was better off hiding in the shadows. And it continued through high school. I went from extrovert to introvert by the time I was a freshman. At least my father’s anger lessened just a little.

Now bullies are more insidious. They’re out there, but they hide and attack me when I’m not looking. They’re not like that boy who used to shove me into the grass. And they don’t just pick on me, they pick on millions. They tell us what to do. And if we don’t do it well enough, they fire us. Or they scam us out of our money. But bullies never win. They get caught sooner or later, or they meet their match.

My very first job was during high school at a movie theater. It was at the AMC 6 in a small town in California. I thought it would be a fun job because I would make money at one of my favorite places to be other than the mall.

This was in the 1990’s. They paid me, I think, six dollars an hour, but I’m not altogether sure. Maybe eight. It could’ve been minimum wage back then. I had to wear a tuxedo with a golden name tag pinned to my left breast. The tuxedo was tight and hot. My neck perspired from the uniform being so tight, as did my armpits. I felt as stiff as a mannequin in that damn thing. It only got worse from there.

My favorite thing to do was rip tickets. It took the aggression out of me, ripping those glossy papers as the customers came in. It was better than serving them popcorn and soda in the heat behind the counter. I’ll tell you that. Pretty much everything was hot in the movie theater.

The only place to keep cool was the theater itself, where they let me sit on my break, eat free popcorn, and watch part of a movie. They did that on purpose so the moviegoers would get cold and hungry. I worked during a summer when not very many good movies came out. I kept watching one where some idiot would put on a mask and turn into a superhero. It was a comedy that wasn’t very funny. The character kept making goofy faces to compensate for the lack of humor in the film.

But it beat having to usher and clean up after those slobs who sat in their seats. They couldn’t control their popcorn buckets or soda cups. The floors were always sticky, and the popcorn kernels would stick to my shoes. I had to clean up vomit one time. Someone had actually puked in the theater and left. Who does that?

And then the theater suffered from a rodent infestation. Rats. They would crawl through the theaters from one to the next. I would hear them squealing. Everyone knew about them. The girls who worked there wouldn’t dare go inside. A lot of them quit, so it was mostly us boys who worked there.

Cameras were everywhere. I was accused once of stealing from the register. One of the boys had ratted me out over something I’d never done. The supervisor called me into her little office to question me.

“We have you on camera,” she said.

“Doing what?” I asked.

“Stealing from the register. Don’t do it again.”

She showed me footage of me pulling money out and scratching my ass. She thought I was stuffing the money in my back pocket when I really wasn’t.

“Count it,” I said. “Was there money missing?”

“Not that I know of,” she said.

“Then why’re you accusing me?” I said. I was only seventeen.

She was kind of a dumb lady.

And I knew the boy who’d accused me—he was chubby with long hair. For some reason, he didn’t like me.

I didn’t work there for very much longer, maybe a week before I resigned. It made me miserable. And on top of that, the paranoia became too much.

Whenever I go to movie theaters, I think about how awful that job and those clothes were. No one should have to wear such uniforms when they’re being paid that little. They should be able to wear shorts and T-shirts. But what do I know?

I drove by it a few months ago, now in my forties. It’s a Dollar Tree. It used to be a dollar theater after I’d worked there, but they showed movies that were over half a year old—movies you probably would’ve seen already.

I went in there one time, even though the place gave me bad vibes, and watched a movie with an old friend. It wasn’t a family experience anymore. The homeless slept in the back row in the afternoon. And it appeared that the rodent problem was never fixed.

I used to celebrate Cinco de Mayo as a drinker. Now I think it’s a superfluous holiday. Is today an excuse in America to go drinking, just like St. Patrick’s Day? I won’t sit here and bitch about appropriation. I’m not that kind of person. You may do whatever you please as long as it’s lawful. But I don’t laugh at a drunk person wearing a sombrero and a fake mustache, who’s insulting Mexican culture. You may drink tequila on this holiday. There’s no problem with that. I’ll stick with chips and salsa and listen to the trumpets blare from the mariachi bands.

I don’t remember any gorgeous times on Cinco de Mayo because I blacked out as an alcoholic. There isn’t much to recall anymore after the blackouts. I just know that I hung out with my former drinking friends at a bar on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. It might’ve actually been called Cinco de Mayo if I’m not mistaken. We drank margaritas and ate nachos. None of us were disrespectful enough to wear a sombrero, thank God.

I don’t talk to those friends anymore. They were only useful for drinking. Once I stopped, there was nothing else I was able to do with them. Isn’t it sad? They’ve all moved away from California. So now I’m stuck in my forties, sober, with no one to hang out with anymore.

Anyway, there isn’t much to say about this holiday. Mexico beat the French in the 1800s. That’s all there is to know. I didn’t realize it, but it’s celebrated more in the U.S. Americans will find any reason to get drunk.

I’m going to walk down the strip in Palm Springs today and pass multiple Mexican restaurants. All of them will be crowded with mariachi bands playing and people drinking margaritas and laughing until they pass out.

Another weekend has begun. It’s the first week of May. I got maybe five hours of sleep last night because it was too hot in my apartment. For some reason, my fan stopped working, and my air conditioner is louder than a 747.

I think spring cleaning is in store, but I hate cleaning. You’re supposed to dust the home this month. It’s ritualistic I guess. The weather is only getting warmer here in Palm Springs. Eventually it will be over a hundred degrees in the desert. I’m not looking forward to that. I wish it was eighty degrees all year round.

But anyway, I just spoke with my editor yesterday, and she showed me the blueprint for publishing my first book. It’s an arduous process, and I’m not looking forward to it. I wish I could snap my fingers and have it done with, but that won’t work. I’ll have to do it the hard way, and that means marketing. The ‘M’ word. Yuck. Who likes marketing? Putting yourself out there, making yourself a brand. Why can’t I just be inconspicuous? This means people have to know me on Facebook and other social media websites and care about me.

I’m sitting in the coffee shop. A strange man is at the table next to me. It’s almost seven in the morning, and he’s drinking a bottled protein shake with a bottle of water. He wears a white baseball cap with silver hair beneath it, and he also wears a baby blue hooded sweatshirt. He keeps staring out the window pensively. His nose looks like that of a hawk. I can’t tell if he’s homeless. A lot of them come in here. I think the baristas give them free food and coffee. How else can they afford it? The coffee is too expensive. I spend about ten dollars every morning just to sit in here because I can’t just show up and not buy anything.

I have a tennis lesson today. I used to play competitively in college but have barely picked up a racquet since then, so my strokes are off. It’s an embarrassment. At the last lesson, I kept hitting balls into the next court. I wanted to hide somewhere from the coach and the people passing by. My rhythm is off, much like writing and where to put the words, et cetera. I hope that someday I can get it back.