Americans drink because they are empty. Sebastian drank for this same reason. Unfortunately, he was part of a select group of Americans who drank BECAUSE    they were empty. They knew it; they realized it. Sebastian always felt exactly how people feel the day after a meaningful day, a day that makes life worth living. Sebastian couldn’t remember his last day like this.

            There was hope in him, in people’s faces. He saw glimmers of hope in others, hope he took from them. Maybe it wasn’t even there; Sebastian was at least comforted by the fact there were some happy people. And if there were some happy people maybe they had a secret to share. As if happiness was a secret club with decoder rings and cloaks.  But the tedium and sadness couldn’t escape Sebastian and he them, so he drank. Sebastian, of course, drank because he was empty. Sebastian couldn’t fill the emptiness himself, and he knew the booze couldn’t either.  No one has ever drunk to fill a void. No one is that foolish. Sebastian drank to not feel his void, to maybe forget it.

The worst thing for Sebastian was that he could never tell anyone how he felt. Not just because Sebastian had been trained is whole life to never share emotions, but because he was from a catholic family. “Why be sad when God loves you so much?” would be the response from anyone Sebastian would tell.  Sebastian didn’t care for God, and God didn’t care for him. Sebastian had been told his whole life God was a father. Sebastian didn’t need another father to destroy his life further.

            Sebastian was sitting in class one day when his teacher said that God loved them all and cared for every hair on their head and every bone in their body. Sebastian couldn’t take it anymore. Was it so bad? Was it so bad to feel empty? Was it so bad to want to die in a world of death? Why doesn’t God care about an altar boy’s knees? Was he to truly believe the universe he lived in was being managed by someone who cared for him? If there is a God why does he have to care for us? Didn’t he create us just so we could worship him? Is that love?

            Sebastian wrote all these questions down on a piece of paper. He was sitting on his leather computer chair in his room with a bottle of Jack next to him. He was only wearing underwear and a robe. The robe was parted like the Red Sea revealing chest hair and cheese doodle crumbs, not nearly as glorious a parting as Moses’ escape from Egypt, but a parting nonetheless. The pain was in his stomach, the place where people who know love feel it.

So like every truly empty person Sebastian tried to kill himself. With his bottle of Jack he took pill after pill of whatever medication he could find that warned against mixing with alcohol. But like every good American he failed. Sebastian lived on. He lived on and met the girl of his dreams and had a family. Sebastian grew to forget his sadness and eventually cherished every moment of his life, but the universe never cared one way or the other. Sebastian knew this throughout his whole life. He was happy in spite of it.