Potential

The things that everybody said rattled around in his head for every day that he did not fulfill his promise. They would bounce in between conscious thought and that hideous sneaking fear that something, anything is going to swallow you whole. Most of the time what everybody said would condense down into one word; like a sun dying and collapsing in on itself until it is no bigger than a basketball but weighing one million times more than he was capable of.

The biggest problem was that he did not know what to do with this curse (or blessing). On occasion he would wear it, a medal around his neck to convince others of the truth of the promise that he made to the world. Other times, the times it would crush him underneath, he would pray for it to be gone or for freedom from it.

He read a lot of books. He read a lot of great books by great, dead men (and some great, dead women). He was well aware that artistic brilliance shines through the worst times of ones life but he was always curious as to whether these great, dead men ever felt the weight of the promise they showed the world and whether they were ever paralysed by it. No doubt there were millions of artistic nobodies who fell by the wayside in the great march of lineal history. Who were paralysed by the weight of their own expectation. But they were nobodies and he would not be relegated to their ranks, a cast of billions, perhaps.

He stood at bus stops for hours hoping to wilt away into the scenery. He would stalk the streets at midnight hoping that someone would think him dangerous and cross the road to avoid him. He really just wanted to follow through though and actually steal from someone, give them something real to fear. He desired to be a rich man who threw plasma televisions from his fourth floor balcony and who still bought home brand groceries. It was the stereotype that fascinated him. He would deliberately conjure himself up to be an ironic stereotype that would give people reasons to say cliche things.

One day though, his parents died in a horrific car crash with an evil drunk driver who survived. He quit university, got a job managing a book store and spent his nights remembering the joyous weight that promise felt like; wondering if anyone would ever say it to him again.