Color Weak 4 - Pleasure

He finally decided to head back home, well to his apartment anyway - he hadn't lived in his own home for many years.  It was early in the day, and he didn't feel like going back to work.  Someone, somewhere earlier in the day someone had told him he needed to do something for himself.  He began to think about that idea, doing something for himself as he drove mindlessly through the streets.  He chuckled loudly as realized nothing came to mind.  There wasn't one thing that he could think of that would be pleasurable to him, not one thing.  It had been that way since she had left.
Determined to come up with something, he started to review his life in terms of pleasure rather than his typical review of pain.  There had been many things in his life that he had enjoyed, none surviving the last seven years though, nothing anyway that had been done without her.  Ironically, anything done with her had been wonderful, from the smallest of of gestures, even household chores,  to hiking and travelling. She had taken so much more with her than her smile and her love.  Now, he was faced with the prospect of teaching himself to enjoy things in life again, and he really had nowhere to start, other than to reach way back, way back to his youth.
He remembered playing as a child, loving to be outside and with friends. He would spend as much time outdoors as possible, preferring to avoid what ever house or apartment his family was renting that month. Play at home was a different thing - a cautious thing. The family dynamic seldom allowed playful interaction for any length of time. If things got too noisy, his step-father would get upset - if his step-father was involved and began to lose, he would explode.  He wondered silently if that heritage had been the cause for his inability to be too playful with his own children, wanting to hide the ugliness inside of him for so long, and the memories of those now ancient outbursts haunted him still. 
There was a time when he enjoyed fishing and golfing, and never missed a chance to do either. He still golfed, but didn't look forward to it as much, and found himself on the course less and less.  Reading remained a pastime, but it startled him when he realized that he hadn't read a work of fiction for almost twenty years - he read now to extract information, no longer languishing in style or description, not feeling any attachment to the words at all.  Being with others only reminded him he was not with her. For nearly a decade, he had no interest in any activity that kept him from her, that competed for her time, attention, affection. 
Hollowness is a unique emotion, and he could find no mention of it in the literature of his life. It was that place between pleasure and pain that envied both, but knew not which way to turn.  It loaths pleasure and is bored with pain - it rejects hope and despises despair - it is a black hole that absorbs self-pity as well as ego.  It was a dangerous place for him, and he didn't want to stay there for the next year and a half.
He drove on, determined to settle on something that could make him feel good, something he could indulge. He decided to go home and read, to pick up a classic novel and lose himself in the pages as he had so many years ago.  Nothing specific came to mind, but he knew he needed a distraction, perhaps the trials and tribulations of some created character could supplant his, at least for a few hours.  A few hours - what he wouldn't give to have her and his health out of his mind for that length of time, it was worth a try.
To be continued..........