"The Quiet Man" by Rachael R.

The quiet man looked through the window, the window that sat on the side of a regular two story, suburban house. Inside he saw them, the smiling happy family that he saw everyday as he passed by walking from the bus station from work. He would stop, just for a moment or two, and look on inside feeling more empty than ever. There they sat cozy in their house laughing and smiling, joking, talking. Sometimes they were still at the dinner table by the time he came walking by, their conversations carrying them till the late hours of the night, sometimes they were sitting on the couch in the family room just beyond the kitchen watching movies or playing games. He wanted that, he wanted a family like that. Sometimes after he left the bus station, and started his lonely trek home o his small empty flat, he would pretend that he was walking to that house as if it were his. He pretended that it was his family that he was going to, he wanted, more than anything in the world to be able to walk in through that front door and smile, laugh, joke, talk, and eat with them. He wanted to say at the end of the meal, “Anyone up for a movie?” or, “Anyone want to play a game?” He wanted so badly for this life to be his but he knew it could never be. He knew it the moment he reached the house, the moment he looked in the window, sometimes he would forget this and when he looked in he remembered, “This isn’t my house, this isn’t my family… This isn’t my life.” Then, one dragging footstep at a time, he finished his walk home.
    Then there came a day when the quiet man no longer walked silently by to the house. There came a day when the seat he always occupied on the bus laid vacant. One day his work put an ad up saying that they were hiring. You see, the quiet man realized one day as he sat up in bed that the life he had led up to that point was no life at all. All in one big, life-changing moment, he realized it. He stood, looked around his small and empty flat and said to himself, “This isn’t my life.”