The pretext of my residency here seems to have exhausted itself. I now find myself in need of offering an explanation for the immediacy of my departure. No doubt certain obvious reasons will come unprompted to mind, but they should not deflect attention from the underlying cause of my primary discomfiture. That I’ve known happier times is surely no surprise. That I can ascertain no prospects for happiness in the future should be received as a foregone conclusion. The foundation on which I rested has crumbled to dust. All my friends are asleep.

What is the consequence when shame, fatigue, stress, disappointment, anger, and sorrow overwhelm a man’s ability to find reason to prolong the struggle? I’ve been driven into a corner of despair from which I find no egress. My heartless and demanding Father seems to have abandoned me. There is no home to which I may return. Yet it still remains that I am a free man, slave to none except my own desires and eccentricities. What I have left of my pride compels me to act on my own behalf. I now choose to follow the way of the warrior and decide my own fate.

Faced with the cold, merciless reality that I can never regain my family and home despite my best efforts to keep the faith, the bitterness of my disappointment has ultimately poisoned the well of hope on which I depended for deliverance from my damnation. The indescribable strain of having endured the gradual, but finally complete loss of those comforts and dreams that had enabled me to face and overcome previous challenges has left me unable to go on. I curse myself for my weakness and inadequacy. I must now conclude that I have totally failed.

To those for whom my absence will occasion feelings of grief and regret, I offer my apologies. I’d have liked to have done better by you. That I haven’t is further reminder of my failure. You may observe more elaborate reminders of my reason for living in those few miracles I’ve been said to have performed, inspired by my love for you. To those for whom word of my departure provides cause for revelry, you may take pleasure and satisfaction in finding that I have been such a deplorable an individual as you’ve so emphatically insisted all along.

Having endeavored for many years to persevere, I now realize the futility of my efforts. I’ve considered the few alternatives that have come to mind and can only arrive at acceptance of justice as an unjust consequence of attempting to act in an appropriate manner as best fit the circumstance at the time. I recognize that my own foolishness has been the main contributor to my downfall, but assert that I did the best job I could. I now know that one exists solely at the very moment of one’s death, during which time one’s entire life passes before one’s eyes.

I’m tired of communing alone with these demons. The agony occasioned by their company causes me to enshrine my essence in an airtight box. I’ll shove the goddamn sorrowful thing somewhere out of sight of polite company who’ll forget it ever took up space on this wretched shipwreck of a planet. I’ll light it afire and dance ‘round the flames till it’s extinguished by its own exhaustion, then scatter the ashes on the deck and piss it on down the scuppers. As I have weathered this storm, I declare myself absolved of all sin. Remember me to whoever rides by.