He had plenty to work on. The roast. Mopping around the kitchen. Sewing up and doing sculpting work for a costume. Not his but a favor for a nephew who only seemed to call or come around when he needed something. The rising weight of loneliness was much to bear and he walked through it. Canceling out the silence that only paired okay with scratching on the fridge from his cat or hearing Andromedon's race wheel spinning during the lithe built creature's daily run. Routine bound together by rapid influx of pressure to always be on, swept him up from Monday through Friday. He missed the people and things that used to get him by. The anchors to his ship keeping the boat from steering well off coast. This running away into the abyss of uncertainty was the driving wedge of where he once was to the now.

Lyle excused himself from menial duties, moving into his study to pull out a scrapbook. A handy leather bound album filled with developed photos that changed the course of his whole existence. He sat at his desk, pushing away the first few pages. Stiff and aged. Suddenly transported back to a time where being the middle child amongst two girls had been some of the better days of his life. It was after an Era of living in a city bred to create monsters, junkies, and the swindlers that got by the best way they knew how. This was part of his story he always left out. Sparing anyone who knew of him or the illusion of him that he had a normal childhood, when it was anything but.

Small and sometimes stout when he flipped through the pages, he grazed over Polaroids matching the year he turned 8. The first day he would come to understand what true freedom was and not the false security that had been promised by the likes of Ramona. She promised for as long as he knew. Setting the tone of what true lies were that spun into false hope in understanding of how the world will always be shrouded by cons and misleading figures. For once during his adult life, he realized how much he was saved from. What attracted him to the idea of leaving behind the blood that ran through his veins and who it was part given by.

A wired effort of forgiveness should set his worries free. The ill examples of sickness that rest in a dormant place, showed up in bits and pieces. Having a close call of the real and true him by his former wife. From the kids who came and went, and the few people in between. His parents owed better explanations and the respect to leave him alone. Those wishes granted eventually including the days he wanted to scroll through the address book to pick out their last known address and write a lengthy letter, pushing on that forgiving them and finally cutting those ties off, would be the satisfying move.

Another page flipped, and more after that. Finger left on one side until the creased page took his eyes from the images now passed. The ages of changes not only he went through but others under the same weight of the years. He saw the ceremonial gathering lamented in one full page photo. A professional capture of a reception that loosely embodied a making of a new life. Eye were left to stare. Examining what the answer to absolving his past from. He believed the gateway of marriage would grant cushion from hard decisions and loss.

He sunk deeper into his chair with reminiscing left to contend with. It brought a hard punch to the chest as always the longer he lingered and felt the sting of many lashings by his own doing. Somewhere along the way, before the shift of events turned many upon their head, Lyle's contribution was pointed in the wrong direction. Taking responsibility fully wasn’t happening and he didn’t want to die by his own doing for the unrest of a family that was stitched together to make work. Under circumstances beyond anyone’s own control, he tried to hold it together.

Even in some facet of mourning. There was a phase of denial of anything ever had been wrong or corrupted by his need to pencil in doodles of a perfect family. A perfect upbringing. Just a form of perfection itself. He was stunted by the denial and lies that morphed into one thing, and creating a falsehood for as long as he internally know. Cutting to the root moved him to close the book again and place it in the draw. Where booze was housed and random belongings that resembled pieces of a man still split down the middle but it was a fracture no one could begin to fix except for himself.