April 26, 2019:

Graduation. Caps and gowns, university students he was friends with, his girlfriend in a pretty red dress.

Except he was friends with no-one. He was so overwhelmed with depression that he was going to work day after day without showering, in the same unwashed clothes, growing hair to hide behind, saying to himself, This is not my life, these are not my friends. This is not my life, these are not my friends.

His life was at the other end of the state, his friends were at the other end of the state. Except, that also was not his life, and those also were not his friends.

He was without love. Betrayed, by the person he'd trusted to be his best friend forever, who turned out to be not a friend but a vampire, a false friend who dropped anyone who cost her more energy than she could siphon.

He lived in black. Black sheets, black curtains, black table cloth, black jeans, black shirt.

He was chasing the dragon, the only way he could sleep. Lots of drugs, not much sex, and he would have deliberately killed his sex drive entirely if he'd had access to enough drugs.

These students: they were nice, they liked him, but with the exceptions of the girls he'd fucked he remembers not one of their names.