The Immaterial Man

​Wilbur was in his mid-twenties when he first noticed the missing parts of himself. They were subtle and hidden, leaving him to wonder how long they’d been gone. By his thirties, the missing parts were more difficult to hide. The disappearance of his right arm drew questions from those close to him. Wilbur told them not to make a big deal of it, and when anyone pressed too hard, he’d either blow up on them or simply cut them out of his life. Not being bothered was his only goal, and he was willing to do whatever it took to achieve it. 

It really wasn’t until his late forties that Wilbur became concerned with the amount of himself that was gone. One morning, he woke up and realized that what wasn’t outnumbered what was. It was a striking thing to understand that so much of himself had vanished. Year by year, it never felt like anything major was being lost. A finger here, an organ there, but the amalgamation of it all was larger than he was comfortable with. A great unease joined him. It was like a bad relationship, but it was the only company he’d had in years, and so he held its hand and convinced himself it was better than nothing. 

There were benefits to being an immaterial man. No one bothered you. In fact, as he went about his day, he realized that no one seemed to even notice he was around. This applied to old friends and co-workers, too. Their attempts to reach out lessened until most gave up altogether. Wilbur had what he’d always wanted, and he found it a bitter reward.

One day in his fifties, Wilbur looked in the mirror and was shocked to find that there was nothing there looking back at him, his head completely missing. His heart had been gone for some time, but his mind, too? All that remained of him were small, meaningless parts of his torso. With so little left, a sensation of panic and anxiety joined him. These new companions, he found, worked best when completely and totally ignored. They never left, but if he tried hard enough, he could get through most of the day without having to engage with them. 

Time became unstable around an immaterial man. Days stretched and stretched while years zipped by. In his late sixties, Wilbur walked past a window and, when he searched for his reflection, found he no longer had one. He was entirely gone. At that moment, he finally allowed himself to hear a truth that had been crying out for his attention for decades. He’d lost too much. Sorrow and regret proved to be the defining relationship of his late life. He didn’t care for their company, and unlike panic and anxiety, he found them impossible to ignore. 

And so, Wilbur made a decision. He would go and find the pieces of himself that he’d lost over the years. It was a grand and noble idea, one that crumbled quickly when he tried to enact it. It was just such exhausting work. A life was far too long a thing to travel back through, stooping low to pick up the broken pieces you found along the way. And so instead, he committed to just doing better moving forward. It was a simpler plan, but even still, that one didn’t really work out either.