Billy Joel's life sucks, but that’s alright, because he’s pretty sure he deserves it.
He was a spoiled, cruel little asshole most of his life. He’d taken and taken and taken, had thrown tantrums to get what he wanted and only cared for himself, and he’d been utterly alone because of it, having only the parents who taught him this behavior for company. No money, no job, no hope, trapped in a house with his folks, who were more than happy that their son would never leave the nest, never leave them. He had retreated into an online life, looking for connection, for anything, because he had nothing, was nothing. Even filtered through a keyboard, he was abrasive and disliked and made nothing but acquaintances who eventually turned into enemies.
One day it’s like he just wakes up.
He’s on his bed, in his room, bored, angry, frustrated, hot tears spilling down his cheeks, and he realizes that he’s trapped himself where he is, and it’s all his fault. He stares at the ceiling as that realization hits his brain. Things have to change. They have to, or he’s going to kill himself, and maybe kill his parents on the way out.
He sits up slowly, and looks around his cramped, overfilled room, full of the shit he’s been too childish to throw away. Video games and toys and items hoarded and never culled over his twenty three years of life. He hates it. He hates all of it.
So he changes.
That next week is dedicated to cleaning out his room, selling the memorabilia that lined his walls, gathering dust. Years of collecting turns out, is not such a bad investment, as long as you flip it, because for the entire collection he earns around $3,000. It’s the most money he’s ever had to himself. He’s never worked, and so he’s never earned, and it feels amazing to have done work (cleaning his shithole bedroom) and receiving pay (money for games and collectables-)
NO.
No. He will not be spending this money the way he always did. He slaps himself.
With the walls cleared, he realizes he doesn’t like the color of this room. Maybe he never did? The walls are wiped down for the first time in, well. Probably since they moved in, twenty years ago, and then he ventures outside, very bravely, and picks paint samples. He paints the entire room a nice cozy jewel tone purple, ceiling to baseboard, and he spills no small amount of it on the carpet. Alright, well. He googles how to rip up carpet, and then does that. He googles how to lay a new vinyl floor, and then he does that.
He has to move all the furniture from his room to do so, and he realizes as he’s struggling over his bed that he doesn’t even like his bed. Or his dresser. Or any of his furniture. It’s cleaned. It’s sold. He sleeps on the floor until his new mattress gets here, and then he sleeps on the mattress on the floor while he waits for the new frame to get here. The room smells clean, for the first time in his memory. He wipes down the windows, and then opens them to let fresh air in, and he realizes he likes the way it feels to breath in deep in exhaustion, after working hard.
The next morning, he takes up walking.
Billy Joel wakes up at five, and he walks around his neighborhood, just enjoying the way the early morning sunlight paints the start of the day. He’s never really been awake for the sunrise, except for nights he stayed up until morning playing his video games. But he never bothered to look out the window at it. Too bad, he thinks. He missed so much.
He makes a point not to miss sunrises again. He’s up every morning, walking, just wandering, and two weeks into doing that he buys some little hand held weights to pump as he goes.
When he gets back that morning, arms aching freshly from the new attrition of his weights, his mother is standing on the steps of their house. Billy Joel blinks. He can’t remember her ever being up this early, not since she retired, at least.
“BJ!” She hollers at him. “Where the hell you been?” Her Virginia twang adds an extra jab of annoyment.
“Walkin’,” he grunts, coming up the stairs, and he opens the back door and pushes inside. The entryway is getting worse. He has to squeeze past mountains of stuff- trinkets and piles of blankets and just fucking trash- to get into his own home. Never mind using the front door. He has no memory of it ever being accessible.
Ma turns and follows him in.
“Walkin’ where? You gettin’ up to somethin’?” she grills him as they squeeze through the corridor her laziness has made.
“I’m just walkin’, ma, god,” BJ groans. “Lay off me. I wanna lose weight.”
Maybe then he’ll have an easier time walking around his own fucking house.
“Well I don’t like you takin’ off without no one knowing where you are,” his ma continues.
“Ma, I’m twenty three. If I wanna take a walk in the morning’, I’m gonna take the fuckin’ walk. Lay off me, now, I mean it.”
“What have you been doin’ to your room? I saw you ripped the carpet up.”
“I’m makin’ it nice.”
“I don’t like the color you chose,” she needles him, as he makes his way upstairs. “It’s too dark! It makes your room look like a coffin.”
He opens his door, turns to look at her as he steps in. “It fucking feels like it,” he says, and then he slams and locks his door against her.
He’s got money now, he paces and thinks. But he’s already spent some of it on the paint, and the new floor. He’s being so, so good with the money, but he needs to do something smart with it, or he’ll waste it. Or worse. His parents will realize he has it and demand it, and then he has no money and no future.
He needs to invest the money in his future, or he won’t have one.
Here's how you can make bold and italic text.
Here's how you can add an image:
Here's how to make a list:
To learn more HTML/CSS, check out these tutorials!