Declan was born to an upper-middle class family in New Jersey. He never had any brothers or sisters, and as much as his parents tried to spoil him, his grandparents would hear nothing of it.

His grandparents on his mother’s side passed away long before he was born, but he probably saw his grandparents on his father’s side more than he saw his parents themselves. Declan’s mother and father had successful but time-consuming occupations, so his Grandma Hope and Grandpa Dunstan willingly took over the job of raising him. The situation resulted in a young man of the most odd blend of modern society and old-fashioned etiquette, making him a central component in many unrequited romances. He loved black and white movies and modern music; he was attracted to ambitious women and believed they should be treated with classic chivalry. If he was left in the charge of his parents he probably would have become overconfident and loudly hidebound, but the affections of his grandparents created a modest and opinionated yet soft-spoken gentleman.

Declan wasn’t a very social boy and he got through school with few friends and average marks. He absorbed the information but believed it to be of no use to him. For this reason and because he disliked the ceremony of education in a classroom, he refrained from an attempt at college, finding it much more worthwhile to work at a bookstore. His fellow workers and the customers might not be the most amiable companions, but the books were a perfect type of company.

He configured his life into a blend of playing his acoustic guitar, visiting his grandparents and working. Once in awhile he would perform songs he’d written at a few local cafés. Normally he had some odd terror of people, but when he got onto the small stage and started playing it felt as though he were in his own room with just him and his guitar. It was the closest he could get to most people without feeling uncomfortable, and the only way that most people could begin to know anything about him.

After high school Declan’s number of friends didn’t change very much. He lost most of his friends from school and gained a couple from work and his performances. He never quite understood why he only let a few people into his life, and why every other person seemed to make him anxious and paranoid. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to let more people in, it was the going out and meeting the people that had him completely stuck.

By the time Declan was almost twenty he was still living with his parents, although he believed an apartment to be in his near future. His parents were barely there anyway, it was almost like living in a house of his own. He was working full time and performed music a few times a month. It was around this time that loneliness really began to hit him. What good was his life if he spent it all by himself? Sure, he did have a few friends, but he couldn’t rely on them to be around him all of the time. He felt most complete when he was onstage, as if somehow he had a connection with every single person in the room that heard a note he played or word he sang. He felt the worst the night after a show, when he lay in his bed alone and thought about all the people he could’ve met at the show and every show before that. Was he destined to be left so incomplete?

A couple of months after his twentieth birthday, his grandmother passed away. It was very sudden, a stroke, and he was in complete denial that she was gone until he saw her at the calling hours. Even seeing her in the casket, he still expected her to open her eyes, to tell him that everything was going to be alright, this was all part of God’s plan. He could never remember being half so distraught as he was the day that they buried her.

Declan didn’t see his grandfather for weeks after the funeral. He just wouldn’t be able to stand hearing him say “It was just her time to go back to God,” with a look of pain on is face. Even after a few weeks had passed, he still couldn’t enter the house without feeling that a valuable person was snatched away from him. She helped shape him into who he was, she taught him almost everything that he knew of life, she was a major pillar in his support system and now she was gone.

It was about four months after he had lost his grandmother that it happened for the first time. He came home from work and felt an overwhelming loneliness. All of the people in his life flashed before his eyes, their number seemed few and their care for him even more miniscule. He imagined all of the faces that sometimes watched him perform and he thought of the personalities and lives of each of them and how he would never get to know either – he would probably never even know their names. It was then that he made his way upstairs to the bathroom.