Most days are spent watching cars, pickup trucks, and SUV’s go by. He imagines the lives of passengers, sitting at Thanksgiving dinners, gorging themselves and laughing around their abundance. Or perhaps fixing plates and going to separate rooms where they enjoy self-induced solitude. Either way, they drown in excess and that’s what almost killed Lazarus—the weight of excess—so he dropped it all and never looked back.

It wasn’t an easy decision. He’d never dreamed he’d sleep on the streets like some unknown vagabond. All he’d wanted was to simplify things, to stop wasting life’s energy on the accumulation of useless junk, but he’d built the expectation, and his family wouldn’t release him from it.

Deborah, his wife, didn’t understand why hating a job meant quitting it. “After all,” she explained, “Everyone hates their job, or some aspect of it, don’t they?” Lazarus didn’t respond. “What gives you the right simply to walk away?” That’s how the argument began. It ended with Lazarus toting a packed suitcase of clothes and toiletries, which, after kissing his son and daughter lightly on their foreheads, he carried through the front door. Deborah didn’t worry. She believed his good senses would return. But they never did. He simply walked into another life as if the previous had been a fleeting, momentary thought.

In his mind, he chose homelessness because he was dying. Years of corporate America, wining and dining, seminars and evaluations, left him believing his life was spiraling downward. The harder he worked, the more he neglected his family, the richer his bosses became until, one day, he simply said, “I can’t do this anymore!” and walked out. The next morning, he woke in a panic. How would he pay bills? How would the family eat? He could’ve had his job back—He was sure of it!—but he couldn’t swallow his last modicum of pride. Lazurus oh Lazarus his mother used to sing whenever she couldn’t figure him out. She’d always end the melody with a question like What’s wrong with you, dear Lazarus? Now, the refrain echoed, like a scratched record, in his memory and reignited longing for a mother he could never have again.

Deborah could have it all, he’d said, although he’d meant to say she was his all. The look of rage, lingering upon her face, made him know that an attempt at reconciliation was futile. He loved her far more in his head than his heart, and once he began to despise his previous life, he despised her along with it. He’d tried to separate the two, the life from the love, but the day he quit his job and Deborah didn’t understand, the two entities blurred into one lump of disgust.