Gallardo says he is “deeply disturbed” that the thought of spending every Friday night streaming movies by himself in his apartment for the rest of his life does not sound all that bad to him.

FARMINGTON, NM—Despite being deeply dissatisfied with nearly every aspect of his life, local man Paul Gallardo told reporters Thursday that he was terrified to realize he could very easily continue to exist in such an unhappy state and probably would do so indefinitely.


Gallardo, a part-time file clerk who is unmarried and has few meaningful relationships of any kind, stated that although his personal and professional circumstances were an ongoing source of distress, he feared they would never be sufficiently unbearable to compel him to remedy his situation. According to Gallardo, after more than four decades of living with his painful but entirely manageable loneliness, he was unlikely to ever improve himself, a fact he said has filled him with dread.

“I’ve always been miserable, but I guess I haven’t been quite miserable enough to do anything about it,” said Gallardo, 44, who added that while his daily life is consistently unpleasant, he has never felt the need to abuse alcohol or drugs to numb his emotional anguish. “I still go to my awful job, still pay my rent, still eat a whole frozen pizza pretty much every night. I hate every minute of it, but it’s not making me panic or reassess my life or anything. I kind of wish it did, though.”


“And that’s what’s so scary,” continued Gallardo. “I’m sad, really sad, but I’m also pretty comfortable with everything. God, I hate to say it, but I could see myself doing this for years.”

Gallardo told reporters that he is continually disappointed with the increasingly overweight and unambitious individual he sees in the mirror each day, but he expressed his deep-seated worry that there may never come a day when he is so overwhelmed with disgust at his own reflection that he vows to change himself at any cost. Instead, the man who cannot remember the last weekend he did not spend alone in his apartment said he was alarmed to discover that it would “not be much of a problem at all” to pass the rest of his time on earth in the same state of moderate dejection he has felt for decades.


“If there hasn’t been a wake-up call by now, it’s hard to imagine there’s ever going to be one,” said Gallardo, who claimed to be deeply dismayed by his complacency at sitting on his couch and aimlessly poking around the internet until he falls asleep each night. “There’s no pressure building up inside me, and I’m okay with that.”

“I’m 100 percent okay with that,” Gallardo added. “Jesus Christ.”

Gallardo told reporters that as long as he could continue completing day-to-day activities such as doing laundry and grocery shopping, he would be perfectly capable of putting one foot in front of the other until he died—almost certainly alone—in about 40 years, a realization a frightened Gallardo said would nevertheless fail to alter his debilitating behavior in the slightest.


“Some people take stock of their lives and finally say ‘enough is enough,’” Gallardo said. “I can’t do that. I’m pretty sure I won’t ever do that. I think it’s safe to say I’ll keep putting up with myself year after year and simply never reach a breaking point. Jeez, that’s awful. What am I going to do about this?”

“Forget it,” added Gallardo, shaking his head. “I already know the answer to that.”