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I shared this with a friend the other day, and with some reflection, decided to change it a little bit. It's a small change, but I think it conveys the idea better and isn't as clique.
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There was a lost feeling inside, where it was that he existed, but he didn't really know why.

He drove to the district mall and looked at things. A book he had read a good review about, a CD that was by an artist he enjoyed, a new pillow that needed replacing.

He looked and thought and somehow he couldn't get it in his head to commit to them. He bought them all and more things he didn't need.

By the time he got home, he had bags from many different stores. He purchased a vareity of things that didn't mean anything. And in the car in his driveway, he felt that he and these items all had something in common.

When he walked in a shop and couldn't find anything, it only perpetuated the feeling. A warm clerk who he says "no thanks" to and a nice girl he thinks "maybe I could talk to her".

Alex sits on a bench watching people go by. Many would come and go, but every once in a while there would be one that he followed.

A little boy walks out of a shop and looks around. He looks helpless and concerned. The boy stumbles around a bit and looks visibly more upset.

Before Alex gets up to go help him, he thinks about how desperate the kid must feel right now. He remembers being a child and being terrified on a time his father left him at the checkout line.

The line moved up and the clerk hang him up and asked "Where'd you dad go?"

As a child, it was the most awful feeling he'd had. He didn't know what to do, where to go, or where his father was. Alex hadn't thought of it in years, but he remembered it now walking up to this boy.

Halfway across the walk, a man came up behind the boy and grabbed him. The boy was startled and then quickly relieved. Alex saw a great joy in the young boy's eyes.

He wondered what his eyes must look like at that very moment.

Alex soon left the mall. He sits in his car in the parking lot and thinks "Where do I go now?"