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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/5905
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Flatten the scope - you are attributing personality to the people he sees, but the words imply they have none. Also focus on the self-obsession of the narrator ( as per @J.R. ). Just my suggestion for re-working it:

> "Outside my window I make out figures who have simply given up. They glance in the bathroom mirror and are met with defeat. Unarticulated, maybe, but real enough, a resignation to the truth that hope for a brilliant future in a lucid, satisfying destiny was misplaced. They had woefully overestimated themselves. They languished, doing nothing in particular for years, with the tacit promise of "self-improvement". They imagined themselves as successes sometime in the future. They start their journey tomorrow. Or the day after. Or whenever. I move among them, standing beside shadows on the subway, in the store, I knew that I, at some point, suffered their fate. After Kathy, I could never find a rhythm, a groove to approach life from- something that I could keep private and something that could give me direction, inspiration, meaning. So I withdrew. Somebody once said that apathy isn’t the same as withdrawing, but I did it out of confusion and insecurity.
> 
> Life then came to find me, by which time I had starting losing my hair, aged and wearied, impotent and faded; all the while having loved no one else and nothing else in particular.
> 
> This, I understood, is what people are most afraid of."

I am not suggesting this as a finished piece, just an attempt to make the picture you are painting much flatter, more 2D.

Original score: 1