(I wrote this a term ago during one of my Monday breaks).
Let me start by saying that this text serves no purpose to the object reader.
You would do well not to bother with it.
I recount this for myself, whoever that is. I did not write it for your analysis, or your belief. Both are immaterial.
This is the story of how I died.
Years ago, I was alive. I suppose you could say I was the average person. I had friends. I had a job, on and off. I had dreams and romantic entanglements and mistakes and above all, I had a pulse. This was in high school – the palace of passion. I rode the wave of my own hormones with a grin and a whoop of exhilaration, sustained by the fires of youth. It was of course no more or no less than every other child of that age, but I remember it fondly even so.
No, perhaps I was more. When I was alive I had a way with words, a way with people. A social circle sprung up around me like weeds in a concrete wilderness, and for a time I amused myself with their struggles and dreams, their desires echoed in my own. How easily dissuaded the mind is in those early years of awakening from the truth. I am jealous of whom I was, back then – the bloated spider in the centre of a web that would soon become a strangling noose. I do not assign fault for my demise to any other than myself. I was responsible for shaping the creature that I became, that I would eventually be trapped by and destroyed.
This could not last, of course. The web shattered under the weight of monotony combined with change. People did what people do, and moved on with their lives, new webs, and new snares. Bereft of my empire, I drifted, lost.
This was the start of my demise, of course.
Before long, I was betrayed. The structure I had manipulated and manoeuvred through with such ease began to resent my trespass. With the strength of my will sapped, I was unable to counter with that which had sustained me for so long – with that power that burned within my very core for over a decade. The fires had gone out and perverted justice was swift to strike.
In my weakened state I allowed the world in. Foolish, as it turned out. There is no describing what was felt. Imagine your capacity to deal with emotion completely and utterly removed one day, and in the place of this capacity you have an inherent understanding of emotions (which of course, I had gained from my empire building and manipulation). Now imagine emotion occurring around you throughout your life, incomprehensible emotion – those infused with the flame you no longer possess living their vibrant lives, leaving you on the outside, a hollowed husk incapable of experiencing what they have become in their evolution.
I became that husk – but I did not die, not yet. Blood still flowed through my veins; my heart surged and pumped life to my brain, fuelling my tormented thoughts. Contempt and jealousy became my bread and butter. The first, for the blind fools who could not see their desires and emotions sweeping them up and carrying them through their brief, fragile lives; the second, for their capacity to feel boundless sorrow, depthless love, and endless hatred. I mocked them for their helplessness and lusted after their purity.
But of course, I say that I desired to be like them; but this desire was not deep, it was not pure. It was a mean thing, born out of self-hatred and warped introspection. I suppose it was true to say that I hated their existence but I hated my own even more so. But still I was not dead. Crippled, but not dead.
My murderer was unassuming enough. He had bleached hair, dark circles under his eyes. He had a slight frame – you would hardly have thought him capable of cold-blooded execution to look at him. But murder me he did.
I was sitting in a classroom. One half of me was bent to the task of filling my head with facts and figures, as one does in a classroom. The other half of me was devoted entirely to the task of blocking out the emotion that threatened to resonate within me, to goad me into attempting to interact with the infused creatures around me, so hateful and so beautiful.
I looked up and met his eyes.
And I died.
To this day, I’m not sure how he did it. There was nothing different about him. There were hundreds like him – mildly interesting in manner and appearance, bodies often slightly unwell and heads full of intriguing ideas. But I had trained myself long ago to ignore these as false signs of depth. The awareness I possessed of humanity, I thought, could not be mirrored in an imperfect, emotional vessel. I was the only wretch who thought and acted the way I do, who had achieved transcendence through desecration of my nature. All those who were ‘different’ were merely reflections of the main body; off-shoots, perhaps, but still part of the same whole. I was aware that they were false – there was no power they possessed that could reach behind my eyes and compel my bleak, embittered soul into passion and fire.
But I met his gaze and felt my death in his eyes.
I am not sure what I am anymore. I am dead. But I am more alive than I have felt in a long time.
