They say we should leave the world a better place than we found it. Which is all well and good, very wise thing to say and everything, but if you think about it, it doesn't mad an inkling of sense.
How do you tally it all up? How do you figure it? Because no matter how hard you try to create and heal and fix things in this scarred place, you never really know if it's going to add up to all of those heavy sighs and black eyes and bruised hearts and carelessly tossed cigarette butts and ruined days that you've caused so far in your relatively insignificant life. What happens when you subtract all the bad you've done from the good? Is anything left? And if there is, was it really enough? Was it really something that left a mark on the world?
Honestly, in my opinion, it's futile. Leaving things in a worse state than you found it is just one of those things that human beings are naturally quite good at. And once upon a time, human beings would leave many things in a worse state than they found it, such as monasteries and villages and people's flesh, without trying to excuse themselves. But I suppose one day, some wise-arse bloke thought he'd wax philosophical about it, and now everyone is going about leaving things in a worse state than they found it, except this time they're passing it off as an attempt to make their mark on the world.
I suppose what bothers me about this is that these people often don't consider that what they're leaving behind in this world may not be so much a satin ribbon as it is one of those awful lacy ones with the flower print.
Point being, whether what you're doing is good or bad is irrelevant. Doing things. That's what's important. That's what will matter in the long run.
When I was thirteen, my mum took me to work with her.
I have to say, I was quite excited. I had never been told what her job was, and I had always been too scared to ask. Good way to get a beating, asking questions that was.
We were living in Nirjiva back then, not long after Maladie took control of it. But that's an entirely different story; a pretty good one, in fact, and that's why I want to save it for later.
The place she worked in was, in my opinion at that time, not possessing of very satisfactory conditions. It was difficult to see and breathe, at least for me, because of all the cigarette smoke, and plus the place was full of strange looking men with alcoholic drinks in their hands. Queer place, that was. I was beginning to feel uncomfortable and wanted quite badly to go home.
Ah, but that was not an option of course. So I tarried through it like a brave soldier. I sat alone at the window and watched my mum leave the place with a man. She would come back an hour later, looking tired, and in a little while, leave again with different man. And she would do it over and over and over and over again.
Every time, she looked a little more dead, and her wallet a little more alive.
One man with a scraggly beard. One man with a trilby hat. One man with a single gold tooth and one man with bowl legs. So bored. Who were these men? What did they want?
It was around midnight that she came up to me, sat down next to me on the booth, gave me an ice tea and told me that I looked like a handsome, healthy boy who would surely find a beautiful girl to marry some day. Oh, mother. I grinned and let her pat me on the head. Then she left.
This time, she didn't come back.
The last I ever saw of her were her fishnet stockings and red heels clicking on the wooden floorboards as she walked out of the bar with no man. Only herself and half a pint of beer.
She had left her wallet with me, I remember. It had about a 1,000 dollars in it.
Oh, mother.
