A Good Gal In the Making.

The Carnivore

Often times when you get lost, you find yourself. 

Vicky motions for her parents to leave, and when they don't comply, she politely detonates her request on a tiny whiteboard in shaky lines "Give us our privacy, please". She has gone mute, and is liable on her penmanship as her only source of communication for the time being. 

Looking rather displeased, her parents walk out, both the mother and her boyfriend darting accusing looks towards me now. She takes a quick, subtle glance around the room to make sure not a single soul notices, then she slips me a note of paper. In turn, I hastily conceal it beneath my sleeve, and nod. I open my bag to hand her the precious teddybear of hers. Inside the stuffing, I've hidden two bars of chocolate, two razors, some cigarettes, and matches. Although she's utterly oblivious of the contents, she hugs the toy dearly. 

Our encounter was brief, disturbing, and rather disappointing. My senses were yearning to absorb her sweet melodic voice for one last time. But my thin hopes that perhaps it would stir my sanity met demise. 

I still feel emotionally detached, like I'm merely an uninterested observer of someone else's life, not mine. My heart and mind are uninvolved in this tragedy, even distant from it, only my body has immersed to play the role I've been given. As though I had invisible strings moving me around, and I was made of lifeless wood. I need my sense and sensibility back, and a voice in my head tells me that unraveling the sheets of mystery folded upon me might be the only way I could do it.

All the way back home, possibilities of what could be written in that slip of paper haunt me. But I'm not in the position to take the risk of opening the paper just yet. Only the little things are capable of consuming your whole existence.

When I get back to my room, I position myself on bed, and meditate. After I'm done, I place the paper delicately in front of me, observing its aspects, obsessing over them. It was obviously ripped out of an old book. I unfold it eagerly, and to my infelicity, no handwriting is found anywhere on it. Just print. I recognize the book it was taken from immediately: 1984 by George Orwell. Upon further inspection, I notice one little underlined phrase. "If there is hope, it lies in the Proles."

An image of a shed begins to form itself out in my head, bit by bit the road ignites. And I march forth, on and on until my feet take me there.

The instant I'm at the door, It strikes me that I am barefoot. I go in anyway. The worst that could happen is that I'd be mistaken for a hippie. 

"What are you looking for, babe" The dealer, Marcus, winks at me.

"Answers" I say back, staring plainly into nothingness. For the first time, void is obscuring my vision, while I have always depended on it to clarify it. I've practiced wordless beholding a great deal, and have always cherished the concept.

When you look at a flower, any thought, memory, or judgment about that flower prevents you from more fully seeing it. It is the same when you look at a person. Your thoughts, memories, or judgments hinder you from more fully seeing, understanding, or connecting with that person. That's why wordless beholding: looking without thinking, remembering, or judging is a rare thing. 

Indeed, knowledge of the human condition is great. But still greater, from a practical point of view, is ignorance.

"If there is hope, it lies in the Proles." A crucial piece of the puzzle is missing. And it's obscuring any possibility for me to see the full picture. A headache creeps through my brains, and I decide to hit a bong.

My nerves begin to calm, but every time I close my eyes I see the phrase. it's devastating how I can't make any sense of it. My vision shifts focus and is now centered at a poster to the left corner of the room, and it read "If you eat pizza upside down, are they still toppings?"

The concept of pun had always amused me. I've never been one to take things literally.

It strikes me dead in my tracks when I think about the phrase again. Maybe the problem is that I needed to be more literal in my perception. "If there is hope, it lies in the Proles." Hope of the Proles. I need to find Hope, my childhood friend. The girl who introduced me to my first love, "H". The girl I had known on and off since I was seven.

Memories of my last, unfortunate encounter with heroin start rushing back. These memories are so deeply intertwined and rooted to the memories of Hope that I get almost too terrified to walk a step further towards her house. But I have to. 

Hope Sanders, a year my senior, lives in a house that I've always thought had an air of glamour hung around it like mist. It's dark when I arrive. Hope opens the door and flicks on a light, looking as though she's expecting me. She lives alone, and her living-room is barely furnished but the floor is so littered with mouldering cups of coffee and dirty plates that it gives the impression of clutter. A stale smell of fried food hang around the air.

I sit there, registering all the changes in the place since I had been here. My observations are interrupted by the slamming of a book on the stool straight in front of me. 

"That'sVicky's copy of 1984. She told me, er, wrote me, or whatever, that you'll be here to take it when I went to visit her in prison." Hope said, her trademark smirk, A half-smile that didn't even reach her eyes, plastered on her face.

Without so much as a thank you, I rush back home. Just sitting there being reminded of the time I almost died was tempting me to get back to heroin. Oh, brown, I'm stronger than all my drugs,  except for you. My near-death experience happened at the hands of brown, or heroin, when I was 15, two years ago. I wasn't even legal yet and I had tried all the kinds of drugs that I knew of. Since then, I had sworn myself off drugs. I still do cannabis, but technically that is not a drug.

I hurl the book at my bed and go in for a shower. I immerse myself under the scalding hot waters cascading down the tub. I intricately wash the spaces between my fingers, my neck, and my bottom lip. Then I realize that some things, especially human beings, can not be washed off. Gaven is not here anymore, and the places he once kept safe are burning, yearning for him to return to where he belongs.

I rinse and dry my hair, covering myself up with a towel. Gazing at my study, I realize how much of a mess it is. The books scattered, papers torn, with coffee stains adorning some of them. Then, I make way into my room, and its inconsistency, the chaotic state it's in, does not surprise me at all. Clothes thrown everywhere except where clothes should be kept. The dirty mixed with the clean, old with the new. Cigarette butts and ashes flying around everywhere like it's the most casual thing in the world. In my head, I picture them as mosquitoes, alive and breeding, always there, everywhere.

My room and study reflect my life: a mess. That, too, is not in pristine condition. Unintentionally, I have crashed it into rubble. My tired eyes fall upon the mirror and I immediately come to the revelation that not only have I excelled at making a mess out of everything I touch, but also that the outwards mess I have given life to is nothing compared to the mess that I am inside. 

I remind myself of my true essences to set myself to sleep: "I rebel, therefore I am." And I chant this hymn until I am able to dose off and call it a day.

Rebellion has always been at my very core. Any normal person woudn't walk the path I have chosen. That sets me off at ease, that I do still have a purpose in life even though I have lost all else. I will continue to rebel. How? by finding out the missing pieces and making something out of them instead of just walking away from the ruins and starting anew. I never turn a page in life until I have read through the very last word. Never start a new chapter until the old one has been finished.