The Goop
There is only one true way to unbecome... A woman laments her decisions but is unsure how to redeem her life.
“Powerball is up to 5 million.”
“That’s insane,” but meaning to say I don’t want to play by these rules anymore.
“Yeah, maybe we should get tickets.”
“Mmhhmm,” a bell chime to dismiss her back to her own thoughts.
In the quiet she could think, the space between words, between breaths, between reacting. She could exist freely in those intervals of silence so interrupted like by a ticking clock.
Tick. Tock. (I can’t do this anymore) Tick. (I have to) Tock. (this isn’t what I want) Tick. (this can be if you try harder) Tock.
If she held her breath she could sense herself lingering inside her frame, stilled and staring back. Life was a flashing train and through the gaps of cars she could see herself only briefly, glimmers of her alone with herself as time hurtled by and space moved between them. She existed somewhere on the other side of that motion.
She could invent herself in her head, be anything she wanted, really. She could be anything she wanted to be to anyone, including herself. She could be *the everything* she wanted to be in her limited skills. She could be talented, expertly rounded.
A miraculous person can only exist if they are not perceived at all (i.e. imaginarily). Life reflects yourself back at you, what you are by those perceptions led on by your actions. That cruel mirror of relationships. No one will truly understand you as you understand yourself, no one can see you on the inside without the act of performing for it to be absorbed and regurgitated back, modified, further processed. So much is lost in the translation of being.
That’s why she liked being a kid so much. There was limitless potential then and staring at the ceiling fan laying on her back on the bed she could see the possibilities of her future flash between the blades. Marriage. A career woman. A traveler. A fully formed person. A vibrant dreamer. A painter. A bright light. She could be all of them then because she couldn’t be any of them.
In youth everything is mystical because anything can be. Nothing has been determined for you and there’s so little you understand that the rules don’t apply themselves in your brain logic. There’s no scalable measure of skill or brilliance in the mind of a solitary child thinking up their unwritten future. Hope is abundant then.
It’s like she was trapped in that naivety, somehow thinking she could be everything, that every decision could render her remarkable even after she bowed her head in compliance to the motion of her quiet life, never questioning to live deeper.
While she held the same childish ego, her wonder was gone. Everything became so serious as an adult, now that life could be enacted on.
Tick. (I am nothing) Tock.
She wanted to be whole. Accept that she was maybe never substantial enough. Accept that maybe a meek existence was all she was capable of. Maybe it wasn’t like her to be skilled. That maybe she was duped by movies, craving some perfectionism that was unachievable outside the mechanics of cinema.
She didn’t want to lament her potential. She was directly responsible for her life, after all.
She needed to unbecome. To strip to nothing, stare into her naked self, stalling the train of decision by stepping outside the social reality she’d made up, that she’d folded herself into so nicely and compliantly.
“Don’t forget to turn here to pick up the pizza.”
“Oh yeah, thank you. Wouldn’t want to go without dinner. Haha.” Blink-(breathe)-er. Blink-(breathe)-er. Blink-(nothing you are thinking is real)-er. Blink-(you are a burden to yourself)-er. Blink-(you are only as sane as you convince yourself of being)-er. Blink-(you are nothing)-er. Blink-(have some relief in that)-er. Blink-(that none of this matters)-er. Blink-(it wouldn’t have mattered if you were anything at all)-er. Blink-(what a fucking egotisti-).
“I’ll just run in and grab it so you can stay in the warm car.”
“Oh thank you, that’s sweet of you,” ripping the e-brake violently up in contrast to her distanced and soft tone, faraway, still lingering inside herself somewhere.
He exited the vehicle and ran up to the entrance, smiling back at her through the clear door now opened before walking through the threshold.
She smiled and waved at him. She closed her eyes with the shop door and laid her head back on the headrest. She tried to focus on her breathing and not the sinking feeling vortexing her brain down through her chest.
She didn’t understand why she couldn’t find solace in her blip of an existence, her dabble in the nothing of life. Is this pain the mark of being? Of wanting and yearning? Of an insatiable need to create?
It seems those who have this compulsion are pulled along life for the want of more. The opportunity to try and make again and again, try to approach some greatness, some fleck of a flame on the timeline of humanity, the smallest illumination like a star in the darkness of forever.
She was spiraling in the black of her eyelids. Her psyche stirred and reintegrated with the physical world.
She checked her phone to see Sorry, they’re still making the pizza. A few more minutes.
Closing her eyes she meandered back to the thoughts she’d left idling in her brain space.
Is this all her life was? A series of hungers satiated with food? A profoundly long scape-of-nothingness stretched out until death? And then much the same in death? Keeping a body in working order while the brain rotted inside of it?
At least after her death there would be nothing that could be done. She would be relieved of obligation, this nagging thought in her head to be greater, be.. be.. be something. She was exhausted from all these invented expectations and underachieving them (what madness!!). No one could know her aspirations, could not see the potential she thought existed. She was a paradox unto herself.
The car door opened. She rolled her head to the side expecting to see her partner come back with pizza in hand. The passenger door was still closed.
Her face braced the cold breeze coming from the open driver-side door and a glinting pointy shape poised above the head of a man looming over her caught her eye before it came down into her.
He drove the knife into her frame repeatedly, in pure concentrated hate. In an act of lust. Every stab was a sigh of relief from her body, blood rushing out to be uncomposed. (Even her matter was ashamed to have such a conflicted, unsure master).
She smiled at his grace. This unbecoming he bestowed her. This beautiful escape from the world- the world, she realized, she loved now that she wouldn’t be able to experience it, now that she was outside the toil, now that she had no decisions to make, no disappointments to invent.
Thank you, she thought between stabs, to herself as much as him.
Her heart beat was rapidly slowing, the blood saturating her form and turning her matter to goop in the car seat.
Beat-(thank you)-ing. Beat-(I can finally forgive myself)-ing. Beat-(because nothing can be changed)-ing. Beat-(thank)inggBeat(you)ngbetng beat-be