Trial and Error

From the moment people are born, the only fears we know are the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises; imagine how I feel now, knowing nothing more than the sound and sensation of my skull slamming against the ground after falling directly onto the back of my head. As the protective comfort zone of my eyelids finally abandons me, I am unexpectedly greeted by the presence of a young woman. She is a timid-looking, platinum blonde, young woman, approximately 5’4 and 13” lbs or so. She can’t seem to take her eyes off of me. She’s not offering help; she isn't asking me why I’m looking at her; she isn't moving or blinking; she isn't doing anything but watching. My every move is being examined closely, and so I return the favor.

I watch closely as her facial expression contorts in various ways, gradually flowing through several emotions as seamlessly as the colors of a rainbow. First, there is pure shock as our eyes meet, which probably means she didn't expect to see me either. Then, there is confusion, as if she doesn't understand why I am gazing at her, studying the blankness of her plain, white clothing. Eventually, there is frustration, as she clearly grows agitated with my rude glaring. I’m starting to feel the same way, but I can’t help but question if I should initiate a conversation or not. I keep waiting impatiently for her to make the first move. Finally, I see only fear in her eyes. Oh, I know that feeling all too well. As I develop a sense of empathy to what the distressed woman before me must be feeling at the moment, I eventually build the courage to wave at her, and to my dismay, she did the same… at the exact same time as me. That proves it. I’m staring at my own reflection.

The pure emptiness that comes with memory loss is a state of being that I would never wish on anyone. It's like entering your home only to see that there is absolutely nothing there– no people, no pets, no items, just nothing. Who am I? What happened? When did I lose my memory? Where is this? Why does nothing make sense?

I envy those who know enough to confidently say that there is nothing to fear but fear itself. I don't know anything. That must be why everything seems so horrifying right now. I suspect foul play, head trauma, or acute-onset amnesia, but I obviously wouldn't remember. People typically decide what to do based on what they already know. But what about me? All I have is this moment.

Faced with sheer uncertainty, I desperately turn in circles, scanning the tight corridor of the all-white room I find myself in for clues. The walls of the room are blinding and all-white with no clear light source. The floor and ceiling of the room were just mirrors, both literally and figuratively. As if mirroring my memory, the room is just as empty, showing nothing other than a distorted image of my confused expression. I do my all to gather any inkling of information, yet there is so little to draw from. Is this a dream? If so, why is nothing happening? Is there an exit anywhere? Why isn't it in plain sight? Why is no one else here?! Is there any way to stop this?!

With my questions far outweighing my answers, I started hyperventilating! The room was so empty that all I could hear and feel was my own rapidly deepening exhales which only perpetuated my anxiety. This isn't happening! It can't be! I’m going to wake up any second and realize that whatever medication I’m on right now is clearly not for me. Yeah! I waited, impatiently for something to happen- for anything to happen… but nothing came. Nothing happened. I simply existed in existential terror.

The deafening echoes of my own bloodcurdling, high-pitched screeches were of no use, but I just couldn't stop, especially after hearing how each of my own screams sounded completely different than the last. It was as if the screaming was the only sense of control I had over the situation, but it only made things worse. The intensity of my voice caused the light bulbs to shatter, one by one, progressively darkening the room around me until I was in pitch-black darkness. Faced with an empty, pale imitation of whoever I once was, I have been filled with only insanity. Eventually, everything ends.

To live is to change. Since antiquity, man has happily conquered the unknown, exploring the green ground and blue brine with an unexplained need to continue the endless journey. Once there is nothing left to be safely explored, man builds ships to explore the waters and the air until their blue hues grow further into the darkness from which he came. He may say that his exploration is simply due to being bested by curiosity, human nature, or simply just because, but I believe the reason why he endlessly seeks has infinitely more depth than anything he can discover. I believe that man seeks until there is nothing left in hiding because he cannot accept the fact that he has no purpose beyond seeking purpose.

As a blinding light finally releases my eyes from its bind, they begin adapting to the darkness all around me. The darkness is accompanied by the chilling sensation of the cold earth all around me, animalistic screeching, and an all-encompassing sense of absolute claustrophobia. Struggling to hold my breath, I hear tiny feet scurrying alongside me, near enough that I can feel their vibrations pulse through the ground beneath me. I listen closely to tiny, ubiquitous chirps reverberating against the cave walls all around me as small creatures quietly sink their teeth into one another. I feel little hairs rub up against my bare limbs as I lay there, too afraid to act amongst the garden of fibers moving across me as if blown by a breeze.

Gradually, the friction from all the rubbing causes abrasions to form in my exposed skin. They won’t stop touching me; sharp hairs, claws, and teeth all gently working together to send my senses into disarray. The pitch-blackness and total lack of light sources only heightened my sense of smell, sound, and especially touch. I feel each of their furry little feet crawling all across my back, burrowing themselves underneath my clothes onto my bare skin and eventually burrowing into my skin itself.

Inevitably, the feast begins. It’s slow and mostly unnoticeable at first so I keep convincing myself that I’m overthinking it. Unfortunately, the inconspicuous tongues and fangs against my skin are eventually swapped with slicing incisors and mashing molars as the starvation all around me becomes too unbearable for the little cretins. Realizing I have to accept these sudden circumstances as reality, I try desperately to lift myself in one quick motion to run but instead the back of my head is immediately struck on the roof of the extremely narrow space I find myself in, causing me far more pain than I would expect it to. How did I end up here? Where is here and when did I arrive? Actually, who even am I?

I must be some kind of explorer repeatedly slamming her head against the rough interior of hard walls, causing me to constantly forget it all while stuck in an endless cycle of the same events. All that I remembered was the horrible nightmare of being all alone in that white room, but total darkness isn't much better. These hairy, hungry creatures must be vampire bats and rats and I must be dinner. Still dazed, I slowly drag my buffet of a body across the cave floor while the small, starving creatures continue to graze me. What little is left of the chunks of my trembling hands finally reach the surface of the cave wall in front of me. It’s a dead end, speaking volumes of what is in store for me.

The rats and bats ferociously gnaw on one another but they all eventually turn towards me as either the spoils of war or a source of nutrients to get their strength back. They take turns tearing into their victuals, stealing the nutrients out of free-form faucets and swollen sustenance sources across what was once considered as my body. Whether from the blood loss, the infections, the shock, or all of the above, I permanently pass out. Eventually, everything ends.

If love and hate are two sides of the same coin, life and death are just the same. We are randomly assorted coins, with random worth allotted to us on an individual level. Our futures or lack thereof are decided based on predetermined circumstances as we spin helplessly out of control towards our fates along with this planet.

As my eyes open, I get greeted by a gray, gloomy sight. Plants are rotting, carcasses litter the streets, and the people… are not doing much better. Strangely, my body constantly moves without my command as each movement feels like an out-of-body experience. I’m not making my limbs move forward, I’m not balancing myself at all, and I’m even forcing my eyes open. I have lost all autonomy over my body as it automatically maneuvers itself in systematic movements. I can almost feel strings lodged within my bones, yanking me around like the puppet that I have become.

Directly within my line of sight, there is a rather energetic woman giving out orders that felt more like a child’s nonsensical babble than heartless commands to be strictly adhered to by a military outfit. Speaking of outfit, the one she's wearing makes it clear that she has no quarrel with her men focusing more on her than the mission. The clearly hand-sown red threads of her military outfit made her stand out like a sore thumb. The sight of her crimson curls splayed loosely across her shouldertops as they lift ever so slightly in the breeze was akin to velvet drapes, waving in the wind. She seems free. She seems uninhibited, invigorated, and at peace! I believe we all envy that. With every step quite literally being preordained, the vicarious escapism of seeing this person prance around before us in an otherwise lifeless plight for total death was the one saving grace from this state of relentless misery. She clearly likes the collective attention. Eventually, everything ends. Suddenly her thoughts were in my head. It was more than that though; it was a jumbled up mess of thoughts from at least two other people, constantly overlapping. I wrestled with concept of my existence as time itself became a lost luxury.

I am a deeply troubled individual. Was that too forward? As equally important as my name is the fact that I’ve never liked the number 8. It's an accursed number, filled with much despair for me. My body cringes a little whenever the number is reached during any countdowns. It even annoys me when people around me talk about what they last ate. It's a bit of a trigger. 8 years ago, my mother took her own life. 8 years before that, I was born. 8 months before that, my mother was brutally beaten. 8 months before that, a group of men were acquitted after beating several similar charges.

Every day that my mother and I saw each other, I saw it. I saw the negative concoction of emotion blending her facial expression into horrible hues of lifelessness. I could tell that every single day, she was incapable of overcoming the trauma etched into her soul. Her thoughts of the past were too dark for her to think of how to move forward, the bright side that things might get better was too overwhelmingly blinding for her to look past the present, and the uncertainty of her future was in too deep a grey for her to find any sense of security. The clouds overhead left her overshadowed by her trauma, all alone in that abysmal grey area. Most days, it was pure misery, opaque and black. Many days, it was sheer anxiety, a mixture of negative thoughts and over-compensated positive thoughts forecasting increasingly dark days. Some days, it was resignation, a bright light, blinding her with the reality of her powerlessness for changing the past. On a few days, it was just emptiness, that grey area.

Those were the easiest days though, since those were the only days where she seemed too exhausted to think of her suffering. Those were also the only days where I knew she would just lay down and sleep all day. Though usually in a day's time, she pointed some combination of all those expressions or worse towards me. I believe that's why she shot that bullet right through her face. She couldn't stand to face me anymore. I reminded her too much of him. At some point I stopped looking at people and started looking within. People are easy to read when you're willing to read between the lines separating the passions in their lives from their perceptions of yours.

As my mother was laid to rest, I saw the bewilderment and disgust in the funeral director’s eyes as I told her that I wanted an open casket for my dearly departed despite the bullet wounds and numerous bodily donations. It was an odd request, granted, but I had hoped to see some positive expression in what was left of her face. I just wanted to know that now she was okay. I wanted to be convinced. Every step towards the casket trembled me with fear to my core as if they were little tremors from the earth. Finally, peeking over into the casket at her harvested body just laying there, losing color by the second, I saw it. She wasn't at peace. She wasn't even at war. She just looked empty. That was the most painful moment for me. That's because I knew unlike those days where she would just lay in that bed, she would lay in this casket forever. She would never know happiness again, and I would never once see her smile. And that was just… painful. Anyway, now I know one thing.

I know how to push a person’s buttons. It isn't difficult. All I need to do is get to know people, and just like that, I gain control over them. For example, if I’m on a date with a cheater who can't seem to stop talking about how much he hates his current wife, I know he probably struggles with moving on. Once I learn about his childhood trauma, the strings are already attached and all I need to do is pull them. I can see his whole backstory in the way he moves. Every time he flinches from a sudden motion towards him, every time he desperately corrects his own words, every time his foot bounces restlessly, and every other time that the rest of his behavior paints the story of his life, I pay attention.

Without any words being spoken, I can see how much his father used to hit him. I can see how often his mother would yell at him for saying something she didn't like. I could also see how alleviated he was that his childhood friend loved him when no one else would, and how heartbroken he was when she had to leave him until he learned what it means to move on. I could see it all playing out before me, like a little glimpse into the distant past. To him, we might be sitting across from one another at a park bench or a dinner table as he rambles on. For me, it’d be a cozy seat in an empty theater and he was the giant screen in front of me. If he paid close enough attention to me, he would have noticed himself getting roped up with a puppeteer. Maybe if he moved on a little sooner, it wouldn't have taken him so long to realize that his wife was just… hanging around at home waiting for him.

I will never feel sorry for the things that I do. That would be like a lion feeling bad for hunting a zebra. Things just are the way that they are and there just isn't anything else to it. There was never a time where I questioned whether or not what I do is right or wrong. The unreliability of societal morality is no different than a

I don’t even really know how these computers work and I don't care, but I know how people work. And that’s all that matters. After all, people are much easier to use than computers since people never change. I do though. I've been through more changes than I can count from the very beginning, and eventually I realized that everything is only as real, coherent, and understandable as they are allowed to be. That is the true error in everyone's programming.