FLUSHED
Tuesday. March 13, 2010. 2:48PM.
I can’t start at the beginning because I don’t know where it all began. I don’t know if it’s the middle because I don’t see the ending. I’m one in a million being flushed through something I can’t understand because I don’t believe in it. And when I try to trick myself in believing in it, I don’t understand.
Every time, every single time, that I push down my anger, the frustration and confusion I put myself through as I wander through life seemingly blindfolded (and from what? The truth? The myth? The ugly or the beautiful?) and lock it up in the back of my mind so that I can face the world again, I end up plunked back into the system.
The flushing system. The system, the machine, that separates, divides, categorizes, teases you into thinking there’s an escape with an open window and then has a hand waiting on the other side to catch the rebellious. The enlightened. The thinkers. The machine explains you were only lost. Slaps you on the wrist. Sends you off to flock with the rest of the dying sheep. The mindless. The flushed. And no one is the wiser that the window was only means of negative reinforcement. To keep you flushed in the machine.
And my blindfold slips and I see what’s happening and the lid on the box at the back of my mind slides an inch and my anger seeps out and my frustration at being part of it constricts my throat and my confusion at what to do to next squeezes my heart and I can’t help but freeze. Not caring is my defense. Because if I care, if I try to escape and lead others out with me, I’m grabbed by the hand, slapped on the wrist, and flushed over and over and over again. Until there’s nothing left but a mindless shell waiting for the machine to herd me into something else.
And I don’t want it.
I don’t like it when the machine tells me to go to school otherwise I won’t be able to write and be a whole, functioning person. I don’t like it when my ability to think and see and understand is dangled in front of my face like a carrot on a string and the only way I’ll get it is by putting my blindfold back on. My future is what I make it? I have all the power I need in me? I have the choice to do what I want?
Don’t make me laugh.
But I do. Because you tell me these things. And all I see is an open window with a hand ready to scoop me back up. And I try to put the blindfold back on-I do. You see me trying. On the outside I say failure. But this is only failure to the machine. Failure to those who see it as the ultimate chance. And I’m stuck between living as a spectator, waiting while the machine rusts and finally can do no more (but who knows when it will finally stop moving at all) and being flushed, living in blissful ignorance.
But it’s hard to cover something you’ve finally realized. I try. I do. But I fail because I always see the machine working it’s magic around me-and it makes my confusion constrict my heart and my frustration squeezes my throat so tight I can’t speak. I can’t communicate what I need to say. What I need to tell you.
I see it in my friends. I see it in my family. I see it in passer-bys, old men and young women. I see it in almost everything. And when I join in, I can almost forget that I know the machine is there.
But somewhere along the lines I stop again. And I feel pity-for others, for myself. And I give up. And all I want is for everyone else to stop forcing me to forget what I know, join the machine in its circus ring, and let me sneak through the window. Fall through the rusting cracks without anyone to shout my failure.
I’m not giving up on life. I’m giving up on the system. I don’t want my intelligence to be based off a diploma the machine says I must have. I don’t want my career to be based off a profile the machine says I must obtain. I don’t. And I hate hearing the same things over and over and over again from the people who don’t understand. Can’t understand.
Or maybe you do. Maybe you can see the window, too. Maybe you can see the machine working its magic over everyone else and it makes you sad, too. Maybe it makes your chest ache and your throat choke up so badly you can’t yell you know.
I have a feeling there is this possibility. But you put on your blindfold. And I put on mine. So we’re not outlaws in the machine.
But I think I’d rather stare at the window with an aching heart and speechless throat, defying the machine in the only way I know how at the moment, than follow. Be flushed. Part of me wants to be in the group. Part of me wants to crack under the oppression of the machine. To stop being, feeling, becoming so lonely. So confused of what will happen next.
Because that’s what it promises everyone, doesn’t it. Companionship and a future. It’s engrained, twisted, and molded itself so closely to what everyone perceives as life that no one gives it another glance. But there’s more. I know it. I can feel it. Just through the window. It exists.
And every time I’m thrust back into crowds-school is the worst-I’m reminded of who I’m surrounded by. They’re not all literal morons. I know this. But their pure ignorance is what makes me say that. Even in crowds of friends, I feel like an outsider. A loner. Because, really, I am. And there’s no way to go back.
There was no beginning to this. I don’t think there will ever be an end. I’m just sick of being flushed.