Beatrice:
Journal entry #1
So, a lot has happened since the last time I opened one of these things.
I don’t know what to think, and since I have nothing but time here, it’s time for me to stop mopping and get to work. No one else was going to pick me up by the bootstraps, or in my case, these orange crocs I got on entry.
Since I can’t find anyone to talk to here, I’ll have to use Jerry’s method. I’ll tear up these pages into tiny pieces before I leave, flush them down the toilet. I’m going to have to dig in and find the details the officers were missing. So here we go—time for some Scribble storming. The method Jeremiah had me learning before all this happened.
Everything has been so new to me. I can’t help but get clogged up over details that stick out from the streets. Usually, the features I care most about seem to be the least important to everyone else.
When I’m not stuck in a jail cell by myself, I tend to be in the way of ordinary people. I get yelled at often enough it stopped hurting my feelings. It’s entirely my fault since I am the one abruptly stopping in the traffic flow or snooping around things I’m not supposed to. But that’s the problem. I never know I’m not supposed to until it’s too late.
I am having a hard time fitting in if that isn’t obvious by my current state. I can’t seem to stay in the shadows I crave.
I got lured out into the light by shiny inklings I just had to see. Only this time, it led me to something I can’t unsee. On the plus side, I found my way to exactly who I’d set out to find, but, in the exact opposite state of being, I hoped to find him in.
Which was not dead, in case you were wondering. I was hoping to find my mentor alive because I had a huge question to ask, and he’d disappeared on me for a day and a half.
It’s so strange to me. I don’t know what I was like before being struck by lightning or whatever rebooted me in the park. Maybe I was awful and boring or jealous and crazy. Or worse, wholly numb or dumbed down and sucked so far into a preferred avenue down the same internet drain hole.
Right now, the only thing I can seem to put together correctly is that I have an entire ecosystem inside me. It depends on me to make the best decisions possible since, say, a liver can’t hold a meeting and opt-out of a mentalities drinking problem. But it sure can show its resistance and become a real pain toward the end of its patience and life. I mean, come on. If ever there was an argument for ‘this is why we don’t have nice things,’ Jerry said this to me once when I accidentally stepped on a plastic cup we’d been using, and it broke into four pieces.
I’m not sure where that comes from, but it’s something they say, and it fits if you can’t even take care of yourself and all the systems and ecosystems inside and directly around you. Why the heck would life entrust another human to you unless it was so you could both act as dysfunctional mirrors for one another.
I heard inmates in the cells around me grumbling, not all of them out loud, over how they’d been mistreated or betrayed by someone close to them. Some were plotting revenge, others wallowing in self-pity. But the more intently I listened, I could see the memories they were thinking of as they spoke, and it was like they were missing an entire separate half of the story. It made me want to strike up conversations with them when I picked their faces from the orange jumpsuits seated around the chow hall.
No one smiles here.
And when I smile at them, what I get in return looks more like they’re going to fork me in the eye the first chance they get.
I am starting to learn that in some situations, my natural tendencies could lead to uncomfortable outcomes. I’m beginning to understand what Jerry meant when he said, don’t throw pearls to the swine. He wasn’t talking about pigs at all. But people. Don’t give others what they can’t or won’t appreciate.
It doesn’t work that way. If one system turns against another, chaos ensues. It’s that simple.
So if you have one subject that’s turned on itself somehow, shouldn’t it be expected to offer the same poor treatment to what or who they love most. If you can’t love yourself for ALL of your parts… you will never love outside of yourself entirely either until you realize the trend centers on one thing…
The guard is walking toward my cell. I think they want to question me again. I’ll write more later.
To be continued…