As I’m going through this awful break-up, I feel that the animals should only be in the zoos so to watch the humans. My crying, in public—as the pain invades the numb shock—is present only in short, cacophonous bursts; my decades of socialization have cause it to cut off before it becomes the blubbery mess it could be, in front of Chicago. The sensation is entirely involuntary. And it’s wordless like the break-up conversation might as well have been; words are said, plenty of them, but they’re ultimately just the texture of mine and her’s confused, angsty horse-wails.
I go to work the day after it happens, and some of the cry-bursts happen in the office, too. It’s so hard to present myself to people; it seems like they *know*; they know how pathetic and anomie-plagued I feel—I am plagued now, perhaps. I’m told I’ve got to make plans with people *and stick to them*, so that I feel the world is a structure, and that I’m in that structure.
I talk to everyone who’s got a head worth transferring with, and I feel the Army Of Me amassing. I feel it marching toward refuge and truth; it is a balm, it is a miracle, it is here. My jokes and hugs and favors have all meant something over these years.
I resolve not to eat endless amounts of Q-grade meat slathered in grease, as I have in the past; I am from the Midwest, I tell myself: I have never needed much reason to punish myself, with such things. This is the land of those so docile that they agree to kill their hearts. But now that I’ve got such a reason to hurt me, I refuse to. I demand of myself that I become something else.
I ruminate toward my transformation at top speed, and I sleep only when it’s possible, which is when I’ve got enough Ambien on hand. My consciousness blurs into funny grids of unreal colors, when I take it, and I giggle into nothingness, only to shoot awake four hours later, incapable of more slumber.
I stare at the wall for hours with knots in my stomach, and then go back to work and feed myself into the system’s arms—but I’m plotting my escape on my computer, when they’re not looking. I’m writing and I’m making moves, making deals. I want to go beyond this mushy subservience. I want to convert this pain into beauty, and be the prize peacocked human, for the giraffes to pay to see.
