ME by Owen Jones

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SUMMARY: A small excerpt of a piece I hope will become larger. Feedback gratefully appreciated.

The end came, as these things are want to do, but nobody recognised it. Had there been recognition then the result undoubtedly would have been mass hysteria, but there didn't so there wasn't. Instead we were left wondering about beginnings. How even though the conclusion is inevitable, we are still forced through the process in order to understand how it is we got there, not that it will achieve anything but for propriety's sake we endure. The thing about beginnings is how unrecognisable they are, no big neon flashing lights but an event. An event so unworthy or irrelevant of notice that it gets passed by. This prejudice forces the event to snowball, gestating a series of reactions, which have consequences that create more ‘events'. It is now out of control. Coincidence becomes complexity becomes inevitability. An end. Rewind. There have been many famous beginnings and I will attempt to make mine enlightening so that the end, which we have already met previously, will make sense. If there is such a thing.

I was born in the year of the lord 203, what lord that is I cannot be sure for it is almost certain I have killed God. I was born a young, loved child. Rare in this or any other time I have come to see. Both loving parents worked hard, at work, at marriage and for their child, but as typically happens time marches on and we can but rush to keep pace with the beat of its drum.
My parents failed.
Time in the fields, tilling the land from dusk till dawn killed my father as surely as a knife through the heart. His eyes fading in the dark light of night could not compensate for the voracious, destructive ultra-violet rays of the too long, too hot day. He died irradiated and in terrible pain. It was to be but my first taste of the nightmarish reality that lay under the smiles and hugs which disappeared with the one man who could make the world right.
So it went wrong.
My mother, as befits a soul sliced in half soon followed, a spiral that was both obvious and blatant, she did nothing to stop it. Nor do I blame her, it was fitting.

So I was adopted, a philanthropic dream waiting to be caught ......... and caught I was. I doubt people who have ‘found peace' because it is an untruth, they haven't found the special secret which allows you to live a full, true life – they've simply avoided conflict at every turn. Conflict and confrontation are an inherent part of living and dying, they are an inescapable part of living and so these people have stopped living.
Philanthropists are a prime example, seeking to fulfil some pre-requisite of an idealised, utopian image of humanity by doing good deeds. Pure guilt. They are the lucky few who don't have to work, don't have to watch their dreams fall by the wayside of expediency. A life less lived is a notion that escapes them so they seek to experience what makes the world outside of their caste so angry and driven, cathartic pain by association. I don't blame them, I just hate them enough to tear their proverbial head from shoulders unbowed by the battle of life.

My adoption didn't last long, I made sure of it.