MISSING: Chapter 8

MISSING

Chapter 8: Wenn Es Muss Sein!

She hates herself. She truly believes that she is unequal to everyone else. She is envious of everyone and everything. She would rather be the hairbrush of one of her classmates than to be herself. This perverse inclination towards self-hate and self-destruction defies almost all of the presumptions above.

If I hate myself than I am not equal to you. If I am not equal to you, then all individuals cannot be equal.

If I am unequal to all others, people will not like me as well as others.

If I am unequal to all others, but make an attempt to appear equal to all others, people will probably like me more than if I made no attempt to hide my inequality.

If I am unequal to all others, I will be inherently unlike, unfamiliar, and unattractive to all others, and people will feel uncomfortable around me.

If I am unequal to all others and unlike all others, then inherently I cannot affirm the self of all others completely. If I am unequal to all others, I can only affirm my self. People may inherently consider me selfish for affirming my self as opposed to their self.

People take offense to selfishness because it proposes that one individual is unequal to all others. People feel more comfortable with equality (see #4).

All people are egocentric. All people are rooted in the unique perspective of being their self. Aha! So if I am different, then by affirming my self I can affirm the part in all individuals that are different from all individuals.

There can be many truths.

What can be true for one person may not be true for another person; this is due to the power of perspective. The null hypothesis here concludes that what can be true for one person – I am unequal to all others – may not be true for another person. 

Herein lies the danger of drifting too far away from the mean perspective on individuality.

Altruism is egocentric and rooted in the perspective that all people are equal and that all people have equal probability of finding any fate. One person has a statistically equal chance of being any one person with any one fate. 

If any given fate that befalls one individual could just as easily befall onto another individual, AND if I believe that I am unequal to others, I may believe that I have a statistical bias for receiving a certain fate. 

If I am unequal to all others I can believe my fate to be unequal to all others'. If I am unequal to all others while all others are equal to everyone else, then I am an outsider. 

If I do not want to be an outsider, than this is unfair that I was born into a life in which despair is my situation. If I do not want to be unequal and yet I am unequal to all others – for better or worse – my situation will be despair.

If altruism is based on the assumption that all individuals are equal, and all individuals have a statistically equal chance of befalling one fate, then I have no reason to be altruistic to anyone but myself if my fate is lesser or worse or unequal to others'. 

In a given situation, I will allow myself to think, “Woe is me. I physically attract doom and ill will. Therefore I am best – and all are best – if I invest all of my efforts into myself only.

And thus one individual closes out all others, believing the own self to be unequal to all other selves. And all other selves are warranted to begrudge the individual who believes the specific individual self to be worthy of salvation from all other selves. 

All other individuals may continue to believe that all individuals are equal, and so all individuals will continue to be equal in 99% of all instances in the universe. Thus our individual who believes him or herself to be unequal of all others commits a fraudulence of universal proportions. 

The individual who believes it’s specific self to be unequal to all other individuals' creates a truth where no truth previously existed. 

The individual creates a truth from a different truth. 

The individual creates a lie. 

The individual is cosmically dishonest. 

The individual is sin, or is the individual misinterpreted?

***

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D. writes of a schizophrenic brother, “I [want] to understand why I [can] take my dreams and connect them to reality and make my dreams come true. What [is] different about my brother’s brain such that he [cannot] connect his dreams to a common reality and they instead become delusions?” (My Stroke of Insight: A brain scientist’s personal journey, 2006, Viking Press, New York, NY).

MISSING: Chapter 1

TITLE: MISSING
Dedication: For Katie, if you ever want to know.

Chapter 1: Der schwer gefasste Entschluss – the difficult resolution

Muss es sein? Es muss sein! Es muss sein! * >>see asterisk below<<<

She careens over the public toilet and explodes. Loads of vomit flood from her mouth. Her brain – armed with monotonous familiarity – seems disconnected for a time. She does not look at the vomit, or at the blotted stains on the underside of the toilet seat that can only be dried urine. This is a public restroom that provides rest to both sexes. The dark-colored pubic hair that curls at the rim of the toilet bowl is likely from a male. She wonders for a second at the crudity of such a public intimacy. How many others have used this room for their own respite? How many others have stowed away in this bathroom to shoot up or to steal an indiscreet cigarette? How many girls have sat on this toilet – with the seat down – and fucked a stranger? The public bathroom is a stowaway for stale transgressions of intimacy.

*Muss es sein? Es muss sein!" alludes to the Der schwer gefasste entschluss (the "difficult resolution) of the last movement of Beethoven's last quartet, which is based on the following two motifs "Muss es sein? Es muss sein! Ess muss sein!" In German this translates to "Must it be? It must be! It must be!"
****
Sometimes her vomit speckles the rim of the toilet seat. She cringes and violently grabs large wads of toilet paper to cloud around her hand before swiping around the under-rim of the toilet bowl. Disparity. She knows in one small flicker of her heart that this is too unsanitary to comprehend. Another flicker she calls common sense tells her this comes with the territory. She deserves this. She has earned this. Es muss sein!
***
A common childhood approximation for naming works of writing postulates that a title should: identify a main character who is introduced within the first 2 chapters; identify an object that has metaphorical significance to the plot; or identify a theme that is contributory to the plot. This was a very long – almost run-on – sentence. However, most works are generally allotted one handful of long, run-on sentences to sprinkle throughout a story IN ORDER to meet one of two criteria: to present a large amount of interconnected material in a way that connects the material; or to guise at vernacular.

This title – “Missing” – aims to defy the stipulates of childhood grammar. The title is ferociously rebellious. Following the above introduced approximation for naming works of writing, one may assume this story will identify the plot of a missing child. This is not the case. Nor does this story indicate the importance of any animate object or theme that is “missing” from the plot. However, this title is not so rebellious as it aims to be. This title is neither perverse nor progressive. And so we begin this story's tale.