I’ve always felt like I was on the outside looking in. Like I just couldn’t seem to figure out how to connect to people, how to act “normal.” I tried my best, I really did, but I always felt like everyone just… knew. They knew there was something wrong with me.
I wished I felt safe in my cubicle… after all it was my cubicle. Just because I don’t have a corner office with a heavy closed door and a shade forever pulled over a tiny rectangular window, doesn’t mean I should have to talk to every single damn person who walks by.
“Well good morning Jeff!” Exclaimed Betty in her overly sweet southern drawl. Betty was in her late 60’s. She had been screwed over in a nasty divorce and would most likely be stuck working in this call center until she eventually keeled over with some asshole still screaming into her headset “I said DO NOT CALL LIST you stupid cow!”
I wondered what it was that kept Betty going like that every day. Always polite, trying to make people smile. What about Betty’s morning could possibly be good? She probably woke up exhausted and alone, rubbing her bad knee like I see her doing 75% of the day. Packed herself another bologna sandwich, to yet again come to some dead end, minimum wage job where sweet ladies like herself get yelled at all day long. She should be retired and enjoying her hard earned free time. I wanted to ask her what was so good about this morning…
“Jeff dear, you alright? Looked like you were kinda staring off into space for a minute there. You got something on your mind honey?” She asked politely.
I knew she was genuinely concerned. But underneath that surface level of concern… I knew what else she was thinking.
‘There’s something seriously wrong with that boy. Hope he doesn’t shoot up the place one of these days… ahh hell I ain’t got much to live for anyways’ Betty’s surprisingly dismal thoughts trailed off as I bid her good morning.
I tried my best to use the tone and smile I had practiced so many times in front of the mirror.
“Yes, good morning to you as well Betty. You are looking lovely today. Nice weather we are having.” I said. I thought I did okay, until the look on her face dropped.
“Umm alrighty .. you have a nice day then.” She said as she walked away fairly quickly for someone with a bad knee. Soon to be two bad knees. She’d been ignoring the other one that had been bearing all the weight and was starting to hurt as well. She knew she couldn’t afford the medical bills.
I immediately checked my weather app, it called for thunderstorms all day… ‘Ahhh shit!’
The rest of the day went by in the same fashion. I tried to avoid people, as much as I could, but for some reason they just wouldn’t allow it.
“Catch the game last night Jeff?” Todd asked as he put a plate of leftovers in the microwave. He kept going on about it as his food audibly splattered all over the damn thing. I knew he wouldn’t bother cleaning it up. He’d leave it for one of the women to do, once they got too disgusted by the old crusty mess to heat up their own lunch in there.
“Umm no, Sir, I am not really much of a sport watcher.” I said.
“Okay, weirdo…” Todd teased. He took his food and as predicted, pretended not to see the mess as he walked away.
I grabbed my lunch and hurried back to my cubicle. The clock ticked by so slowly…
“How is it only 1:00?” I muttered under my breath. This entire concept of measuring time, makes it seem so much slower. These half evolved apes really need a new system. No wonder they are so unproductive. Staring at these silly clocks all day. Measuring time in their strange ways to make it seem quantifiable. Yet they constantly say things like “time goes fast when you’re having fun!”
I just don’t get it. Their science, their religion, their expressions, everything these people do, say and believe seems to contradict it’s own very nature! I forced myself to breath and calm down, I could feel the anger boiling up in me. I knew I couldn’t let it out, I knew I had to keep up the facade.
Awkward glances on the bus. Awkward shoulder touching. I hated it. I didn’t want to hate humans. I know there are some really good ones out there… but just like they seemed to sense that I was, well wrong … and I couldn’t help but feel the same about them.
I didn’t know how much more I could try to blend in with them. Trying to act like them was wearing me down. The thought of suicide was so unheard of to me, so unfathomable until I learned about how many people on this planet actually take their own lives. I thought the concept completely insane, at first… but as the long days passed by, seeming longer and lonelier the thought began to run across my mind more and more often.
Back at work again, and — ‘Ohhhh no… ohh no…. He finally died,’ I realized. Poor Janice, her dog had been very sick for a few months now. She tried to hide her silent cries everyday in the bathroom but she couldn’t hide them from me. He was all she had. 35, single, no kids. She had survived a pretty serious trauma when she was young so she intentionally lived a very solitary life. She believed it would keep her safe from further harm. It did not.
See, this is why I want to have compassion for the human race, because of people like Betty, people like Janice. But then there are people like the one who hurt poor Janice so badly she chose to live a lonely, loveless life, trapped in a cage she created, that did the opposite of keep her safe. People like Betty’s husband who divorced her for a younger woman after she gained a few pounds having carried his children inside of her own body, one of the most selfless acts humanity is capable of.
Humans just don’t make any damn sense to me. ‘Ohhhhh Janice, please stop,’ I think to myself. Of course I feel bad. I do… but I have spent so many years teaching myself to tune out their thoughts, their emotions. I can tune out the mundane bullshit, the empty minded thoughts of people like Todd, just waiting to get home and drink beer on the couch.
But then there are the loud ones. The emotions these people can have are so strong sometimes. Their thoughts are so loud. It feels like it vibrates through me. I feel every bit of their pain, their fear. I hear their desperate and devastated thoughts as if they are screaming in my ear, I can’t take it!
“Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!!!” I scream, not realizing it was out loud, and over the headset directly in the ear of a now very angry customer demanding to speak with my manager.
I ran the fuck out of there. I knew that was the end of that job. But I didn’t care anymore. I couldn’t wait any longer to be rescued. There was no one here who could help me and it was just too long of a wait until anyone else could.
I couldn’t take the bus. Overwhelmed I had completely lost my meditative ability to block them out. Thousands of overlapping thoughts screaming inside my head. LOUDER, LOUDER.
A lady begging for her sick son to recover. A man behind her checking out her ass. Another man begging for money on the street corner, his heart breaking with every dirty look he received. An elderly man fighting back tears, knowing he didn’t have enough money for his wife’s heart medication. A mother who had just given birth to a still born baby, blaming herself for not eating healthy enough.
I was inches away from walking into traffic, when I heard a different kind of thought.
“I hope mommy likes these flowers’. I watched a little girl, maybe around 5 years old picking dandelions in her front yard, humming and skipping along.
If I could cry I would, but I do not know how. There really is a strange beauty here. This world seems to be a balancing act. Between thunderstorms strong enough to tear apart homes, and the beautiful flowers that grow from the rain.
People who are so full of fear and rage all they want to do is inflict pain on anyone they can, and people so full of love all they want to do is bring joy and comfort to others.
I went home, sat down on the couch and decided I’d continue waiting it out. I was genuinely fascinated despite my frustration, I wanted to understand this planet of opposing forces. I wanted to believe in these odd creatures who inhabit it. I knew I had plenty of time, considering how slowly their damned clocks ticked. I would try harder I decided. I did not want to end up one of the hateful ones. I would learn to be one of the kind ones instead.
I have decided to share my account anonymously, because I can no longer bear the burden of feeling so alone while I wait for my rescue.
I know it will be a long wait. It will most likely take hundreds of your human years before my people can finally reach me. We knew the risks flying into the first artificial wormhole our species had created. We knew the possibility it would collapse and we would be stranded here.
What I don’t know is why I had to be the sole survivor. I don’t know why my companions didn’t survive the crash. But I have learned from my time here that this planet tests it’s inhabitants. It seems to want to believe in them too. It is very much alive and it’s thoughts are the loudest of all.
And right now I can sense it reminding me that the wait will only feel as long as I chose to make it feel. That free will is an important part of this experience. Though it will not explain to me why these tests seem so severe. Why it has to be so hard. Is it all a lesson? An experiment? I can feel that there is no malice in the Earth’s intentions, only hope. Maybe that is what we are supposed to learn from all this, that free will is a powerful thing.
Then again, there’s no malice in the intent of a happy little 3 year old catching fireflies and putting them in a jar overnight… but it really sucks for the fireflies.
Maybe the planet is also learning the depth or her own free will?
Damn, this place is confusing. Why do I even have all these stupid questions? Things were much simpler back home. However, as I do have free will here and I do find it fascinating, I suppose I should try to make the best of it. The humans may not know what I am but I don’t think that matters anymore.
There is one unfortunate problem I have however… I can not fool them into believing I am one of them, if I don’t look like one of them.
The real “Jeff”, poor guy, is locked in in his own basement downstairs. Using the technology I was able to salvage from my ship, I harvested his DNA to alter my own to take on his appearance. The process was extremely painful, and I knew it would only be temporary. My body is beginning to reject Jeff’s DNA.
I will have to kill him… and find someone new. It’s not that I want to… but what choice do I have? I guess I ought to do it soon. I can hear his terrified thoughts getting louder.
Poor Jeff, he knows his days are numbered.