I Lost My Soul Today (but I wrote it months ago O.o)

Just a short piece of musings/depressinginess. (I didn't really lose my soul, so far as I know O.o)

I lost my soul today, somewhere between 3rd and 9th. I’d chosen to walk down Madison as a prescription against heart sores and burgeoning depression. My shoes, as it turned out, weren’t cut out for the trip, and I ditched them early on, walking barefoot through the city’s grime. Perhaps, I should correct myself then; today I lost both my favorite flats and my soul, while walking down Madison.

I can’t be exactly sure when my desoulment took place. To be perfectly honest, I’m not really sure how I know that I’ve lost my soul at all. Maybe it has something to do with the silent apathy with which I now take abuse of all kinds. I suppose I’ll know in time. If, that is, a soulless person can experience revelation.

On the way to losing my soul, I passed a number of beggars. I prided myself for looking them directly in the eye when they asked for my spare change and answering “No, sorry” with a small smile, not ignoring them as though they were an unfortunate blemish on my town’s otherwise flawless visage. But I also didn’t give any of these people money and I grew irritated when I failed to receive a kind comment in return for my words. Maybe this was where I lost my soul.

I once read somewhere about a study conducted at a university to see how many people would check on a person lying down at a bus stop. Nine out of ten people who approached the supposedly unconscious subject ignored him or her completely. When later questioned, these nine out of ten claimed that they merely assumed that the person was drunk. Did those nine out of ten people lose their souls?

Or what about those thirty-eight people who heard Kitty Genovese scream when Winston Moseley stabbed her twice in the back and fled, when one of thirty-eight yelled at him. Or those thirty-eight people who did nothing when he returned two stab and kill her. To do nothing, maybe that’s what robs you of your soul. But I did say “no, sorry,” so I did something. I must’ve lost it another way.

At about halfway, I passed a church with a free lunch program, to feed the city’s hungry. I was a hungry person at the time but I’m sure it didn’t apply to me. It was one of the Protestant churches- Presbyterian or Lutheran, maybe.

I was afraid of those people. I’m a little bit afraid of most people; I have a panicky attitude towards all human beings outside of myself. I can’t see inside other people the way I see myself, which I guess is normal, but I can never get used to for some reason. I’m arrogant that way- always hoping that I’m somehow special. I’m not, or at least I wasn’t. Maybe losing your soul makes you special, in a way.

Like everyone, I can’t help but discriminate with my fears. I don’t like to be alone with any man I don’t know, really any man I don’t know especially well. Even though people walk ten feet ahead of me and five feet behind, surrounding me, I consider myself alone as I walk; the men at this lunch scare me. I don’t think I discriminate based on race or social class, but I’m programmed to think that I don’t, because I don’t want to be a bigot. Maybe I am bigoted, and just try to ignore it, so that I can try to lead a normal, PC life. Or maybe it’s all just the fears in and of themselves.

After passing the church, I reached the underpass, beneath which lies the freeway. The wind blows strongly here and is cold and tinted with the sea, which is close and always seems to push closer with each wave of effort, hoping to one day drown the skyscrapers like Atlantis. The wind is probably strong enough to blow a person’s soul right out of her body. I think about twirling around, releasing my hair from its harsh ponytail, dumping my bag to the ground, and freeing myself to the wind. Closing my eyes, outstretching my arms, rejoicing in its sharp force. But I don’t, ever, and it is this above all things that I think causes people, such as myself, to misplace our souls.

On the underpass, I also think some things that are slightly darker in nature. Sometimes, more honestly, often, I wonder what would happen if I propelled my bag over the ledge. If it hit a car’s windshield, would it have to actually hit a person to kill him? And if it did, would the force of my bag falling from such a height combined with the force of the vehicle going seventy miles per hour kill him on impact? Or would it cause an accident at high enough speeds to do the job? Or, if I missed, how would the bag survive being run over? Would the car survive? And what if I just threw one paper from my bag and it glided slowly down? Maybe it would obscure a driver’s vision. If I wrote “I’m sorry” on the paper, would that make it any better?

When I’m really down, I think about tossing myself over the railing. Even when I’m not down, sometimes I think about it. I wonder if I really had to, if it was life or death, if I might be able to fly or just float a bit. Again, some part of me wants to be special. Part of me wants the angst and worries and responsibility of it all. And part of me would be disappointed to fly because I’ve had near death experiences and if the rush is any prelude to the real thing then it will be fantastic. And awful. Maybe not for me, but I’m happy to say, I’m not alone. When everything goes so slowly, but is over so quickly and you’re disoriented and suddenly in pain, but it’s gone in an instant because your brain knows how to protect you that way. And you cry because you don’t know if you’re happy or scared or somehow disappointed. Because for a second you were part of something huge- a community of all people, because it is inevitable. And maybe it won’t be like that if I’m old and I “go gentle into that good night.” No sense or what’s happening. Someone once said that they wanted to be awake and aware when they died, because they’d only have one chance to experience death. It may have been Richard Feynman, but since he also or instead said “I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring,” I’m probably wrong.

Maybe I’ve just forgotten how to feel my soul. I’ve forgotten so many other things, it wouldn’t be hard to believe. But I don’t think that’s the sort of thing a person forgets. I’d like to think, with or without my soul, I know its weight and significance within me, or without me. Do you think that it misses me, now that we’re parted, and wonders how it could possibly have lost its body?

Once I’ve safely crossed the underpass, I walk the length of the library and think about going in. It’s too daunting, too many stories, too many books. There’s a fountain by an artist I admire somewhere inside or around the perimeter, but I’m too daunted by the library to pursue it. Sometimes I have to walk on the other side of the street here because of construction. I hate that. I have an enormous library fee that I’ll never pay so I can’t check out books, anyway. I feel like I might be on the library’s Most Wanted list. Why does it matter what side of the road I walk on then? It does matter, I just wish I could understand it myself. Maybe it won’t matter anymore, what with the soul gone and all.

I tripped here one day when it was slick. It’s a steep hill and the pavement is often wet. If I’m foolish enough to wear heels, I slip. I didn’t today, probably because when I did trip, I fell, and no one asked me how I was. I don’t think this says anything about me, and I try not to take it personally. I try not to think that I might be going invisible like that guy in the Ralph Ellison book. Not the H.G. Wells one. That always confused me. In Ellison’s novel, the man goes invisible because he is socially invisible. You start to fade away because you are so insignificant that no one notices you anymore. You don’t literally fade, just from people’s conscious. I try not think that I might be like that. But the people around me when I fell said nothing, didn’t help me up, didn’t seem to notice or care. I think, if anyone should lose their souls, it ought to be them, and it ought to hurt something awful.

I reach the place where I would have disembarked from the bus, if I’d taken it instead of walking. It beat me down the hill- it always does. It runs every fifteen minutes and it takes at least twenty to walk the hill. But the bus is crowded and noisy and I feel obligated to give up my seat to elderly people, or anyone older than me, which is almost everyone, even thought I have pain. The sort that gets you a seat on the bus, if you are vocal about it. I’m not. So I walk down the hill to avoid the conversation. If I’d had the gumption to take the bus, I’d probably have a soul big enough to wallpaper the sky.

The bus stop I wait at, which covers the second stretch of my journey, a length I cannot walk, is on Third and Madison. While standing there with all the others, waiting for my bus to come, I realize my soul is missing. And now that I look around at all the other people with me, I wonder if they’ve lost theirs too. But I guess if they have, then at least we’re alike in that as well. A community of vampiric humans, zombie-like, animate objects. Infectious? Maybe. Medicine as it is, someday they’ll have a vaccine to prevent this condition. Unless we’re better this way. And now, I know I am special. But only insofar as there is nothing special about me at all.