What do you understand?

Tawnie:


What do you know? Nothing. The hopeless act of existing. Everyday simply moving through space, navigating myriads of useless emotions. The gulf between what your life is for you, and what your life is to others, as perceived in their own minds.

You could not ever understand this thing - this involuntary nihilism within, which erodes everything away, and leaves only empty shells and peeling skin.


Toniie:


What would I know? What do you know? This nihilism of yours - it is not involuntary. It is of your own choosing. What erosion? What unhappiness? You and your entire people - blessed with everything this world can produce, how could you ever claim to know anything about any condition?

I know true nihilism - that complete destruction of the soul. Hopelessness? You have a myriad of choices around you, and you choose hopelessness. Me - I have nothing. That is hopelessness. Everyday, simply living, with that thought that perhaps something might change. But with nothing but an endless cycle of disappointment, you are left with an empty void.

Please do not claim depression. Do not claim emptiness. You do not have the right to come here and celebrate your unhappiness in front of us. This self-destruction is a luxury you can afford. For us, depression is   integrated into our very lives.

Tawnie:

You think that with your poverty, with your lack of access, you alone feel pain? You alone suffer? Oh dear, you cannot even imagine the horror of it all. For you, it is simply disappointment in opportunity. Your poverty brings you your suffering - an external force which can be thwarted if enough effort is put in. I agree that it is not easy, but in comparison to my situation, your hopelessness can easily be cured. 

What I feel is beyond anything you can imagine. This comes from within. That is the worst - there is nothing coercing you, no one brandishing a whip across your life to make you unhappy. Yet you are unhappy. There is no one thing which directly points to the cause of this unhappiness, but this fact simply exists.

That is the worst bit - not knowing where it comes from. You simply hate beyond hate. Sometimes, I look at people, and without ever knowing them, I hate them. I can't... I can't think of things any other way. You won't ever believe this torture; these trails of lashes across me, everyday spreading like wires across my existence. 

Toniie:

There it is again, isn't it. Those dramatic words of yours. That fake pseudo-philosophy. That idea that you alone know, that you alone understand the nature of suffering. 

You standing there, in your comfortable shoes, your beautiful dress, your wonderfully curled hair, perfectly flaunted around your face. Here I am - bare feet, dusted skin, matted hair falling all over. My dress might as well be made of jute for all that it matters. 

How dare you claim that you understand suffering. This is suffering - when you cannot even eat. There is nothing to eat. There is nowhere to go. The constant grabbing and stealing that goes on. Your eyes are darkened, you cannot even see beyond any of this. 

You think you are of higher thought, that what you feel is beyond the physical life, beyond the situation around you. That it transcends from a mere human sense of suffering to something deeply spiritual. That your very spirit is broken and damaged because of conditions beyond your control. You believe that you are in such a state that you are above other human beings, that you have transcended beyond these murky clouds of foolish human thought, and have become an epitome of the true suffering of the soul.

Yet, you stand here, and after you have said this to me, you will crawl back into your large comfortable home, behind those walls, which protect you from the true horror that is the life of people like me. 

Here is what really causes a broken spirit - when you cannot even buy a cheap tablet for your mother, and watch her being slowly taken over by consumption. How could you ever be so cruel as to suggest that our suffering is external, that my sorrow is a simple experience which will extinguish soon enough.

You cannot imagine what it is like.

This artificial state of being of yours - where you think that you alone understand what it is like to be human - will shatter soon. Watch someone die in front of you. And then slowly see the horror grow, the horror at the realisation that you will never hear them again, or see them walking around. Then you will truly have a glimpse into what suffering is.

Sometimes, I feel like taking a hold of people like you and shaking you, violently, to jolt you into some sense of perspective. To make you feel something, some part of the terror of my existence.

Many times, when I am down, I feel terribly guilty. I don't think I have the right to be sad. 


And then I have this conversation in my head.