Survivor

by Chuck Palahniuk

Nothing shows you the straight line from here to death like a list.

Cleaning this same house every day, all that gets better is my skill at denying what’s wrong.

I check my schedule, and it says I’m happy. I’m productive. I work hard. It’s all right down here in black and white. I’m getting things done.

I want to be hugged in her cold, dead arms and told that life has no absolute end. My life is not some Funeral Grade bit of compost that will rot tomorrow and be outlived by my name in an obituary.

Then because she thought it would make a good case study, I had Koro Syndrome, where you’re convinced your penis is getting smaller and smaller and when it disappears, you’ll die (Fabian, 1991; Tseng et al., 1992).

We were happy enough this way. For a while. She felt she was making progress every week. I had a script to tell me how to act. It wasn’t boring, and she gave me too many fake problems for me to stress about anything real. Every Tuesday, the caseworker would give me her diagnosis, and that was my new assignment.

She’s suffering from what’s called Learned Helplessness.

We were kept busy learning. We had a million facts to remember. We memorized half the Old Testament. We thought all this teaching was to make us smart. What it did was make us stupid. With all the little facts we learned, we never had the time to think. None of us ever considered what life would be like cleaning up after a stranger every day. Washing dishes all day. Feeding a stranger’s children. Mowing a lawn. All day. Painting houses. Year after year. Ironing bedsheets. Forever and ever. Work without end.

What people forget is a journey to nowhere starts with a single step, too.

This is why when the agent comes to you with anabolic steroids, you say yes. You say yes to the back-to-back tanning sessions. Electrolysis? Yes. Teeth capping? Yes. Dermabrasion? Yes. Chemical peels? According to the agent, the secret to getting famous is you just keep saying yes.

How he looks is eternal and durable. Just meeting him, there’s that guilt I feel whenever I buy something impossible to recycle.

He says, “My point is that every bit of your career with us is already in place, and we’ve been prophesying your arrival for more than fifteen years.”

Just remember, your heart is only beating so you can be a regular dinner guest at the White House. Your central nervous system is just so you can address the UN General Assembly. Amphetamines are the most American drug. You get so much done. You look terrific, and your middle name is Accomplishment.

“The big question people ask isn’t ‘What’s the nature of existence?’” the mouth says. “The big question people ask is ‘What’s that from?’”

People can’t conceive of a virtue in someone else that they can’t conceive in themselves.