One's Company

by Ashley Hutson

Back then I never shared my plans or preferences, my ambitions or desires. I never gave away the things I loved. I knew better. Other people can ruin a dream just by knowing it.

My own identity had always seemed suspect to me. Though I believed a shadowy, hidden kernel of personal essence lay within the heart of every individual—a certain absolute truth that determines one’s identity—I had never found mine. I felt I could change in an instant depending on the situation or the people around me. It all seemed so real in the moment, and so completely fake upon reflection.

That’s when I realized what money can really get a person: respect they didn’t earn. I briefly felt disgusting, then free.

Some men don’t trust a woman who doesn’t play their game, and then, if that women wins at a bigger game—one that has nothing to do with them—their hatred is complete.

I had a vague sense of my severe avoidance and its possible abnormality, but I chose to believe instead that the world was abnormal and I had only adapted to it. Like every person in denial, I believed my methods were acceptable simply because I acknowledged them.

The depth of my feeling and the wildness of my imagination was a farce unto itself. Even I had to laugh at it. I would have been rejected by every artist working for me had they known how much personal melodrama was invested into this project.

The world felt large and doomed, yet everyone seemed destined to carry on normally.

I was ashamed not of myself but of myself as seen by others, which I sensed was happening even more than I suspected.

In my heart of hearts, I had wanted to be exceptional. I wanted to believe I had a higher purpose than staggering from one day to the next in fear or exhaustion, death always hanging out up ahead.

My newfound narcissism felt like revenge. I figured that if the world was going to wreak its random cruelty on me, I might as well aspire to greatness in the meantime.

So many people wanted to solve their problem of self; I wanted to trash it entirely. The world was so haphazard and frightening, why not arrange it the way I wanted it? Why not?

Was there nothing in this world that couldn’t be mine alone?

I should have known. Escape would not be allowed. There is no escape from other humans, from being human.

I had tried, and I had succeeded, but my success was mortal, like all things. I could not, as I’d hoped, transcend time, or my own body, or this ugly human plane while alive.