Science fiction, double feature

"Society kept forcing them into these categories that I don't think they really needed. And that was so destructive."


Self: Not that there’s much to be proud in anything we do. Finished school? Yes well so did all the other kids. Played sport? Ooooh, you too? Well, being pretty I suppose is something. But I rather gather it has more to do with genes than any natural talent, so pride probability isn’t so fitting. (Pause) ah well, perhaps it’s for the best. They say, well I’m not quite sure who it was, might have been Aristotle, could have been the bible, but they say something of that sorta that ‘pride and a haughty spirit go, or come, or something before a fall’. The point is pride is bad. So, I’m not proud. But I’m not really anything. I’m nothing kind of. I’m shrinking. Today I’m sure I’m a size smaller than yesterday, and that’s what happens to old folk before they cark it. Shrink and die. Shrink to fit into the casket. Shrink, like a brand new shirt someone’s going to taint by wearing.

Your body is a battleground. Or at least that’s what they tell me. A kind of war where the things fought out and the things fought for aren’t at all the tangible ideals that we’re used too. I’m not fighting for food, or for love, and I’m certainly not fighting for human rights. Nobody’s violated the Geneva Convention here in the last five minutes, and nobody here is in a position where they’d have to go without. It’s not that kind of war. It’s an inner fight. The sort you have with yourself when you’ve just stolen a five cent coin from your mother’s purse and you’re torn between spilling it all and never saying a word. It’s a battle of conscience. Except now the halves of my self have their own little halves and so on and so forth and it never really stops. It’s constant. A never-ending fight within a fight within myself between all the little things I’m meant to be. Because that is what divides us, really, when you think about it. It’s the pressures and the expectations; when you’re with Mummy you have to be a daughter and when you’re with mates you have to be a friend. And when they meet? Well you’re stuck between the two and it just leaves them upset. But mostly I’m okay with that. Until now I could handle. I was fine. But lately, lately I’ve been submitting more and more to the stereotypes, the clichés of people. I’ve been sleeping when I should have been awake and, sometimes now, I’m finding it hard to get up at all. It’s a battle. It’s a battle with my self, and all my selves, and all the other selves that everyone else thinks I should have, and, it’s getting to be a bit too much. They tell me that my body is a battleground. I won’t argue with them. But you see, the thing is, I’m just a little scared that I might be losing. That… I… might have lost.