The End of Hope

This isn’t the truth, you know. You’re all fools if you think it is. Just like her. Except, deep down, she knows this isn’t the truth. Look at her, turning her head to one side, so she can’t see it.

It’s all she knows, now, this feeling of having to look away, or not look too closely. This avoidance, filling the void with distraction.

In a darkened bar, she talks to a man in a hat. Just a brief exchange of words that shy away from truth, though reality crackles all around them. She says words devoid of meaning, just for the sake of speaking, and he responds with platitudes.

It’s the way of the world.

Inside and outside, she is alone. I watch her, constantly, and still she is alone. Unloved and emotionally bankrupt.

The truth is, there is no truth. No love, no gratitude, no common thread that connects us all. And she knows this, but is afraid to admit it. Because, unless you subscribe to some abstract ideal of truth and beauty, you are devoid of hope. Hope rushes out just as quickly as fools rush in to seek it.

Like her, you’ve probably sat down in a room, low-lit by lamps from IKEA, and listened to some two-bit songwriter singing a love song about being there. Unlike her, you probably find comfort in that song, that expression of love, believing in truth as you do.

She is just acutely aware of how none of it is true.

Once, you see, she would have done anything for love. Believed in it, even.

Because once, there was a man. He had blue eyes and either some sort of problem with his vision or else the appearance that he was looking straight at you was, in fact, a reality. He’s the same man as the one in the hat, except now he has learned to choose carefully who he looks at with his blue eyes, now he knows there is no truth.

There was a woman, too, whose eyes were either blue, or green, or grey, or turquoise, nobody had decided, though all the official forms said grey. She’s the one we’re watching now.

She was born with the knowledge that nothing the world or heaven could offer would ever fill the hole right at the centre of her being. This knowledge somehow never stopped her from trying to fill that hole, though. She threw all sorts of junk in there, believing or maybe merely hoping that, like a jigsaw, the pieces would miraculously fit together to fill the gap. But the spaces between the pieces were enough to let her soul seep out.

Unable to recue herself, then, and believing she could never be loved, she set herself an impossible task: to be a rescuer of others...

He was standing in the corner of the pub, trying to work out how to persuade the cigarette machine to dispense some cigarettes in return for money. But he couldn’t even work out where the money went. His hands were up in the air, his knees were bent, and as she walked past she couldn’t help but stop and ask if he needed any assistance.

“I can’t see where to put the money.”

“Which brand do you want?”

“Marlboro Lights.”

She took the pound coin from where it was gripped between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, and pushed it into the slot above the Marlboro Lights sign. Then she took the remaining money from his open left palm, and fed that into the machine as well. Finally, she pushed the button, pulled out the drawer and handed him the packet of cigarettes.

“Thanks,” he said.

He bought her a drink at the bar, and the conversation flowed, so he bought her another. His blue eyes sought out her suspected grey ones, and she couldn’t quite meet the intensity of his gaze. So she lowered her eyes, and he liked the way her lashes brushed down against the rise of her cheeks. When she raised her eyes again, he was smiling at her.

Now, what many men who believe in truth don’t realise is, when faced with a woman who seems to want to be rescued, they are in fact about to be rescued themselves.

© J R Hargreaves 2004