The Girl With the Hole in Her Head

It wasn't always like this... She used to know the tranquility that comes with repetition. The soul crushing boredom of a perfectly predictable existence. Now her life has become unpredictable, frightening. Images and sound rushing past her that seem to bear no relevance towards past or future. When once goals seemed tangible, as if the future was just out of reach, and the past still left a bitter taste in ones mouth, now the abstract notions of a temporal realm alluded her entirely. Nothing existed except in the ever changing, ever present moment. It was impossible to paint a picture of, to form an idea, that could encompass her routine daily life. Before she could walk to the kitchen to get a glass of water, she had lived a thousand lives, been a thousand places. Upon arriving in the kitchen, she wouldn't have the faintest idea of who or where she was, why she existed, or what she was staring at [presumably the sink faucet]. Formulating a thought coherent enough to satisfying a bodily function such as thirst was no longer possible anyways. She had become a soul, untethered to her body.

It had all began with the slightest rip, but that wasn't to come just yet. In the beginning, she was just like any other child; She had an insatiable curiosity about the world she now found herself inhabiting. As her peers discovered their first encounters of a social nature, these thoughts dropped off among them. Content to spend their days playing hop scotch and discussing the pressing social issues of their youth, [such as the latest cootie outbreak in West Dakota, that had claimed nine lives] gradually, she was left behind by them. Rather, that is to say, she allowed herself to drift apart from them. She felt more secure in the world of literature, finding in it her one refuge from the questions that plagued her daily. Her tendencies only increased as time wore on and in her adolescence she had flourished. Within her head, she has built up a repository of knowledge. She was a walking encyclopedia and within her head she contained enough knowledge, the weight of which would crush the most ardent of scholars. But she cared not for them and even less for that. The idea of the world of academia in general. She didn't receive education in order to succeed amongst them. No, she chose to educate herself to try to satisfy her longing. She pined to learn the meaning of existence, the reason why she was alive at all on this, our earth.

She had grown up to be a wizened older woman. While others married and had children, she still found her only solace in the bound pages of a book. She had amassed such an incredible array of knowledge, she had fit all of humanity and culture into a nice puzzle with the universe. She was in almost complete harmony with her existence. It was as if life were a beautiful mosaic on a giant wall and only she could step back and appreciate it's true beauty, while everyone else could not help but to scrutinize the individual pieces of tessera which made it up. The only thing that remained outside of her grasp, that escaped her comprehension, was still the most important question to her. Where were we as a species going? What was her role to play in all of this? For what singular purpose did she exist?

That night, she went out by the sea and lay down. As the repetitive breaking of waves on the shore echoed out alone in the silences of the night, she stared out at the stars. Thats when she knew that there was no book ever written that could truly tell her what life was all about. Perhaps she had always known, she thought. The last piece of her puzzle was and had always been inside of her. There was no one who will ever have any more or less potential then her. She knew then what her life had been leading her towards, with every step she took. She knew also what she must do.

When she went into the cave, she did it without remorse. Without remorse for the life she had spent in books, nor for the life she had spent alone. Thoughts of this nature had long since stopped afflicting her. She had only her iron will, her unyielding determination to finally come to terms and make peace with her perceptions of reality. She seated herself on the floor and proceeded to probe deeper then she had ever done before. Minutes went by without her so much as blinking. Hours passed and still she sat. She was undoing an entire life's worth of psychological programming. She was smart enough to know when she was dishonest with herself. She was smart enough to know exactly what was going on but for some reason, her brain would try desperately to deceive her. Her brain was subconsciously using a technique of self preservation. Three days passed without her so much as moving but she had done it. She had allowed herself to be honest with herself for the first time since she was a child. She remained in the cave for another five days, contemplating her inner truth. Weak from mental exhaustion, emaciated from days without food or water. She crawled her way along her carpeted floor to her desk.

She was never in a cave to begin with. The cave was a metaphorical place in her mind [She had in fact been sitting for over a week in the spare room of her apartment staring blankly at the space in-between her carpet and an electrical outlet]. There really was a beach by the sea, but that is a tale, for another time. When she reached her desk she knew she had little time left and so she hurriedly scrawled on a sheet of paper everything she felt was of importance and that is when it happened.

It started as just a little rip. It ran from her ear to her temple. There must have been something in there with a sharp corner and it had eventually poked it's way through. Once the initial perforation was there, it was not long before the weight of her mind started pulling it longer. The tear stretched from temple to temple, across the crown of her head. Before long everything was just spilling out of it. Rudimentary grammar, long division, iambic pentameter, and more and more just kept falling out. As the hole in the girls head grew, not only did the fruits of her labor fall out, but also her fondest memories. Gone were the greek tragedies, and gone were the holidays with her family. It's not that she collapsed so much as she no longer possessed the will or desire to stand. As she lay writhing on the floor, darkness over took her, and consciousness seeped out of her body.

When she came to, It might as well have been the first day of her life. She could have recognized that fact the way that an antelope recognizes the fact that there are satellites orbiting our planet. The hole in her head was so large that she could hold nothing in her head for longer then the moments it came to her through one of her five senses. She could no longer even form thoughts, but just merely try to guess at or interpret what the visions and sounds were that came and went arbitrarily. It was another three days before she died. She was no longer able to connect the pain in her stomach with any concept of nourishment or food. She starved to death alone in her apartment.

It was about a week later when her place was forcefully entered and her body taken to the morgue. Neighbors had complained about the smell emanating from her apartment. That is not important, but this is what is; her possessions were sent to her closest living relatives, which were her parents. They were not on bad terms although they had not spoken in over a decade. Among the thousands of books they received in dozens of boxes, there was only one box which contained her few and scattered personal effects. Among these was the page she had written on shortly before she had died. It took her parents many month before they got around to finding the box and reading what the girl had written. What she wrote is roughly translated as follows:

In my selfish pursuit of knowledge, I ignored most of what people consider life; friends, family, love, marriage, children. I know now that the only noble pursuit of man is a selfless one. To love his fellow man and to be loved. To give all of yourself and in return to be given so much from others. In this one great purpose, i have failed.

She was buried in a local cemetery, her head stone read only this: "It is never to late to say you are sorry".