@preluded : “and what do i get for my pain and suffering?”
you have always been searching for the greater meaning of it all. the how, the why, the reason why the universe has aligned itself perfectly to allow life to form and gain sentience; how cruelty did not need to be bred into men, and how millenia of evolution could not fix it. you weren’t one for philosophy, men in waistcoats discussing theories as if their minds could conjure up a single original idea that hadn’t been thought about by someone lesser than them over a beer in a rundown bar. pain and suffering was built in, inescapable mass unable to be exorcised— it happens. you think she should just count her losses and move on like any other person; how her pain and suffering does nothing to measure on the scale of global catastrophes [war, famine, death– she was looking for her glory amidst the wreckage]. you like to think you can figure out the life story of people from a single glance– their hopes, their dreams, their purpose; what went wrong, why they had never achieved. it's like a game that you cannot stop playing, you pick at the seams as if to unravel the thread and let them come apart before they have the chance to figure you out.
“jesus—what, you want a reward or some shit?” cigarette is lit and hangs from your lips following a bark of a laugh. “yeah, newsflash. your pain and suffering? it means shit. like, what— some fucking washed up critic writes some shit that anyone can see with their fucking eyes but suddenly it matters because it’s in some fucking paper? no–” flare of free hand for added emphasis, plume of smoke follows an outstretched cigarette. “nothin’ in life comes without it. just got to get used to it.”