Chapter 1
Happiness is not a good thing Diana, I thought to myself as I picked a package of instant noodles from the highest shelf. Scrunching up my nose at the sight of Sriracha chicken flavor, I returned the package and dug deeper to find a beef flavored one.
We all chase it, relentlessly. Be it by ourselves or with other people. We try to find it, buy it, borrow it, steal it, create it, conjure it. Ask a thousand people what happiness is and you will get the equal amount of answers. Family, friends, love, money, health, children, animals, nature; would probably be included in most of those definitions. It seems that people define happiness through things which they do not possess, through experiences that they perceive are out of their reach. Then ask the same people what happiness is after a certain period of time. You would hear completely different concepts of that state. A man, who wanted a Ferrari and obtained it, now swears that happiness is not in material things but rather in love and intimacy. He yearns for a woman or a man to love him for who he is and not because of his fortune. A woman who wanted a husband and children, now wants a new house because the old apartment in Brooklyn with two rooms is making her miserable and constantly angry. She says that more space for dogs and better school for her kids would make all of her problems go away. We choose an arbitrary goal within seemingly endless sea of choices. In reality they are limited by our very own human nature. Procreation and the battle for a better hierarchy position seem to be the main two reasons why we keep on living. We unconsciously reshape our drives into achievable goals that later on determine our definition of happiness. That feeling seems to be a reward for being a good human being and doing what you were made to do: birth babies and show off in front of other people. That is why happiness is a fairy tale for adults, allusive and seductive, packed with serotonin and dopamine and other happy neurotransmitters whose purpose is solely to keep us alive in a world where nothing every made sense or was ever in our control. That was why I never sought happiness but freedom; complete and utter freedom. Goal oriented happiness always stood in my way. Thus began my fight with the basic human nature; the only goal I ever cared about was expressing myself without any boundaries. But will I ever be truly free? Will I ever kill that part of me that was so deeply rooted within my system? I wanted to believe in the possibility.
‘Excuse me miss? Are you feeling okay?’, I heard a voice talking in my direction and I quickly snapped out of my daydream haze.
It seemed like I finished my shopping without being aware of it. A young cashier was looking at me with worry written all over his acne scared face and fluffy dark eyebrows. He looked as if he barely got out of high school; his thin, delicate hands a telltale sign. A scent of his strong cologne mixed with his putrid, adolescent sweat and created an unpleasant mist around him. I felt pity for whoever slept with this boy; I would probably vomit all over his immature face.
‘I’m sorry I must have wandered off. It’s a habit of mine’, I gently smiled at him handing him my credit card.
‘You got me scared for a minute there miss. You looked as if your soul left your body for a second’
‘Who knows? Maybe it did’, I winked at him as he proceeded with my transaction.
He gave me a confused look and I laughed picking up my card and groceries.
Somewhere within my purse a phone rang.
Whoever it is, they would have to wait.
‘Where in God’s name have you been this time Diana? You got us so worried!’, Sheila boomed at me as soon as she picked up my call.
‘Oh I’m in Kokomo, Indiana’, I answered nonchalantly while lighting up a cigarette.
I had a strange habit of disappearing during my days off whenever I felt overwhelmed by the city life. New York City was like an angry beehive of people constantly chasing earthly pleasures. Alienated form everybody, even themselves, they spent days and nights working for their place under the sky. Sex, money, love, drugs; anything to keep their minds off of the unbearable pain of existence. Cacophony unique to the Big Apple was sometimes unbearable for my already frenzied psyche. Even if I wanted I could never erase it from my memory. All I could do was push it in some dark corner of my mind, replace it with sounds of nature and small towns or just pure silence. When that happened I would randomly chose a town and drive to it. Riding towards the chosen destination was more therapeutic than any psychotherapy session I’d attended in my life. The feeling of complete freedom of the open road was liberating. Listening to music mixed with the mighty roar of the car engine drove off the pestering thoughts that plagued me ever since I became aware of myself. Nothing in the world existed except for the magical voice of Robert Plant and my old Mercedes Benz.
‘Why in the world would you go there?’, I could almost see the disgusted look that Sheila often gave me when I talked about my trips.
‘Because I felt like it. You wouldn’t believe how many breathtaking amateur pieces I’ve seen here. You should really contact some of the artists. I even took a few numbers’
‘You know I’m not going to do that. I’m up to my neck in shit regarding the exhibit that we’re preparing. I really need you on the opening this Wednesday’
‘I’m coming home on Sunday. Who is it this time?’, I took a last drag of my cigarette and stubbed it into an obscenely full ashtray that emitted a horrible smell of stale cigarette ashes.
‘A French guy named Victor. I have to try and learn to pronounce his last name correctly. I forgot everything that we had learned in those French lessons back in high school’, she whined.
‘Just send me the name and I will teach you. What is his style?’
‘Good old realism. I can’t wait to see your reactions to some of his portraits. I’m sick and tired of abstract art. This should be a nice change’
‘Now, I can’t wait. You know how I hate when you hype me up this much’
‘Oh, just get your ass back home as soon as possible and send me photos of what you’ve seen in that god-awful Midwest’
‘Of course darling’, I said and hung up.
I couldn’t wait to become one with a bed in my rented room in a sleazy downtown hotel and pray to God that I don’t bring another infestation of bedbugs back to NYC.
The ride back home was rather uneventful and excruciatingly tiring. Caffeine became both my best friend and my worst enemy. Thanks to my extremely reactive bladder a 12 hour drive, turned into a 15 hour drive as I had to pee every 50 miles, buying a new drink on every gas station and thus continuing the vicious cycle of coffee and gas station bathroom stalls. When I talked about interesting graffiti I came across in those stalls Sheila always asked me how comes that I wasn’t afraid of murderers and rapists. My answer was the same over and over again: because I’m not afraid of death or pain. I am a firm believer that humans’ greatest fears always find a way to materialize themselves, simply because of self-fulfilling prophecy. People are always on the lookout for the object of their fear and what you seek, you shall find. If I saw every man as a threat, I would surely notice their lingering gazes over my chest or backside and set myself into a spiral of panic and dread, a natural survival instinct. Fears, much like happiness didn’t fit into my concept of freedom. To be afraid means to be in a self-imposed prison, watching as your life passes by while you are paralyzed, unable to indulge yourself in it because you are not capable of breaking the heavy chains of an inherit survival mechanism.
