“And that is your evening news.” My robust voice broke through the air. the camera cut off and I sat there as the producer walked through telling us, ‘What a great job we did. What hard hitting news stories we did.’ It left a taste in my mouth like a sour grape. I had become jaded in my position. Becoming used to he monotony of the reaction of the news for the day.
One more death simply meant the next movement of the scale upon which our pay checks were cushioned on. In the comfortable existence that we currently held, in a position where everyone knew your name, everyone knew you. If there was a story there, you were not welcome. Where if you still had the heart and the stomach to do what you wanted to in the beginning when you started this job of telling the truth, it no longer held true.
There were things that would eat you alive, unless you succumbed to the gentle calling of being comfortable in an uncomfortable world. You simply reported without feeling. Or at least you did not show it on the screen. In person. In any way, shape, or form that might break the mold of the current society that existed. some how you made that person on the other side of the mirror, whom hung onto you, your every word, every thought that came out of your mouth.
They trusted you to tell them the truth. To tell them it was going to be okay when they decided that it was time for the daily life to stop. To turn in for the night.
So often I felt like saying, “I am sorry to have to report the news of a death of the humanity we feel, but on a side note, the community has come forth with love and support, all will be okay in the world. And now onto our next story.”
That is how things had become, simply words on a screen to a world that only wanted to hear the good things. To ignore the bad, and to simply survive in an un-survivable world. It moved daily like that.
I reported the same news every night, in a different manner, and then I would send my listeners off to an unsuspecting sleep that even though I had told them all was well in the world. The world was going into disintegration, the world was really just going away.
I would send them off to a comforting sleep, reminding them I would be back tomorrow, that all would be okay, and the mere existence of my reporting meant that they would still be alive. Truly it was the other way around. I knew a long time ago that is was them who kept me alive. If they did not watch, I would simply not exist anymore. Well to be honest, if we are not seen, we do not exist, myself or you.
I pushed myself away from the desk. Looking around, the new production manager was simply that. Some kid straight out of college, who had no clue what life was about. Arrogant, cocky, he had new ideas for the nightly news. Somethings I was not comfortable with in my mindset of what should be, what was, and what is.
When he came on, I decided then that it was time for me to well, rethink my possibilities and what I was there for. I had come from a place that I should not have. Standing up against the tyrants of the day. My suit hung on me as if it were as tired as I was. constantly on the go. Rising up at daybreak, searching the news, seeking the stories I could bring in. Trying to keep my humanity and mentality in check, things in life do not always work the same as what we expect and in the then, when the time comes, we must make a choice of where we stand.
I gathered my things and walked to my car, thinking. I noticed in the parking garage, the people I had been accustomed to, that I had become comfortable with. I waved to them as my car opened with a small hitch. As I exited the garage and began to drive, I found it odd to feel this way. The industry that I had been in so long, honestly was not as when I began. Things I did not like, it had changed, as all things do, but this change I did not like. It was that which I saw out there and it was not okay. I was to report it, comfort people as if all was okay, when I knew what the truth was.
I was not allowed to discuss it because it might upset the norm of what was presented. People surviving in a case of not knowing, and did not up-rise against what they knew is wrong. They held onto to the monotony of the life they were living. They existed in becoming comfortably numb in the reality of a world that was truly not comfortable. My mind screamed of all the things I had seen, in a world that somehow had just simply been accepted, allowed.
I saw things that were abhorred in others, in ourselves. That we tolerated in ourselves. An outcry was needed, yet no voices were heard, and if they were, it was met with anger, vengeance, and beaten down upon the people involved. There they were muffled in the chatter of society, so wanting to survive. They would if they could ignore what was around them and move on with death under their feet.
They would still be comfortable in buying and selling what ever they had to complete the cycle of feeling that they belonged. Numb to the pain around them, because like us, they themselves had become numb to the tragedy, the sadness, and the complete utter loneliness. Because they themselves at one time, fell into the trap of their own lives.
Circling and fueling exactly what they thought they had overcome. Yet, in reality, in the end, you remain where you come from. Somehow I ended up where I cam from earlier this week, after an interview of a young senator. Dangerous in his own rights. He spoke what I felt, I just had lost the nerve to report it.
This senator was different. He spoke what others feared. Unfortunately their fears were very valid. He challenged the system way too much. The system that so many trusted. He spoke against it, raged. He knew the system controlled everything. Or so they thought.
He questioned and that woke people up. An old neighborhood, old beliefs, falsities in the niceties that came when you decided to leave from whence you came. Only to return and seek the path, the journey, the way you started is not always the way you return. Underneath it all, you are in the end, still the same as whence you were when you left to make a better life.
This man never left where he came from, he accepted what he was and stayed there. He never left the boundaries that defined his being as so many of us did. Even myself, had left the boundaries I realized after talking to him.
I pulled up to an old home. It was old, worn down, decrepit just like me. Settled and dusty. It was however the place I belonged to, my roots. I pulled into the driveway and when I entered the home a car exited. The dust settling, I saw the movers had been there. In an open window in the center of the foyer was a desk that was tossed out of a a few houses down. It was now setting by the bay window.
They were renovating the old buildings for a new condos. I was sure whomever would move into to them, would soon move out. I moved the car forward, turned off the engine, and shut the door behind me. The dust from the house settled around my feet, almost as if to welcome me home.