Prologue.
To be honest, I have no idea what to write in this prologue, so I’ll just wing it and hope for the best. In some ways the events of Summer 2014 are still as fresh and vivid to me as what happened to me at work yesterday or what film I watched last weekend, especially now when I read my diary of the time, scrawled and almost illegible. But despite re-living my endless paragraphs of morbidity, the harsh assumptions, unfounded judgements on my future housemates and my glaring ignorance, it’s hard to describe the depth and the layers of emotions we all experienced. There was fear, there was desparation and there was utter terror. For me there was also an intensity of loneliness that I never thought I could live through as well as hours passed in sensual oblivion. But there was more to it than just my childish indulgences and selfish choices. For the deeper threads of the human state , I have no words. I’d like to say that what transpired brought us all together, that….absurdity we lived through. I’d like to say that, at the end of the nightmare, our new-found unity was like a moist, cooling refreshing shower on a sweaty day and that through that hell, we’ve all bonded forever, putting all the hatred and betrayal behind us. Helping Alicia in her hour of need and getting ourselves out of that hellhole should have stopped our petty arguments and thrown our lives into a stark reality perspective. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to say, yes, we all pulled together. But that wasn’t entirely the case, whatever the ending of my story may suggest. On the surface we appeared to have resolved our differences; Lee waved his ‘magic counselling wand’ over all of us and we suddenly saw beyond each other’s selfish ways and vindictive comments and realised that we shouldn’t have judged, we should have ‘walked around in each other’s shoes’ as Lee told us to. Time and time again, he told us, but we all sniggered behind pursed lips, nodding in all the right places, while seething and cursing each other’s existence in favour of our own agendas. How I wish we had listened to him. How I wish we hadn’t just pretended to forgive and forget, that we had actually bothered to sit down and talk to one another and be strong in our admissions of weakness….admit we were all to blame, we were all human and humans make mistakes, humans fuck up.
Lee thought we did, but I knew better. So did Alicia.
I don’t want to talk now about where and how we all are today, I want you to read this story that I have told here through my diary entries and those of my companions. Then, where the story comes to an end, you will find my final words and thoughts written. I won’t plead or beg for you to believe me, it’s up to you to come to your own conclusions. Some of you may never be able to decide, and that’s ok too. All I ask is that you give my story a chance. I have my own beliefs, my own theories, but what do they matter? After all, what I am trying to tell is a story with a hundred different messages and a thousand different perspectives.
““There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.”
― Aldous Huxley
Listen and learn~ Casey Papadaki
The Silent Angels 