Burn It All Down

She opened her eyes.

Breath heavy, but nerves as calm as a secluded river, cold as one almost frozen over.

Voice ready, she began to speak from behind the podium, in front of a crowd of waiting ears.

“One day in the future, not many days from now, the effects of what we are doing to the environment, the Earth – this planet, our home – will be irreversible, and catastrophe will take hold. We are seeing the impacts now, but the impacts now are minor in this year compared to what they will be in upcoming years.

“The polar ice caps will continue to melt, with the one difference being the speed at which they do – the acceleration at which they do. Glaciers melting and breaking off into icebergs. Icebergs melting, too. The heat trapped in our atmosphere giving rise to heightened sea levels, which will sooner or later contribute to calamity, if we do nothing. Rivers will be unable to freeze over.

“And I say we do nothing, and I say we hope it is sooner than later that we see this tragedy.

“Usher it in, and burn it all down,” her voice echoed throughout the room before its reverberation was overcome by applause.

Taylor was speaking at the Misanthrope Convention, whose tagline, “Getting a bunch of people together who hate people,” was a perfect description of the event.

Taylor was one of the guest speakers for the one-day convention. (Two days around other people would be too many.)

After her mid-afternoon speech, it was time for the small group breakout sessions before the keynote speaker and goodbye salute. She found herself sitting alongside nine other attendees, to discuss the different ideas that were brought forth by the convention’s speakers, what they thought of them, and the final address still to come.

The conversation turned to Taylor and her speech, aptly and almost too obviously titled, “Burn it All Down.”

“So, I think one thing the other misanthropes can agree on here, myself included, is we dislike humanity, and it seemed like a lot of this resentment went into your main theme. Can you explore more of your disdain for us?”

Taylor nodded in agreement, and although she wasn’t overly excited to share an unrehearsed response to people she hated and who hated her, when she opened her mouth, the words flowed like an unobstructed current:

“Well, it’s simple. And I’ll try to articulate it in an eloquent manner to allow my quote unquote contemporaries here to understand. When you grow up, for most people, the world seems like an alright place. You learn about the past and some of the atrocities committed in the past, and you don’t ask yourself how they could have been committed, you just tell yourself that’s how people were, how it was, and that’s why the sins of yesterday were committed. You don’t even use auxiliary verbs like ‘used to’ because there is such a complete break between us and them, our present and past, that it’s not appropriate to say, ‘That’s how people used to be, how it used to be, and that’s why the sins of yesterday had been committed.’ You learn about the past and some of the atrocities committed in the past, and you don’t ask yourself if they could be committed today because we are different now than we were then.

“But then when you grow up, when you really grow up, you realize auxiliary verbs won’t even help us now. We are no different today than we used to be during the times of barbarians and cavemen, only with better technology, worse attention spans, and more ways to kill.”

Taylor paused on kill, her controlled anger building.

“Are we empathetic? No. Are we selfish, stupid, and self-centered? Yes. Do we wear masks during a pandemic? No. Do we fight with complete strangers across the world online? Yes. And our countries’ governments do the exact same? Yes. Do we deserve this world that’s been given to us? No.

“And that is the resentment, the disdain, that went into the main theme. Right now, we can’t even come together to mitigate the risks of climate change for our species’ survival. Good. If we can’t do that, we deserve what’s coming to us. Let it happen. Let it all burn down. Let the Earth be a home with a gas leak, and let us be the inhabitants.”

He snapped back to reality. His eyes had been transfixed on nothing in particular, just a point off in the distance, while his mind wandered. He was sitting in a circle of nine people, who were sharing their stories of how they found themselves here – how their vices started, how they knew it was time to get help, and how they strived to get better.

He was jolted back into this actual reality when the question was posed to him, “Taylor, what do you think triggers your addiction?”

He reflected for a moment, needing inspiration to greet him first in order for introspection to arrive.

He answered:

“What feeds my appetite is, when I do reflect for a moment, I see something I don’t like. All I see is a person who isn’t the person I want to be. Someone I can’t stand to be around but I am with constantly.

“And when I look inside myself, there are three miseries I keep revisiting that make me want to crawl into a dark hole and never return, like a coward who can’t face the visible truth and instead retreats into darkness, hoping for but too scared to enter the void on his own accord.

“The first, it’s like I have everyone fooled. Everyone who thinks I’m a good person. Not that everyone, or anyone for that matter, thinks of me often enough or knows me well enough to hold a true opinion. When I’m reassured of being good, if good has an objective definition, I just know I’ve fooled them again and their reassurance is coming from a place of blind love and not truthful facts. Which only serves to confound the situation because then I start to wonder if it’s imposter syndrome, and maybe they’re right… at which time I realize they’re wrong and remember what I’ve always, secretly known, and that is I am a bad ‘insert non-subjective definition here’ person.

“That’s the second hang-up. I’ve known it, worried about it, and contemplated it for such a long time, but at the same time buried it until it rises from the surface, not been concerned with it until it makes itself known, and compartmentalized it until it hurts others and I continue the trend of hating who I am.

“That there is number three. How I’ve known this, and I’ve done nothing about it, and still don’t see how I will do something about it. This, this just might be the worst of them all. No, this is the worst of all.

“That’s what triggers me. Triggers me to do what I can to forget who I am. To forget what I hate. To be home and enter an alternate reality in which I don’t have to think anymore. To be out, wearing my best clothes as a charade, to post online my best life as a façade, surrounded by people I don’t know if I can stand, with a drink and drug in my hand. I just like to forget who I am. It’s easier to pretend to be something you’re not than to actually make an attempt and put in effort to become someone better than you currently are. It’s easier to forget.”

The circle was taken back by the starkness of the response. These circles were meant to be safe spaces, where a person with a problem could share their feelings freely and openly without judgment, but even then, the answers were not typically this free or open. Candid overtook comfortable. This was real self-hate – truer than self-loathing, and less of a woe-is-me mentality than self-pity.

When it was time to share in front of the larger audience, of around 30 in total there that night, Taylor jumped at the opportunity, as if what he had just disclosed was an epiphany and not simply a confession, known for many years but just now only said aloud.

“I’ve thought about these words prior to stating them tonight. I’ve told myself, and I’ve told others, that humans are good people, and we need to do what we can to make the world a better place for the greater good. And recently, I’ve recognized I was incorrect in this belief all along. If there’s one lesson the global reactions to a pandemic have taught me, it’s that we are not good people.

“Similarly, I’ve outwardly presented a consistent appearance, and that is that I’m good people. But unlike with the world, I didn’t need to learn that this was false. There was no recent revelation. Inwardly, it was a fact cloaked in fiction.

“And when you know that both you and the world suck, there isn’t much more to hope for than to burn it all down.”

He overlooked the crowd, which was silent. He prayed they were no longer free of judgment. He wanted them to be his jury. To decide his fate. To let him take the easy way out. To be his jury and executioner.

He thought of Meursault waiting for the jailer to escort him to his death. Taylor, too, felt the indifference of the universe, but unlike Meursault, he did not just resign himself to the end: he actively wished to be one of the spectators greeting himself with cries of hate when the time comes.

“So, in my home, I hope a gas line’s age leads to wear and tear. And I hope that wear and tear allows gas to leak from the line. And be it a candle or cigarette, I hope there’s a reason to ignite a flame. And with it, the sky will fill with a painting of red stars on a black canvas, ashes falling to the ground like snow. With me inside, at the time, there will be no place to go. It’s easier to burn it all down than it is to grow.”

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Question:

Do you ever think about that song, “I Hate Everything About You?”

Plot twist.

It was written in front of a mirror.

Double plot twist.

It wasn’t, because the next line is, “Why do I love you?”

Nonetheless –

Your depression isn’t an excuse to be a bad person.

“My depression isn’t an excuse to be a bad person.”

(And me hating myself isn’t an excuse to be a bad person.)

Am I truly one, though?

Probably, but I’ll never be able to objectively decide.

Maybe I just have everyone fooled, though
everyone who thinks I’m a good person
everyone except the select few
who know
the truth

put down the book
finish the line
become so entwined

So, it’s probably best to err on the side of caution
And believe myself when I look at myself in the mirror and tell myself I’m a bad person

put down the book
finish the line
it’s all it took

Believe me
When I look at myself in the mirror
Tell me I’m a bad person

put down the book
finish the line

Burn it all down
This poetry will finally end in due time
///
Shit poetry will finally end in due time