I found a few cookies in a styrofoam container at work yesterday. I ate four of them, assuming I was only stealing from Travis, or that Joni did some baking, or that Toby’s mom stopped by with some baking again. They were good, decidedly bakery purchased cookies, and I thought nothing of it.
Travis came in later and told me that they were found in a change room on Saturday, the busiest day we’ve had in a few months. I would’ve eaten them regardless.
It hit me later. They were laced with something. Something pungent enough to require me three or four excruciating porcelain roller coasters, a feeling I haven’t experienced since the times of India. I ate two more today. There are three more left for tomorrow. I have eaten laxative chocolate before; we did it in the dorms because we were bored once, and these cookies easily could have been interweaved with such poisons. Here’s props to the proprietor of pranks.

After a long while of contemplation, both my body and my mind have decided to quit. I’m not sure what I’m quitting, not my job, nor my life, but I’m quitting something. I’m over it. I’ve lost a large degree of hope and it isn’t going to come sprinting back any time soon. A long series of events and decisions has led me to the point where I feel that trying at life is barely worth it, that all humans are inherently selfish and that there is nothing I can do about it.

As a kid, I always heard scary real life stories. One recurring one was that people had placed needles/syringes around cities of the world, hidden in movie theatres, vending machines, buses, grocery stores. Needles that carried HIV. When you reached your arm in the dispenser of the vending machine, you would feel a slight prick, see a small amount of blood, and a small business card like note would fall from the machine saying that you had just been infected with HIV and that you were going to die. I believed it as true, and now we are in a world where it could be true. But they use laxatives and cookies instead, I guess.

So if you don’t see me much these days, I’m sitting in my basement on the floor of my room, on my new laptop, watching episodes of Friday Night Lights and waiting for the new year to whisk me away into adventure and newness.

I have been pricked and infected with the antidote to hope. I reached my hand into a styrofoam container of laxative  cookies and came out a quitter.