Tell Me What You Are Worth

Part 1.

For the sake of this story, you don’t need to know who I am.

But if you like, and if you really need to, feel free to wonder about me - picturing my story - your story about my story - in your heads.

“Is she rich? Is he tall?

What’s their position on the current political climate?

Do they/he/she/it care about the trees? What about deforestation??”

Feminist? Misogynist?

I will just not be able to give you any answer unfortunately - as it would probably bore you to death, and you wouldn’t want to know about my story after that. My story is not about me. For the sake of this story, all it matters is to tell you what happened to me.

It is sufficient for you to know that I am definitely someone, but most of all, I definitely had something happen to me.

So, it’s up to you: you can imagine I am 2ft tall - male - blonde - white - classy-rich; or, if you prefer, you could imagine I am of regular height - woman - brunette - mysterious and charming - class and race uncategorized. Gender fluid. Makes no difference. Or maybe - maybe it makes all the difference and that’s why you shouldn’t know about it.

You might for sure not know anything about me yet, but for sure you probably already think I am a bit of a handful - like "Why would you not tell us about you like every normal character of every story ever written?”

I promise, I am not trying to play special or mysterious, ii is just that I don’t have much to say about me and I also feel I am not the protagonist in this story.

Although, something I can definitely tell you - Something I can tell you is that, I, in this story do not matter at all.

So here you go, so now we are on the same page.

Now that we have clarified that, I will proceed telling you my story.

I will not tell you where I live - it is sufficient for you to know that is it cold, and it is miserable.

If there is any character information I can give you, is that I am quite on the miserable spectrum. I do like my misery, and I am quite content with it’s conformability. What can I say, I like to feel part of community.

I fully learned in my lifetime to thoroughly appreciate mediocrity and its lovely state of stillness. I like things that don’t move, in fact, I don’t like change and most of all, I do not like surprises.

Knowing it all - it makes me feel controlled. I like control, to feel in control, not like a crazy manipulative controlling person, but more like I know where I stand.

So - to be fully honest with you (if can ever really can) - when I had happen what happened to me, I pretty much did not feel in control at all.

Let’s say that, when I had happen what happened to me, I was definitely swept away from my two very stable feat - from my state of mediocre content - and very suddenly felt something that I can only describe as being punched right in the face.

Sometimes I go over my life so far, play it all in my head. When I do that, I like to treat myself to a cup of tea - tepid - a bath - tepid - and, some days, when I feel particularly joyous about such a routine, I make sure to add little cold water in my bath, so I remember to keep it mediocre.

I enter my bath and breath calmly - not too deep but not too shallow neither.

I proceed playing the film of my life in my head - neither obsessively or too intensely. Thank God they haven’t made an actual film of it! - I think in my head.

I like to categorize things, I put things into the boxes they belong to. I like to scan my life through in my head, and remark with a little pleasure - and sometimes a little giggle - that nothing major is there to be noted.

I made sure of that.

But that day was different, for some reason.

Part 2.

I think about the most remarkable thing that happened to my life:

When I was 7 one day and out of the blue - with no request from my part for sure - my school teacher at the time came up to me. She walks - stops right in front of my small child’s head - puts on a serious face and stares straight into my eyes; and finally asks:

“What are you worth?”

“What are you worth?”?

The cheek!! - I think - But I am mute.

As a seven year old I was pretty clever, but that question petrified me.

I - to this day - never gave her an answer. I remember hating her for it.

That question ruptured the fabric of my life, catapulting me a lifetime away from this earth. Shooting me into space - floating into the galaxies. In the space of two minutes, that question resonated deep and far away from my body - In that space, I witnessed the Homo Erectus and his first murder, the Homo Sapiens discover for the first time the fire of life. I crumbled.

That sole question pinned me to the floor and gravity won over the all of my seven years old - non gender specified - body.

Since then I make sure I keep that question well away from my life.

Part 3.

So when I hear the doorbell ring that morning, I am fully confident it is the postman. I am fully aware it is 9:30 in the morning - he rings on the dot usually. That morning, I am fully present to the reality that my life so far, has been a great pile of ****.

And that I loved every forgettable and oblivious moment of it - with all the mediocre passion I was able to produce with my body. My body that - when at seven years old - felt a clear decision being taken by it’s matching brain:

“Never again these questions - may my life be a comfortable obliteration of worth and a daily commitment to what is flat, to what is safe, to what is unremarkable. May people live happily ever after: underwhelmed. Amen.”

I get up to get the door for the postman, a promptly get my post of the day.

I open the door. The postman had gone already - weird - he usually waits.

There is one package at the door - one forgettable and unremarkable small package at the door.

I wake up - “What time is it?”

“Where am I?”

I look in front of me and finally open my blind eyes.

“The moleskin!” “Sh**!”

Part 4.

At this point I will finally tell you what happened to me - How has this anything to do with a tiny little black moleskin?

I will finally tell you everything, I will tell you everything. Everything - is already and always a funny word - because it talks about disclosure, cathartic revelation and consequently, change - a big change. So maybe, to tell you everything, is not the right thing. As I very well do know, that with that would have to come a revelatory change, and - as I clearly said already - change I do not want. So i will tell you something - some-of-the-thing.

When I went to open the door that day, I found a tiny unremarkable package.

Happy about the reliable lack of surprise in my daily post, I collect my packages from the doorstep - still a bit irritated by the postman’s early disappearance. I calmly step to the living room and sit down to open my new package, like everyday until now.

I open the envelop seal using my finger as paper knife, carelessly ripping the paper apart.

Something falls off the package: a small black book - something which looks to me like a black leather Moleskin. On top of the Moleskin, held within the book’s elastic band - sits a big roll of cash. A big roll of £20.000 to be precise.

At that point I dropped everything onto the floor and the next thing I know I black out.

Part 5.

I am trembling, just managing to sit back up onto the sofa. I must have fainted! - I think. I finally decide to investigate - and open the fist pages of this Moleskin - carefully placing the roll of cash next to me on the coffee table. I feel the pages with my fingers - trying to make sense of such a surprise, such a slip away from my daily controlled little life.

I find something, finely written on the fourth front page:

“Tell me what you are worth.”

I feel my body fainting again, but I don’t let go - I can’t go on like that, as I have got a story to tell you and not many words left.

I read again: “Tell me what you are worth.”

Written in small, fine, red handwritten letters.

I furiously search thought the little black book’s pages, trying to find any sign of the sender - or any information at all. Unknown sender, I conclude. No address, no nothing.

Then I stop - At page 43 I find:

“Money is possibility - Possibility is remarkability”

Feels like someone is catching up with me. Is it my school teacher?

Is she fu***** with me?

I panic.

I think about my life - my life of commitment to no commitment whatsoever.

My life that glides away, with the sole purpose of pursuing careful purposelessness.

I look at the little black leather book again, and at the bulk of cash next to me.

What would people do with this cash?

Here it is, smacked in my face, a possibility: a choice.

A chance.

In any way I decide to move forward from this, in any way I decide to proceed, I am stuck with the inevitability of creating a meaningful moment for myself, for my life.

Imagining of telling my friends about how me met after my life changed forever, that day I received a little black anonymous Moleskin and £20.000 via the post. That day the postman forgot to say hello before dropping my package.

The day when I bought a house in Malibu?

Finally pursued my ever desired art career?

Or maybe the day when I bought my brand new car?

Or maybe the day when I used that money as the first step to becoming the new president of the United States of America!?

Oh my - I was stuck.

I hated - hated whoever that day stuck me into meaningfulness - whoever that day sent responsibility through the post, responsibility of changing my life.

Think.

Think!

What to do?

You have been good at it so far!

Then, I know. There is only one thing to do. Only one thing to do.

I get up, carefully close the little leather life-changing Moleskin, slowly reach for the big bulk of remarkability cash.

I walk to the other end of my living room, in my little grey house, in my grey city.

And I throw the both of them in the fire!

Burn. Baby-burn.

Burn!

I watch it burn, happy like I have never been, grimacing at my teacher and at her stupid questions.

Winning, winning at life - winning because I have never lost! Once again I have never lost.

Then I take a little black pen and I write in the biggest characters I can fit:

I am worth nothing, and nothing is my everything.