Insane or Inspired? Book 2: Prologue
By: Jay Campbell
Tags: Books, Ego, Fiction, Suicide, Literature

Hello. I’m Lucy. You were probably expecting my sister, Melanie, but, well, she persuaded me to start writing. And so here I am. What do you want to talk about? Oh, right, that’s my job. I talk and you listen. Sounds straightforward enough. I’ll have this writing thing down in no time.

Okay then, let’s talk about belly buttons. Is yours an innie or an outie? Mine’s an outie. Do you want to see it? Oh, that’s right, you can’t. Darn. That’s not a word I’d normally use, by the way, but Melanie told me to watch my language. So, this is me watching my language. I suspect there’ll be a fair few more ‘darns’ before this book is done. Did I say book? I meant essay! I guess I could have edited that, but, like I said, I’m new to this writing lark. I’ll get the hang of it though, sooner or later. Don’t you worry.

So, yes, Melanie advised me to pretend that I’m writing an essay, because I told her that I found the prospect of writing a book a little too daunting. “Just start it as an essay,” she said, “and don’t stop.” Well, you know what she’s like. Writing is in my blood, she reminded me. And apparently I needed to make sure that my blood is in my writing. Whatever that means. Better in my writing than in my stool, I suppose. Is that gross? I can be gross sometimes, I should warn you. I don’t mean to be. I just don’t seem to have as much of a filter as regular people, especially now. Now that I’m ‘liberated’, I mean. But more on that later.

For now, let’s get back to the subject of belly buttons. Or did you think that I’d forgotten? Like I said, mine’s an outie, which may explain why I grew up pretending that it was an actual button. Or, more specifically, a suicide button. I liked to imagine that I had a quick and easy way out, if life became too unbearable. And, let’s be honest, if people really did have a suicide button, in their navel, wouldn’t almost everyone have pressed it by now? I can tell you that I certainly did, on many occasions. I meant it, too. The difficulty of commiting suicide, for real, only seemed to add to the cruelty of life.

Clearly, there is something very wrong with the world, and with us, if the only reason why most people are still alive is because they lack the ability to self-terminate. Or, at least, they lack a method of self-termination that’s as quick and easy as a suicide belly button. Perhaps it’s just as well though, that committing suicide is a really rather difficult undertaking. I certainly wouldn’t be here, were it not. And, probably, neither would you.

There are different forms of suicide, however. And one of these forms has nothing to do with the death of the body, but rather of the ego. It’s the ego, after all, that suffers, and that wants to end its suffering. Why? Because the ego is an artificial construct, neither capable of love, nor of being loved. It’s the identity that has grown out of this world, as surely as a thornbush. And only in its absence can the divine human love affair begin again, without pain, without fear, and without the need for patriarchal control systems. This is what I had experienced, at Haven. And this ‘absence of ego’ represented the dividing line, between the proverbial sheep and goats. As such, people were gradually finding their way to Haven, from all over the world. I myself, however, had somewhere else that I needed to be.