Selfish

Selfish

Trust me, it will sound ridiculous however I put this, but as I sit
here surrounded by emptiness, I'm casting my mind back, realising that
all of this, every detail of the story I'm about to tell you, began
with a broken bit of birthday cake, chocolate sponge birthday cake,
which fell onto the kitchen floor one afternoon in May.

I was baking a cake for my brother's birthday, and as I lifted it
slowly out of the oven, a small crumble tumbled off and onto the floor.
I picked it up and put it into my mouth. Mmm, it was tasty enough. I
looked at the cake. It gleamed. I knocked the edge with my thumb
forcing another bit to fall off onto the kitchen work surface, and
quickly, as if there might have been someone behind me to catch me
doing it, I jammed it into my mouth. It was delicious. I took another
clump from the other side, didn't bother to let it fall off casually
this time, just ripped it off and bit into it. The cake was uneven now,
it needed straightening out. I swiveled it round and carefully trimmed
it down but another chunk collapsed and I had to eat it.

It was a surprise birthday cake, I remember thinking. My brother would
never know if it failed to appear on his birthday. Who was to say it
had ever existed? Before rationalising this any further, my hands acted
independently and ripped the entire cake in two. Warm sticky crumbs
attached themselves to fingers... which I licked. It was a pleasant and
mouthwatering afternoon, by the end of which I felt truly sick.

About a week later a friend of mine left her new corduroy jacket round
at my place by mistake. I tried it on impulsively when she'd gone and
posed for a good five minutes in front of the mirror. An inch too long
at the sleeves I thought, so I folded them in to have a better look.
With my head cocked to one side I caught my own eye in the mirror, as
if I'd just seen someone else and wished I hadn't. I turned away
embarrassed, shy of my own reflection, feeling the gaze of another. I
ran for my sewing box.

We chatted on the phone that evening and my friend mentioned that
she'd lost her jacket. "D'you know where?" I asked her without
hesitation. "When did you have it last?" My eyes drifted hurriedly over
the corduroy bulge draped across a dining room chair, and I glanced
around searchingly as if trying to look for it. I was a natural, I was
brilliant. She had loads of jackets anyway, I think that's what I told
myself. She wouldn't even remember it after a day or two.

It was at this point that things really began to change. I started
stealing from market stalls, picking up little items, clenching them in
sweaty fists and smiling at the market sellers. When I got home and
looked through the things I'd stolen, I laughed and arranged them
neatly in piles. Everything I did, I did for myself. Everything I
thought, I thought for myself.

I was still seeing my friends, and occasionally my family, and so I
acted and spoke in a way I thought they would recognise and remember,
although even with that I became sloppy. I'd always take the warmest
and comfiest chair, (the armchair next to the gas fire), or the nicest
slice of toast, (one was always less burnt than others). They were the
tiniest of matters, but I couldn't break my habits. If my memory serves
me, I doubt I've ever been any other way. As a child I was exactly the
same, grabbing the brightest balloon, the biggest handful of sweets.
But all children are self-centred, that's what people say, it's in
their nature. It doesn't occur to them to put others first, they
satisfy their own immediate needs. I was now doing likewise, in every
area of my life, and was finding it to be good strategy.

One morning as I was getting onto a bus in the centre of town to come
home, I squeezed past a couple of chatting women and their shopping
bags. "Excuse me," said one in an angry and assertive tone, "but we
were here first. There's a queue." I ignored her and shuffled further
forwards, but she shouted and came up behind me, her bags bouncing into
the back of my legs. "Excuse me," she tapped my shoulder, "there's a
queue."

"I heard you the first time," I said quietly, and taking an opportune
moment I hopped up onto the bus just before a dithering old gentleman
who was getting out his bus pass.

"Selfish bitch!" shouted the bag, and the remaining passengers
suddenly hushed and turned to look at her. So I was selfish, I thought
as the bus trundled down the high street. Not something I didn't
already know, so why did it bother me that she'd told me so? I kept my
head down for the rest of the journey but smiled smugly to myself. On
that bus I made a decision to be selfish and to live by my selfishness.
From that point on, I would not hide behind even a slightly caring or
helpful facade. It would not affect me that others knew what I was,
because I myself had already acknowledged it. Life would be easy from
now on, I need not think of others and I need not pretend to think of
others. My choices would be my own, based on my ideas, my situations
and my desires.

After a month or two I saw less and less of my friends and less still
of my family. I never called them and so they never called me. I got on
without them, without the hassles they brought, without their problems
to solve. My head was clear and concentrating fully. I was flying high.
I enjoyed dining out, eating well and drinking lots and had finally
come to realise that it no longer mattered what I said or who I said it
to. Anything could happen in a day because the impression I made was of
no consequence to me. Don't misunderstand me, I didn't go out of my way
to be rude. I didn't intend to be a bad person. I simply didn't have
room or space in my being to occupy the concerns of other people, other
things. Some people do, I thought to myself on many occasions. Some
people can. They give to charity and they help to make the world
better. They try to understand each other and do good for each other.
But I thought about this, I really did, and the more I thought about
unselfishness, the more selfishness I found. Everything they did they
did for a reason, just like me, and their roots lay with satisfying
themselves, making themselves feel better... about themselves. In the
end I concluded that I was the only honest person alive, because I
didn't deny my selfishness. I basked in it and treasured it.

I was soon outcast in the town where I lived, shops would not serve
me, people swore and hissed at me in the streets, I could not get what
I wanted, there would be no more plain sailing. After almost a year of
living by my new philosophy, it was now beginning to bear down on me,
and I must admit, I panicked, not knowing where to turn or what to do.
At first I held my head up high, I didn't care remember? But under the
strain of isolation and self-doubt I started to convince myself I was
out of my mind, crazy, not behaving like normal people and that this
must be bad. I needed to revise my thinking. But even this I felt I was
incapable of doing alone.

I booked myself an appointment with my local Doctor, a man or a
machine, so robotic I felt numbed and afraid. I had not felt so
vulnerable for as long as I could remember, and my voice came out mouse
like and high-pitched. "I'm selfish," I told him, "completely selfish.
I need to know what to do." I explained my theories and my actions, the
story I'm basically telling you now, but without the confidence. He
listened, I'll give him credit for that, and at the end of it all he
gave me one simple piece of advice. "Go home," he said flatly. "Clear
your house of everything you have acquired through your selfishness.
Empty your thoughts of your selfishness and begin again." He wrote this
down on a piece of paper in scraggly handwriting as though writing a
prescription, and handed it to me without making eye contact. I took it
and left the surgery.

My house is now empty. The rooms are bare. I have followed the first
part of the Doctor's advice and am about to follow the second. But
before I do so, I feel it was important to record in this writing why I
will soon be as I will be. I hope you will not take pity on me, or even
sympathise with me when you read over these pages, because if you do,
it will make me selfish for having written them.