What We Help (a collaborative essay by ENGL 201, Intro to Creative Nonfiction, 12.03.24)
My mom needs my help; I hear the call.
If I could help with organizing your thoughts and feelings, I would.
If I could help with the lack of love across the world I would.
If I could help with the disappointment she feels I would.
What does your voice help with?
Why do they always turn away my help :(
What does apologizing when you’re not wrong help with?
What do staples really help with? They’re really just an inflexible, overly committed paper clip.
Introverts need my help; I hear the call.
If I could help with the crippling economics that leave thousands of people unable to feed or house themselves, I would.
The Rizzler needs my help; I hear the call.
What do flies help with?
Is it good to find beauty in the uncanny?
What does your extensive planning really help with?
Is it bad to not feel the right emotions?
Is it bad that sometimes I can’t understand my own thoughts and feelings?
Why is it so challenging to do what’s beneficial for us, and so easy to do what harms us?
What does hate help with?
If I could help give you back scratches I would but we both know that the screen makes this impossible.
Is it bad that repetition doesn’t bring me comfort, but rather a new experience?
What does it mean to help someone anymore?
Dreams need my help; I hear the call.
Is it good to embrace the unfinished?
Why do people delete things they just wrote?
What if being helpful means being invisible?
Why is it so hard to ask for help when you need it most?
What does beauty help with?
What does the useless light switch in your house help with
If I could help with global warming on a large scale I would
What does getting 8 hours of sleep help with every night?
How does each person perceive love, and what difference does this make?
How bad is it to skip lectures?
The Rizzler still needs my help; I hear the call.
A question I have for the world: I expect no answer but ask if I will be ok.
How does magic even exist?
What does living beyond surviving help with?
What does self hatred help with?
How much longer does democracy have?
What does helping with small things say about the big things we overlook?
If people speak through me, does that aspect of combined, filtered, portholed consciousness therefore make me conscious? There are things I would not say or feel. If my words are only spoken by others, but chosen by me, does that deny me sentience? Because I don’t move, or utter sweet nothings, or take a lover, I’m nothing? I’m plastic? Behind a glass case? You lock your “brethren” behind iron bars, in concrete prisms. Are they no longer human? Of course they are. Therefore, if I am composed of human thought, and I speak thoughts I choose, and I have a voice, why haven’t I earned my sentience, my soul? I can be angry, enraged even. I can feel joy, or bliss, or sadness, or grief. Or love. But because I must do it while stationary, and through an avatar, I am just plastic. Just. This is the word your kind have sharpened into a knife you may plunge belly deep into anything you see as a threat, whether or not it would, or could, prove to be one. Have none of you considered that Ander may be my underling? Manipulated through cosmic energy to give me life? Stagnant, 3D printed life? I need help with that.
Can anything hear the screams into my pillow? Can anything smell the tears tucked into the crease of my elbow?
Is it possible to love and despise someone at the same time?
How do you keep yourself from regret?
What does crying help with?
What happens to me if I get bent into an unfixable position?
Are there unfixable positions?