A Hopeless Journal for A Helpless Man

Chapter 1: Disoriented

To whoever it may concern, my name is Emmett Nielsen. I don't know how I got here, where I am, or where I'm going. The fundamental question of life that I can't answer myself even if oriented. My existence was a question and now it's a doubt. This is not a suicide note or anything of the sort, but I fear in some terms, it might as well be. Now I just pray I'm not the only one who reads this. Let the one who picks this up send help.

Said the letter as I began to finish reading it under this palm tree. This letter. This useless letter that would never amount to anything more than just a piece of paper filled with ink. But of what use is a mechanic with tools if there is no car? The idea of writing an SOS letter was just a futile distraction of my impending doom and a way to transfer my feelings from what I believe is a sun stroked head on to what seems to be paper. All that being said, I'm lucky to have these two things, my pen and paper. This makes the quiet, scorching, and deserted tropical solitude one-sixteenth bearable. I seem to be doing better than most castaways I've heard of. A bold claim for someone who has been stranded for... an hour? Two? Days? I woke up not too long ago and I don't know how this happened. I'm having trouble enough figuring out what I was doing before this incident. I stood up from my lovely shade of green palm tree leaves, then headed into the dense vegetation to look for edibles. I don't know what's edible or not, so I just took a nice distracting and analyzing stroll through these opaque mirrors my mind has the stupidity of calling a jungle. Picturesque scenery wasn't all that I saw, there was also complete solitude, endless hopelessness, and some dehydration. Luckily I had found an answer to one of my 99 problems. Water. I know nothing of survival, but I knew fresh water when I saw it. The thought of getting any illnesses has been forgotten ever since I woke up. An illness would be considered luck by now in my opinion. Now thanks to the water I had four weeks of life. Minus two if the illnesses take on and minus another three on account of my rapidly deteriorating mental state. My life span was varied, my anguish would be varied with it, and later on, entirely consumed. These feelings, emotions, thoughts, rambles, and swears would all eventually compact into an enigma of suffering that I wouldn't be able to tolerate. Ironically, tolerate does not mean that I won't feel every second of the senseless agony until my body seizes to feel anything, except pain.

I'd rather perceive nothing for awhile. I grow weary. This isn't my comfort zone, I doubt it's anyone's. Yet I try to accustom. This isn't so different from where I used to live. The only difference seems to be the lack of concrete. Their similarities are obviously distinguishable, the ominous, anxious feel that goes along with the ravenous environment, and the feeling of entrapment. A jungle is a jungle, no matter the name. The other differential exception would be the sound. In my case I've experienced the two extremes: eardrum shattering cities and now deadly silent jungles. This isn't a comparison, it's mostly a way of convincing myself that this could be home for more time than I expect. My mind wasn't so easily tricked, neither was my body. No one puts themselves in these situations. They shouldn't have to, but unaccountable things seem to be the only certainties in this world. I remember a saying that would compliment this thought: "An optimist believes his future is uncertain, but a pessimist is always right." The optimist just wants everyone's prosperity and mental ease by believing that if he doesn't think of bad uncertainties they won't happen. Honorable, but foolish. The pessimist, however, can't be wrong if he prepares for the worst. The uncertainties are uncertain of themselves thanks to the latter. The optimist just causes more breathing time for himself, but, in turn, to the uncertainties as well. Probabilities... well that's a different story. Mine were high, apparently. I'm an optimist by nature. It's not my intention. No one wants anything bad to happen, not I at least. I'm not always right and I'm never prepared, so pessimist is out of the picture. I'm confused. Anyone would be if they thought too much, and I do quite a lot of that. No one pays much attention to this thought of uncertainties, pessimist, and optimists. I begin to think they're uncertainties themselves. Unpredictable, unexplainable, and spontaneous. Maybe this also keeps the uncertainties uncertain, as unpredictable as the very being who formulates a world of endless time lines, possibilities, chances, and so on.

That letter isn't even mine. My name is Aaron Groff. I can't help Emmet. I can't even help myself.

As I said earlier, I'd rather perceive nothing for awhile.