Sophia Artichoke was a girl of about twenty-five. She was most certainly a woman of her time, and displayed it in every conceivable way. Both her first and last names had meaning beyond her appellation. Her first name, unbeknownst to her, was an ancient word for “knowledge.” In fact, during distant times there was a great city bearing the same name. In the time of Sophia Artichoke, it was a fairly common name, though it did bear a slightly aristocratic ring that was enough to set her apart in certain circles. Her last name, Artichoke, was significant, because it also belonged to a type of vegetable that most children did not enjoy eating. Most parents asserted it was very nutritious. Upon birth, she had also been granted the pleasure of a middle name, but that name has little to no bearing on this story.
Sophia Artichoke was a happy girl. She had life, love, liberty, an expanding education, and employment. She had herself a cushy job in a wallpaper factory, where she had met her boyfriend, and intended, Melenkoly Jones, who despite having a rather dashing name, was rather unremarkable to speak of. He was also twenty-five-years-old, and unlike Sophia, he was not attending college, and had lucked into a lucrative position in the wallpaper factory. Late at night, he and Sophia would tell each other starry fantasies about the day they would run the wallpaper factory together. Melenkoly Jones had little or no ambition beyond the wallpaper factory, and though he would agree with Sophia that he needed to do better in life, he had no real intention. She loved him anyway. For a long time, she even managed to believe it was the only thing necessary.
As with most beliefs, the day came when its foundations would shatter, and a greater truth could be exposed. Oddly enough, it was this very same wallpaper factory that caused her to see this truth.
You see, the wallpaper factory had a tendency to hire all manner of reject and lowlife, as this usually was the only type of person that would want to work in a wallpaper factory. True, there was the occasional college student, like Sophia Artichoke, who were just looking for a means to pay their tuition, but for the most part, it was made up of undereducated, over-employed clock-watchers taking valuable time from their sinful lives to collect a pittance for survival. They were backstabbing, sodomizing, adulterous, lying, lazy, slothful, and generally unhappy creatures whose only joy seemed to come from bringing each other misery. Friday nights after work, they enjoyed gathering at the local dive bar to drink cheap kerosene and tell vicious (and generally untrue) stories about whatever co-worker had decided to flee to the bathroom. Each person carried the belief that no one said anything bad about them, and they proudly left the group, only to have the whispers start almost instantly.
It was one of those Friday nights that Sophia Artichoke received an epiphany that changed her life forever, and ultimately cost her long life of happiness with Melenkoly Jones. They were at their customary table, discussing their co-worker, Nikolai Tesla, who had no connection to the famous (or infamous, if you read certain stories) scientist of the same name. While he was outside smoking, Henny Penny, Nikolai Tesla’s supervisor, was in the middle of a fictitious, but unanimously believed, story about witnessing Nikolai Tesla consorting with the Devil himself, when a light flashed before the eyes of Sophia Artichoke. At first, she thought it was the same blinding light that Paul of Tarsus had seen, but he wasn’t nearly as lucky. However, the knowledge it brought made her instantly get up and walk out the door into the night.
Melenkoly Jones followed, only to find his beloved sitting on the curb, crying her eyes out, staring up at Venus above her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, confused.
“I can’t be there any more,” Sophia Artichoke responded. “I can’t spend any more time with those people. We need to go home right now.”
“Why?” Melenkoly Jones asked, still confused.
“Last week... Last week, Henny Penny told the same story about you when you were in the bathroom.”
“No way!” he said, shocked and offended. “They don’t talk about me. I’m the one they all like. Nikolai, he does worship the Devil. You know it as well as I do.”
“They all believed it when she said it about you,” Sophia said, shaking her head. “They believed it, and now she’s telling the same story, and they have forgotten about you.”
“That can’t be real.”
“It is,” Sophia Artichoke protested. “I can’t be around those people any more. We need to get away from here. We can’t talk to them anymore, we can’t work with them, we need to get away.”
“I don’t understand, what’s gotten into you? These are our friends, these are our co-workers. Are you saying we need to just stop talking to them? We can’t do that. We will see them every day, and they will still want to be friends.”
“I quit. I quit right now, and you need to as well,” Sophia pleaded. “What is that job going to do for us? What are those people going to do for us. I’ll finish school soon, and you can get back in, and we can go somewhere, make something more for us.”
“But I like the wallpaper factory. I don’t want to leave there, I’m upwardly mobile, I can go anywhere in the company.” Melenkoly Jones looked at her with such terror in his eyes, that it was nearly enough to make her cry. “How can you say this?”
Sophia Artichoke shook her head. “I’m not fulfilled there anymore. The halls are empty, the friendships are empty and fake. I need something better. We need something better.”
“Like what?”
Sophia thought for a moment. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I really don’t know. All I know is that I can’t go back to that place ever again. I can’t see any of those people ever again. I don’t know what I’ll do, but it will be better than ever seeing that factory again.”
And so, it was said and done. Sophia Artichoke never returned to the wallpaper factory. Never called them, never spoke with her old friends again, save for Melenkoly Jones, who continued to slave away, week by week, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, to infinity. Sophia Artichoke searched for work, but would only accept a job that brought her some kind of meaning in her soul, which is no easy task. She would not relent though. She had made a vow to herself, and she knew above all else, that was a vow that needed to be kept at any cost.
This search was detrimental to her love with Melenkoly Jones. He watched her search, watched her suffer, and wanted nothing more to comfort her and bring her security. She tried to explain to him that this very comfort and security, no matter how much she wanted it, she knew it would kill her to accept it, if not physically, then at the very least, she would feel her soul whither and die. Melenkoly Jones didn’t understand how the pain she endured was the salvation she was seeking. His job at the wallpaper factory did bring him joy, did bring him comfort, did bring him security, and he saw no reason whatsoever, despite the begging of Sophia Artichoke, to leave his beloved place.
Which brought about the final realization of Sophia Artichoke, her illumination, if you will. She deeply loved Melenkoly Jones, and she knew that he loved her as well, but things had changed. So many things had changed, and in the words of the prophet, Stevie Nicks, love just wasn’t enough.
“I’m going to leave you,” she told him one day.
“Why?” he asked, fighting back tears, because he already knew it was real, and there would be no opportunity to undo this act.
“Because you are happy,” she answered plainly. “Because you have what you want. Because your dreams are in your hands. Because it has already come to you.”
“Aren’t you happy with me?” he asked.
“Very happy with you,” she answered. “Very happy. Very comfortable. Very secure. I could sit in this stasis for the rest of my life if you asked me to. I have to leave you, because I know if I stay with you, I will never need to look for anything ever again.” With that, she turned on her heels and walked out the door.
Sophia Artichoke lived a very fruitful life, besting obstacle after obstacle, enduring success after success. By the end of her long life, her name was a house-hold word, and any person could list at least a dozen of her accomplishments off the top of their head, and find more than a hundred more easily. She was considered to be one of the greatest women of her time, and many young girls looked up to her. She died quietly in her modest home, and her funeral was attended by thousands. Her tombstone contained only the words “THIS WOMAN WAS NEVER SECURE OR COMFORTABLE.”
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