Paradise Lost.

Note: The text contains mentions to triggering topics such as domestic violence and suicide

One could say Samatha has worked in an office her entire adult life. Throughout the years she learned indispensable lessons to make her mornings easier. She had a small leather-looking case hooked to the zipper of her backpack where she would always put her access card at the end of her workday. Instead of searching for comfortable heels, she settled with the thought that they do not exist. Now, she had a pair of office shoes hid under the desk which she would put on once she got to work and take off during the last video call of the day.  She also had a full set of gym equipment with her every day. This setup was the initial reason that made her switch from the fancy-looking handbag to the practical backpack, that had one big compartment and was opening just like a suitcase. Samantha also had one of the best thermoses on the market. Even so, she would never drop it in her backpack. This could be because she knew better or simply because her trust issues were sliding through the cracks of the most unnecessary areas of life.

It comes, thus, with no surprise that, on that Thursday morning, Samatha was wearing sneakers, holding the thermos in her hand, and struggling to get the access card from the small case hooked to the backpack’s zipper. 

Even though looking at that image, it might have seemed all natural to Samantha, if someone were to take a few steps closer they would see something different. To do so, one should have paused time for everything around, then slowly walk in front of Samantha and grab her by the shoulders just enough for her to lift her eyes in surprise. At this moment, one could simply stare into her eyes deeply for the two seconds before she would probably shout with scare, surprise and confusion. In those seconds, it would be clear that Samantha was adapted to her living ways, but what would be even more clear is that Samantha would have naturally wanted to do something else. There, deep into her eyes, and visible only to a profound stare, Samantha’s love for drawing lies hidden.

When Samantha was about four years old, she drew two concrete buildings for her kindergarten art project. The buildings were seen from the sky, and one of them clearly showed that Samantha, at four years old, was aware of shadows. Her grandfather saw his granddaughter’s drawing and decided to take her to art classes every Tuesday and Thursday. He bought her professional pencils which she did not break, and gently pet her on the head every time she would come out of the class with a new sketch or drawing.

But soon after, Samantha realized her grandfather’s son is more than her dad. He was also her mother’s husband. Even though she never really shared, she would have preferred to realize the roles of her father under different circumstances. But since she could not change the moments of her realizations anymore, she had to live with them. This is why Samantha realized her father is her father when he picked her up in front of his friends and said ‘Samantha is my daughter and I would kill any man that even tried to lay a finger on her’, but also why Samantha realized her father is her mother’s husband when he said ‘Because I am your husband and you do as I say’ just before striking her with a hard slap that made her fall on the kitchen floor.

Of course, many years later Samantha realized that maybe she shouldn’t have stopped drawing just because she realized who her father was. Yet, at that time she did not want to do it anymore. It was not necessarily a conscious decision, however seeing her father as a husband was having a negative impact on her happiness levels. And even though her drawings made her happy, the happiness induced by them required a creative process which could be at times frustrating. In the end, she could not see the benefits of going through frustrations in her art, just to get to a short happiness boost that would soon be slandered by seeing her father in the husband role. Instead, she found alternatives that gave her hits of good feelings with almost no effort. First there was chocolate, then there were cigarettes and then for a while there were boys.

To be able to move away, Samantha started to work in a fast-food restaurant when she was sixteen. That is why, if one was to believe that Samantha became an adult the moment when she realized her father was also a husband, one could also say that Samantha did not work in an office her entire adult life. In fact, she worked in a fast-food restaurant and in a bar, all before she was eighteen and moved away.

Despite all this, Samantha thought her life ended up pretty good. She made the best out of her situation and was at least grateful that her parents helped her financially during her studies. Her dad was dead now and her mom was living twenty minutes away from her house together with one cat and a dog.

In some evenings, when she was not feeling alone, Samantha even thought she should be grateful that her father showed her what men could be.

That of course protected her from love, from having a partner, but more importantly that protected her from having a husband like the one her mother had.

But on that particular Thursday, no one shook Samantha, so no one discovered the deeply buried passion for drawing. Even more, Samantha herself was not aware of it.

On that particular Thursday morning, something else surprised Samantha. While she was trying to get the access card out, some possibly young, skinny and tall man struck her and left her with only the thermos cup in her hand. He stole her backpack from right in front of the office building. It was unbelievable! Samantha, shocked, lifted an eyebrow and looked for surveillance cameras at the corners of all the corporate buildings surrounding her. She also noticed there were very few other people around.

‘To steal in such a secure area at this time of the day when there is no crowd to cover you…that poor kid must have been desperate.’

She straightened herself up and called the doorbell of the company where she was working. The door opened and Samantha went to reception to ask for a new access card.

‘Do you need a temporary card just for today?’ asked the receptionist.

‘No, mine just got stolen so I need a completely new one,’ said Samantha.

The receptionist was surprised, asked a few follow-up questions, typed something on the computer, offered Samantha a pity candy and gave her a new card.

Samantha went to her desk, changed her shoes, and put her phone on the desk. This was the moment when she exhaled with relief. Her phone was in her jacket the entire time! Great! She did not have to change her number or any of her passwords. But her work laptop was gone.

Samantha was still as composed as one can be after they got robbed. She has been with the company for five years. Back when she joined, she only had 15 colleagues. It was a small start-up. Now the company was large and had complex processes in place therefore she knew that getting a new laptop may take more than a couple of hours. But everything should be resolved by Monday.

Calmly, she filled in the request form for a new computer just before she realized she was late for her first meeting of the day. It was not an important meeting, but she rolled her eyes. She knew that two of the stakeholders in that meeting are almost impossible to bring to common ground. One of them was always critical, but also very busy whenever he was supposed to do something. The other one made an entire sport out of keeping to his own ideas.

Nonetheless, Samantha went into the room, remembering how her manager hinted that her bonus depends on this project. She smiled and explained that her entire backpack was stolen and thus she cannot present anything but instead would like to have an open discussion about the next phase of their project.

The stakeholder who loves critique sighed and mentioned he has limited time at his disposal anyway, thus he would like to use it on valuable talks.  

Without her will Samantha’s mind wandered. That might have been because of the shock of having her goods stolen. Or because she simply adapted to her reality and did not have a natural interest for the corporate world. She kept on zoning out during the meeting. She let her stakeholders blabber in the background and only paid attention when one of the stakeholders mentioned her name in a question or when her body reminded her, she needed the job to pay the bills and to be able to afford that expensive gym and spa membership. She loved relaxing.

In the midst of the meeting, Samatha received the first email related to her order for a new laptop. The signs of what was to follow were slowly unveiling. Her order was approved by her manager yet the email she got said it was pending for payment. ‘Why would they await payment when the computer is paid by the company?’ she thought. ‘It probably is just an error in the system… I need to call the procurement department …’.

Ten minutes pass and swoosh! Another email notification comes to Samatha’s phone. Her salary payslip. She completely forgot tomorrow is the last day of the month. Samantha also learned during her years of work to always check the payslip. Not for anything, but even the company she works at made mistakes before.

Once she opened the payslip, she could not help but whispered aggressively: ‘What the fuck?!’ The payslip balance was negative. Not even zero… She owes the company?!

This kind of behavior was unexpected from Samantha. Filled with rage she did not even look back; she did not even excuse herself. She simply stood up and left searching frantically for her manager’s number. Lucky for him, he did not answer. The Payment Department, that was the natural next step.

To say that she was not expecting what came next would be an understatement. The rage she felt was due to her need to pay the rent, the bills and invest in a few stocks just like she always did. Her savings would of course cover these needs… At the same time, when it came to the money she so desperately links to independence, the natural, not yet adapted to the stern life of a corporate employee, Samantha was coming to light.  

Some lady Maria from the Payments department answered her phone call.

‘Hi Maria, I just received my payslip, and it does not look as usual. It seems like I owe the company money, but you see… I have worked for the company during the month, and not vice versa.’ Samantha said in a passive-aggressive mode.

After Maria asked more details to authenticate Samantha she nervously said: ‘Let me put you through with my Manager, Dave.’

When Dave picked up, Samantha said the same thing.

‘Hi Dave, I just received my payslip, and it does not look as usual. It seems like I owe the company money, but you see… I have worked for the company during the month, and not vice versa’

‘Oh, I see, Samantha… You were hired six years ago. If I am not mistaken, you were part of the first round of employees our then CEOs hired.’ Dave said.

‘Aha…’

‘Was any of your corporate goods stolen today?’

‘Aha… but how about my salary?’

‘I am getting there Samantha. Please know we value you, your work, and your expertise. You are one of few who have been with us from the beginning.’

‘Aha… I know. We switched ownership twice since I joined.’ Samantha stated.

‘Exactly. But you see Samantha, when you were hired the company was not doing as great as today. As you know, it was acquired soon after by ABD Group. Anyway, all employees hired then had a clause which says they are liable in the case that any of their company owned goods i.e. laptops or data are stolen.’ Dave said, slowly changing his tone of voice to a more serious one.

‘Aha… Are you sure? I don’t recall that…’ Samatha said with suspicion.

‘Unfortunately, I am.’

‘You are?? I was 23 when I signed that contract!! I don’t even recall this policy. Also… how is this still in place? We are not a start-up anymore.’ With every word Samantha’s voice got more and more lost in between, becoming shaky and aggressive.

‘We cannot do anything else. Your computer was stolen, and you had internal company data on it. The company estimates this to be expensive, yet we will only deduct 4k from your income. Next month you will almost get back to normal. We can provide great benefits in exchange. How about you work only four days a week for the next month?’

‘Excuse me?!!’ The entire thing was bullshit. Samantha knew that the offer of benefits and the stupid deal of working shorter weeks were all dust in her face. What was happening was definitely not legal, and completely out of the imagination of some out of touch with the reality start-up founder. She was shocked of course, that the company kept some of the rules the idiots who started the company put in place. They had an idea, so some could argue they were not complete idiots. On the other hand, Samantha clearly remembers that in just seven months they burned the investors’ money and were on the break of bankruptcy. They were beyond lucky to be bought-out.

Samantha found herself in one of those situations in life, that sounds crazy, feels crazy and requires a lot of effort to be fixed even though it should not have been a problem in the first place.  She was used to these situations; she was one of the unlucky bastards who maybe had a few too many happening to her. Luckily, with each new situation of this type, Samatha got better at solving them.

Today however, something flipped, Samatha was a bit too tired, or maybe she stayed a bit too long in her natural mindset. She shut the phone call, walked to her desk, sat down, watched her reflection on the black screen and decided she did not like what she sees. She did not want herself to be this corporate employee, dealing with stakeholders, dealing with deadlines, dealing with performance indicators for some baseless corporation with no other goal than maximizing shareholder value. And now what? She had to pay them?!

She could have lost her mind, but she did not. With the outmost calm, she inhaled, picked up the scissors standing in the pen holder at the corner of the desk and used full force to stick it in the screen. It was harder than expected to break that monitor.

With the same calm and composure, she picked up her phone, and walked towards the elevator. She left the building almost in the same fashion she always left the building. Two slight details made this situation different. She did not have her backpack and she was naturally content.

She headed to the street she lived on. There was a small art boutique on its corner. She entered and asked the shop assistant how much it would cost for her to have it closed for a day. It was easier than expected to negotiate: the shop assistant owned the art shop. The owner only agreed, however, on the condition that she would also be there since she wanted to make sure Samantha wouldn’t trash the place.

‘No problem.’ Said Samantha. ‘I’ll transfer the money right away’.

Finally, she was free. She took all the materials she needed to draw again. She gently touched each pencil she picked up and dropped a tear the moment the first one touched the canvas.

‘This is the paradise I lost! I should have done this all my life.’ She whispered to herself shortly after.

.            .            .            .            .            .            .            .            .            .  

That is when I met Samantha. She drew for 48 hours straight. I made her a few cups of tea. She drew buildings, flowers, and a lot of rain. She also paid me good money. In the end, I kept the shop closed for a week. Afterwards she continued to visit. She used all her money to invest in drawing tools. All she was doing was to draw. For months! I know she was thinking about going corporate again when the money ended. We became close… One day she said jokingly: ‘I could always try dying…Ha! who knows maybe the other side is all about living for free and drawing?!’