Have you ever played a game with your parents? It goes like this: you ask them, 'Why is the sky blue?' and they say, 'Because the oxygen is blue.' Then, if you were a day younger, it would have stopped at that, but that day you were playing the game, you felt like you should keep on going. You'd played it too many times. What was blue? What was oxygen? I asked, 'What's blue?' and they said, 'It's a color.' So I asked, 'What's a color?' and they said, 'It's like blue, yellow, or pink.' So I asked, 'What's blue?'
At this point my dad told me that I was wasting his time and that he needed to go to work, and I was left confused because he never told me what blue was.
Things made a lot of sense when I was seven. Then, I turned eight. I was in a hotel once, with my mom. The room was dark, and I could see nothing. I did not mind it. I didn't notice anything in the dark.
I bumped into a drawer. I opened it, and within it lay a book which I could not see because it was too dark, but I felt. My mom came in. Awkwardly, she turned on the lights and I could see, and all the shadows disappeared and the room I was in felt unfamiliar and strange. I had never seen the chairs or beds around me before, unshrouded by darkness.
'You ought to go to sleep.' She said. She saw me peering over the book which I could now read the front cover of. It read, Holy Bible.
I asked her what it was about. She said, 'It's a book about religion, like a story about right and wrong.'
I questioned, 'Is it real?'
She looked at me assertively. 'Everyone has a different opinion. We should respect all of them. That's all there is to it.'
When I got back, I was in a math class. Before, we learned about diversity and how we should respect all cultures. The class was asked what three times seven equaled. I raised my hand, and the teacher called on me. I knew the answer!
I said, 'Twenty-five!' But she told me I was wrong. What? How could I be wrong? How could anyone be wrong, if everyone has a different opinion and we should respect all of them? I asked how I could be wrong, if we had to respect all cultures and beliefs. I was told to sit down.
What? Did not anyone see I was right? Everywhere, while they played and ate together, they talked about rules. What was the source of their rules? What made their rules more right than any other rules? How did they know their rules existed? How did they know that their lunchboxes and their lunches, and their friends and family--were nothing but illusions?
All this coursed through my mind and frightened me! I shouted to them and they laughed at me and told me I was quite funny. Funny! How did they not understand?
Did they not feel what I felt? I was scared, but they were smiling and playing. I was fearful of my own existence! But there they were, happy!
I saw a spider in the shadow. I lept in fear! I shouted for them to leave, but there they were, happy and playing, thinking me only strange while the spider danced, and they noticed it not, for they looked away and could not see within the shadow. The black spider was right next to them! I saw it. How could they be so blind as to not see the black spider? They called me crazy. I was not crazy!
I was not crazy! I am not crazy! How could they not understand me? They were still laughing! Were they real? Were they not real, and was I insane for imagining them? Were they real, and was I insane for doubting them? I talked to everyone! They did not understand me. I asked my mother what to make of the day, 'Mom, the teacher asked the class what seven times three was, and I said twenty-five.'
'What! How did you solve a math problem wrong?'
'No! You said that everyone has different opinions and we should respect all of them, right?'
But she did not understand that, and listened to that not at all! No one believed me--but I was right! I had to be right. Yet the whole world mocked me when I did what the world had asked me to! Did I follow the world wrongly? All the friends with their smiling faces seemed ignorant and unreal and malicious, and the kindred face of the mother became snarling and angry at me. I was despairing and crumbling and already was I spilling apart, but they felt not an inch of my pain!
Was I imagining all of it? It could not be. It could not be, and I knew I had to be right. I ran away to my room and locked the door. Were the lights on? They seemed so bright, and my soul was aching and burning! Slowly, I assembled my toys and my cardboard boxes and formed within my room a castle and a shrine. The outside became smaller, the room seemed larger, and my heart felt lighter.
I had a shrine, and it understood me! It understood me, and how I felt. For the next several months I took care of my shrine. I prayed to it every day. It knew I was right and I believed in it; so it believed in me. Everyone else was a fool, and I was the only right one!
What were they doing, blabbing about democracy? If democracy was so good, why was not every country a democracy? So I laughed at them, and they looked at me downwards with sorrowful eyes for me, and I looked at them and laughed at their sadness.
Was I imagining it? I could not be. Once, I was foolish! I was like the rest, too happy and carefree to see anything. But now, I saw everything, and the demons crept at night and drank blood from the bones, and wiggled their fingers around their foreheads. I saw everything now.
One day, when I was praying to my cardboard shrine, my mom came in. She said, 'Your sister needs new toys, and you're too old for them. So I'm taking them away.'
I yelped and screamed, 'No! What are you doing? Don't you see what they mean? Don't you see what they mean to me? Don't take them away!'
But she did not understand that, and looked at me normally as if to wonder why I was acting in such a way. She took them, put them in a bag, and left. And to me, my shrine was gone, and my god was gone, and the shield of darkness had broken and the harsh light came pouring in, and I was alone! There was a crater, which was once my shrine and my toys and my only shield believer, and there was a hole, robbed of my courage and my zeal, in a deadened, cold Earth.
Was I insane, for seeing something in nothing, or was she insane, for seeing nothing in something? I do not know, but my heart became cold for many years.
