Butterflies

Before I was old enough to speak, I had already committed mass genocide.

Allow me to explain. 

 As my father recounts it, the day of my conception was the simplest he had ever known. The breeze flowed gently off of the bay, cooling the air in the park, rustling the leaves of trees overhead. My father had brought my mother for an egg-salad picnic, on top of a plush, grassy knoll overlooking a garden crowded with peonies. I wish the breeze hadn't blown so gently that day. I wish that my father hadn't purchased their egg salad from Simon's Deli, on Octavia Boulevard. I wish the romantic fragrance of the flowers had never reached my mother's nostrils. I wish that I was not conceived on that day, June 23rd, 1978. Allow me to explain. As my mother recounts it, the day of my birth was the calmest she had ever known. She made it to the hospital with ample time to spare. The sun shone bright in the sapphire sky, illuminating even the darkest corners of the city, creating a shining world in which to welcome a new life. I was born neither a day late, nor early, but exactly when I was meant to arrive. The event of my birth was seamless, and painless. I was a healthy 7 pounds and 3 ounces. I wish that my mother didn't anticipate my arrival. I wish that the sky remained grey and omnipotent, forcing me back into the womb. I wish I was born too unfit to survive, the type of baby that you see shoved into an incubator, where it's slow death, so soon after birth, can be enjoyed by all. I wish that I was not born on April 2nd, 1979. Allow me to explain. As my older brother recounts it, the day of the incident was one of the most relaxed he had ever known. In the morning, him and I played on the lawn in front of our sea foam panelled home on the hill. We passed a striped rubber ball back and forth, the loser being whomever dropped the ball first. Fog rested heavy all around us. The air hung with a weight I had never felt on me before. A bright orange Cadillac raced quickly down our street, splashing water from an antecedent rainfall over the curb and towards my brother and I. The murky grey torrent splashed across my body, soaking my clothes. I felt the air around me suddenly thicken, as if it meant to constrict me until I had offered it up all the air in my lungs. I realized only then what had happened. I had dropped the ball. I lost the game. But somehow I knew I had lost something else too. Dread seeped into every orifice of my body. I was forever changed by the guilt I felt for what I had done. I wish it hadn't rained the night before. I wish my brother had been to selfish to share his ball with me. I wish I had only held onto it tighter, and not surrendered it so easily. I wish I had never played that game on October 11th, 1981. Allow me to explain.

As the years continued by, I felt as though I held an extra weight that no other child had. I experienced a heightened sense of responsibility, which nobody but me could understand. In the third grade, my teacher told my parents I had no friends, and refused to participate in class activities. My peers thought I was too strange to be around. I didn't know how to defend myself, and the way I felt. After the incident, I knew I had done something incomprehensible, something catastrophic, something that will eternally shape the outcome of the universe around us. I ached to be punished for what I had done, and longed to understand the consequences of my actions. In seventh grade I discovered my crime. 8,400 people dead. My heart leaped against my chest when I made the connection, pulsing and pushing, rebelling against my putrid mind, appealing to escape my body. The earth which had sustained me my entire life, now an accessory to my misdeed. An earthquake. The small Nepalese village had no warning, only the ground surrounding the valley grumbling like an angry dragon. They had not even the time to clutch their loved ones close to them for the last time. In less than an instant they were all engulfed by the avalanche that tore down the mountain. Every life ended in that sad valley that day, and there I sat, in my comfortable classroom, using the disaster as an example for a math question. It was the morning of October 11th, 1981 when the earthquake occurred. It happened seemingly without prediction or cause, but I knew why it happened. I dropped the ball. It hit the grass beneath my feet exactly when the torrent of snow and rock engulfed the village. Great scientists from all corners of the planet didn't know this, but I did, I always knew. To see my sin played out before me as a series of images on a slide projector, only confirmed the mistake of my existence. Allow me to explain.

I often become itchy as I sit on the green and brown tweed couch in my psychiatrist's office, but I dare not scratch, for the fear it will be interpreted as a sign of my supposed illness. Doctor Papillion tells me that the way my brain works is not usual of an eighteen-year-old. I dare not remind him that I am still seventeen. He tells me I am depressed, and that my family worries. He tells me to swallow synthetic pills, to fix me. He tells me that losing a game of catch in America can't cause an avalanche in Japan. I dare not remind him that it was in Nepal. Papillion asks me to explain step-by-step the butterfly effect I have been ensnared in my entire life, but I can never meet this request. One does not understand, at any point in life, how their actions effect the cosmos that cradle us. A man does not comprehend how that, by buying a large coffee rather than a medium, he has inadvertently doomed an expedition to Mars 40 years in the future. A child does not understand that by playing with a dress up doll rather than a car, it has vastly created an alternate reality of fashion, which will remain prominent for millennia. Humans were not meant to know the indiscretions they have caused without knowing, it is too much for our limited brains to handle. However, on occasion, we will know. We will find out, perhaps by coincidence, but much more likely by fate, our own impact. Perhaps you see me as defective because I feel guilt for something no one person should. I am not the way I am because of something I understand. The chemicals in my mind flow freely, with no valves or chutes under my control. I haven't taken my own life yet, because I need to live, to honour the memories of those we lost, and to carry on the flicker of light, hope, and happiness they all once held. Compassion. Provide me with compassion, and let me know that you are aware I am doing my absolute best to live my life. Stop filling me with new drugs to make me stop feeling anything at all. I believe, no matter the sorrow I encounter, that it is better to feel everything. I'd rather experience life, good and bad, rather than float about aimlessly, like a forsaken jellyfish, feeling nothing at all. Life is connected to life, whether you choose to believe it or not. Perhaps we can save the world by treating even the smallest of our decisions as if they will have a catastrophic outcome. I say this, because they will. If the butterflies' wing beats create a tornado half a world away, think of what you are capable of.