Thoughts behind the silence

When life started, everything was just a shock of light, a burst of existence; and then silence. So then chemical reactions continued to live and die, right? Leaving behind some trace of their life for the next trial of forgotten bursts of light…all this so one day I could sit here and think this, write this? So someday, fifty or a million years from now, someone is going to have a trace of my burst of light in their mind or spirit or gray matter and my purpose would have been for their existence? But I’m not bacteria…or am I? Well to the universe I am more insignificant than that. But what do I care? So many pointless questions, yet no pointless answers or bits of wisdom to accompany them. 1

Thinking raises the question of whether I am sick or simply nauseated by the fact that I have nothing better to do than sit here, like a lifeless corpse. Not like I function much more differently from one in the first place. Maybe one day they will mistake me for a dead person and throw me in a fire…or maybe they’ll build a little plastic sanctuary and let me rot in the ground; just like Aunt Lora. Wouldn’t it be nice to give her some well deserved company? After all, there was nothing I was better at than being quiet in her presence. Nothing would change now, except she wouldn’t look at me disappointingly because her eyes would fill with mud and worms. And I’m guessing she wouldn’t like that. But maybe this time I can help her…maybe I could save her. Uh? Save her from what? Why would I think something so pointless…nothing can save her now she’s dead. Her righteous life will lead her right to heaven, right? Sure. 2

But I think at the moment my Biology teacher is looking at me in the most bizarre fashion. I wonder if she’s happy. Or maybe she’s convincing herself slowly that life and happiness just don’t love each other very much (like her and her husband). Yeah, looks like Mr. and Mrs. Rogers had a little mishap this morning. Nothing short of the useless, unchanging details that pester me in this existence. I wonder if she suspects that I have no idea what she just said in the past ten minutes…I don’t want to be a biologist anyway and I don’t really care about the ‘bag of knowledge’ that will somehow help me blunder through my life. We’re all blind anyway. Does she think she can see clearer than the rest of us?3

Stupid bitch. Yeah, I thought it. 4

If I said it out loud, to your face, Mrs. Rogers, you would look at me as if to say “ I might be a stupid, useless bitch, but this even more pathetic school system gives my stupid little brain the last word, no matter how witty you think you are.” Oh, but Mrs. Rogers, you forget that I do not think I am witty at all. I do not think I am funny or particularly intelligent and there is nothing that makes me unique and lets me stand out from inside the flow of lifeless human beings. I will give you that, Mrs. Rogers. I hate myself much more than I hate you, and maybe one day I will be able to eliminate both in complete tranquility. Maybe one day ‘God’ will kill all the stupid mistakes he committed, because they are doing nothing for the good of this planet. 5

Look at Mrs. Rogers, for example. She’s middle aged, always wears the same thing, has been teaching biology in this little town since she was 26. She’s married to the history teacher, a balding man who fancies himself to have quite a sense of humor. There couldn’t be anyone more boring, more ordinary. Yet, she’s here, and she’ll probably be here for another 20 years at least. And then what? She’ll retire and play with her fat, drooling gran kids. Oh how smart you are, how beautiful, how perfect! Oh yes, children seem that way, because they haven’t adjusted to the system quite yet, they are still teetering just on the edge of unconsciousness and complete oblivion. What’s the last chapter, Mrs. Rogers? Do you know? Oh I think you do, just like the rest of us cockroaches. 6

You know that one day your eyes will close and this time not to sleep or sigh or sneeze, but to die. Your mind is probably familiar with the usual ‘heaven’ drone, and because the subject bothers you, you will continue to ignore it until your last breath of air, when you realize where the hell you’re headed and start coughing and grasping for another oxygen atom, just to say something, anything, to let you be remembered. Because, you’re scared, aren’t you! Oh I can see the fear of those precious last moments. 7

Who will remember you, Mrs. Rogers? Your husband is old and frail; death is just about to cut his head off as well. Your children have their lives. They’ll make you a cold, stone memorial and come once a year to visit with their fat drooling kids who would rather stay home and play video games than come see your rotting corpse. Give it 50 years, and your memory will only be a faded one in the back of some stupid person’s mind, running in their own problems, their own concerns. Give it 100 years and you’re gone. You are no more, physically and mentally, you do not exist. Is that scary for you, Mrs. Rogers? Do you wish you could have been slightly more intelligent, more ambitious and strived for something that would have made you somebody? Somebody who will have a note, however small and insignificant on an official paper, somewhere. A somebody whose opinion matters. A somebody whose smiling face will be remembered as a hero, or even as a monster. Isn’t it better than being a complete nothingness? All your thoughts and actions never mattered; they got trampled in the race for immortality. And what can you do now? 8

“Emily! Hello? Are you with us?” Mrs. Rogers had evidently noticed the mocking smile with which I was silently torturing an older, dead Biology teacher.9

The fact that she had disturbed the free associations of my thoughts gave me a particular disturbing anger.10

“Why must you always wander off! Doesn’t anything I EVER say interest you in any way?” She shook her head, something she enjoyed doing. Does it make you feel secure, Mrs. Rogers?11

“I keep sending you to the office but it is as if everything I do bounces off of your mind like rubber! Don’t you have your future in mind?” She paused, expectantly looking my way.12

“Answer me!”13

I remained, as always, mute.14

“You think you’re better than all of us? You think I enjoy wasting my time talking to a wall? If I stand here and try to teach you something every day it is not to be completely ignored!” She was fuming, I could tell. The sound of her voice nauseated me more than her fastidious cheap perfume. I broke the pencil’s tip off, silently. I had to release my anger somehow. But I wasn’t even mad at anything. I was just so annoyed by the endless flow of stupidity. I had to control myself from taking the nearest sharp object and decapitating that useless speck of dust. 15

Mrs. Rogers looked at me, clearly wishing above anything for her most quiet student to just say something.16

“I am so sick of this behavior! That’s it, off to the office for the millionth time. Something will have to change in you sooner or later. In the mean time I will not have you practically dozing off in my class!”17

I nearly twitched, but got up never the less. The rest of the class was looking at me knowingly. Some of them were completely indifferent to me or anyone else; probably wondering why they’re so fucking ugly. I almost smiled at this, but I figured the situation wasn’t favorable for comedy.18

The halls were silently empty. My shoes were the only small noises that engulfed the building, except the distant words of the lecturers in the classrooms. The principal knew me quite well; we had seen each other many times. I had asked myself what her intestines looked like many more times. This time was no different. Mrs. Ester was sitting comfortably in her swiveling chair, observing the quiet scenery just outside of her window. At the sight of my face her expression was one of resigned consciousness. Nothing short of the ordinary, her little head was probably thinking.19

“So…what was it this time, Emily?”20

I didn’t move, or looked at her. I didn’t like her face features. They disturbed me.21

Besides, I knew the principal didn’t care about anything outside of her little existence and wouldn’t ever have bothered getting angry for the lack of response or eye contact.22

She half smiled, and picked up her coffee cup. She then placed it back on the table, at a different angle.23

“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say a word. Your teachers say you do fine in written exercises. So why don’t you say anything? Are you shy?” 24

This time I looked at her face. There were two options: either the presence of some form of mentality intrigued her, or she was just trying to fix a degenerative student so she wouldn’t be bothered in her stream of thoughts. Or maybe she was a failed psychiatrist who hated her job and would any second go back to curing Schizophrenics. In that case she probably thinks I have some kind of mental problems she needs to permanently adjust. Or what? There’s probably another million motives. But I don’t really care.25

“Emily, I’ll be frank. I don’t think you’re a bad kid, and there’s no reason why you should act like this. If you don’t like talking to people, try a little harder just to say the minimum. If you have problems talking, see a counselor. It’ll be helpful, really. But please don’t ignore your classes. I don’t know what goes on in your thoughts, but I know it’s not going to make you pass high school.” I tilted my head to one side. But my lips remained silently sealed. 26

“Look Emily, just go home. I’ll call your mom and you can go. I want you to think about what I said, and tomorrow come to school with a different attitude. Punishing you doesn’t change things anyway.”27

She sighed, took out a pen and wrote a note on a yellow slip of paper. She handed me the note and told me to go to the nurse. Her handwriting was a bit slanted, neat, clean. I would judge her an orthodox woman, but I had never studied calligraphy interpretation. The nurse called my mom. Normally the student would have done so, but I hadn’t spoken in four years. Nobody knew why.28

My mother’s car smelled like a combination of pine freshener and tobacco. It was mostly neat, except some newspapers in the back seat. My mom reminded me of the car. She was mostly alright, except for some troubles in the back of her mind. She drove silently, pushing her way mnemonically through the half-empty streets. The radio, a permanent staple on her driving was turned so low that only a slur of words could be deciphered. She didn’t listen. She didn’t care. Maybe it just sort of gave her a reassuring backdrop of normality. 29

I looked at her. Her eyes were small, light brown. They crinkled at the ends (from being tired or happy?). Her hair was a dark shade of auburn, and her features were plain but balanced. There was nothing extremely special about her. I wonder if she thought the same things Mrs. Rogers thought? I wonder if death would carry her off soon or not. It didn’t really matter. 30

She caught me staring her way and returned the look. I almost twitched, and turned away. I could almost feel the disappointment in the crinkles of her light brown eyes. She turned her head back to the road. Maybe in that particular instant she wished I would perish under her wheels. Maybe not. I wasn’t going to ask her.31

My house had nothing special about it. 32

My room had nothing special about it. I bit my lip every time I thought about the fact that I was as ordinary as any fourteen year old in the world. And then I would shake my head and resist the urge to scream. Or to kill. Magdalene was on my bed, just looking ahead of her small body pointlessly. I got on the bed and started stroking her slowly. Her fur was soft, warm. Her body gave small palpitations under my reassuring hand. If there was anything I could say I cared for was my cat. Because she wasn’t stupid. She was nothing. She had no option because her intellectual functions were limited. So it wasn’t her fault she was a subspecies. And I was glad Magdalene couldn’t talk. Maybe if she did she would have showed to the world that she indeed wasn’t special in any way. And then I would get the urge to kill her, like the rest of the cockroaches. I looked at my ceiling. Empty.33

There was nothing to see there, yet I looked for something. Or was I just mirroring myself on the coldness of that white wall. I touched my hair. It was a very light blonde. As a child everyone commented on how adorable I was. I had always disliked people, but I coped. When I was four I remember that my Grandma died. I looked at her body for a long time. My mom told me to go away, between a sob and another, but I liked the shape of her eyes, the finality of her pallid face. I just wanted to touch her cold skin. 34

Mirrored in my four year old eyes her features were almost happy in their relaxed state. But eventually my mom grabbed me gruffly by an arm and forced me out of the room. I tried to sneak back in the whole day before she was buried. I could hear my mom crying quietly on the other side, I didn’t really know why. My dad didn’t smile; he held my hand a lot. I didn’t like physical contact. But I liked the rough surface of his hands, the way he held me tightly. I didn’t like my mom’s hugs. 35

The funeral wasn’t of any interest to me anymore. Grandma’s body was covered by a ‘black box’ as I described it, as if someone was somehow ashamed of seeing her unmoving. They lowered her into a hole, and I remember a really tall man saying something in a droning tone. My mother was silent, her eyes downcast, as if she was examining the ground. Everyone wore lots of black. I didn’t like the color. I had screamed when in the morning my mom had tried to dress me with that horrible velvet black dress and shoes. I don’t even have any living memories of my grandmother. All I remember is her dead face. And that’s what I liked about her.36

Magdalene slowly started purring. I smiled. I looked towards my window. Small wind chimes hung just on the other side of the clear glass, and they were slowly tinkling in the flow of wind. The sound they produced soothed my thoughts, they almost sang to me, quietly, innocently. They sang something completely different every time the wind picked up, like a poet and his constant stream of words. Consciously never stopping, even in darker times. 37

I got up and walked to the window. I slowly unlocked it and gazed outside. My room was on the second floor of our home and I had a view of the green park and trees bordering us, as well as the scattered residences of our neighbors. Living right outside of a small town had been a convenience and a malediction. It was quiet, and I could listen to the tiny sounds of insignificant objects, but it also meant everyone knew everything about everyone else. The town’s people were very empathetic towards my mother, assuming I was a ‘disturbed’ child who needed saving. 38

I personally didn’t really trouble myself with their insignificant opinions. I had the sky to look at, and my thoughts to amuse me. And really all I cared about was the unmoving, the dead and the silent. Because everything else had wasted their gifts. Everyone I knew lived forgetting they were alive, or blaming my deficits on personal faults. Either way, their complete destruction would be no suffering matter to anyone. 39

Because no one cared about the housewife living just down the road who made excellent apricot jam. I almost felt like laughing at her. They could cover her body with her ridiculous marmalade when something ripped out her heart and left her bewilderedly rotting. What a show. I wondered if it would be sunny or gray the day my neighbor would die. Maybe I would bring wind chimes to her funeral if it was windy. Maybe someone would remember that I was capable of thought. Or maybe they would just think I was back when I was five; back when I didn’t understand. Or maybe I understood more than they did. I cannot clearly distinguish the memories anymore. 40

Silence. A word, so many meanings. Silence equals death and eternal life. Silence is peace or anger. To me it was just something I had befriended, something I had tricked into being with me always. Silence was my slave, not the other way around. 41

I took silence wherever I pleased and made it do my wildest dreams. Because silence doesn’t care about you. Silence won’t tell your mother if you killed a bird, or if you look curiously at your cat’s genitals. Silence just looks, remembers, but never says a word. Silence knows more about me than my mother or I ever did.42

“Emily…your therapist is here.” My mother reminded me that I was still bound to the material world. I sighed and sat comfortably on the bed. There was a faint knock on the door. I wished the barrier would never open and I could float away into another consciousness. But the therapist came in anyway. Her name was Elaine. Poor woman. Just as clueless as the flock of scattered bird shit in the world. She had a bit of a plump face, wavy black hair and a nice smile. She always wore a little necklace with a jade on it. 43

“Hi, Emily.” She tried to smile a little, then looked around almost nervously for a chair. Because I categorically refused to talk, sometimes we would play games, write or draw pictures. I never made anything clear to her. Sometimes she thought I was simply being stubborn and drawing nonsense. The fact was I was picturing metaphors. But I couldn’t tell her that.44

“Well…today I thought we would do something called free association. It’s actually something I find really fun to do myself.” She handed me a couple sheets of paper. 45

“Now every time I say a word, I want you to write the first thing that comes to your mind. If nothing comes to mind right away, please don’t write or draw anything at all, it’s part of the game.” She moved her eyes around the room. People always did that when they were thinking of something. It was like their mind was trying to find patterns within the objects their sight fell upon.46

“All right. The first word is dad.” She suddenly glued her eyes on me, almost trying to perceive what was going on behind me eyes. The first thing that came to mind was the moon, so that is what I wrote down. 47

“Moon. Hm that’s interesting. Too bad you won’t tell me why you associate your dad with the moon.”48

I neither cared nor wanted to tell her, but this is what she was trying to convince me to do. I remained passively staring at my piece of paper. The game continued endlessly. She seemed to be steadily increasing the flow of words, but I had no problem getting ‘stuck’. 49

Every word had an association, which logically often had nothing to do with the word. She was kind of upset when she said the word ‘therapist’ and I drew a snake with a dagger on his head. But I saw nothing wrong with the picture. The snake wasn’t dead, and I didn’t even see the therapist as one. I was just picturing whatever randomly popped up in my conscious mind. She fretted a little and started biting her nails…talk about unprofessional. I laughed, perceptibly. She stopped immediately. She had never so much as perceived a whisper trespass my lips. 50

“You laughed?” She looked relieved, but at the same time slightly alarmed.51

“Why?”52

I sat silent for a moment, then drew the therapist running in circles about the room with woodpeckers on her head. It was my way of saying that something was clearly bothering her constantly and biting her nails was a way to feel secure; but she took it literally. She shook her head and frowned, almost disappointed with herself.53

“You don’t like me?”54

I didn’t say anything, nor drew anything. I simply didn’t care. I don’t think I’ve ever considered people enough to care whether I liked them or not, I just despised stupidity. The people themselves didn’t really matter in my vision of things. I drew a flat line. My way of saying there was no clear answer and it certainly wasn’t a ‘yes or no’. 55

The therapist looked at the paper and furrowed her brow. I needed a literature teacher that could recognize symbols and patterns, not a self-doubting therapist. 56

I looked at her closely. I almost smiled because I figured she had received counseling as a girl herself. So, simply curious, I took a different approach. I drew her as a child, in a room, crying. I drew scars on her face and bruises on her legs and neck. When I showed her the picture titled ‘child therapist’ she winced slightly. She looked at the floor for a long time. 57

I wondered whether she knew I was there anymore, or whether her realm and memories had come back laughing at her mistakes. I was observing her now, curious, for once, at a human being. The therapist seemed to be trying to forget something, in order to proceed with the counseling she was being paid for. Instead, she suddenly looked up at me, a strange calm expression on her features.58

“How…why did you draw this?” 59

I didn’t move. But this time I felt enough courage to look at her in the eyes. I felt she was a weak, lonely creature, and looking at her wouldn’t disturb me like most people. Vulnerability made someone loose part of their boastful stupidity, and I liked that. The woman’s eyes seem to grow slightly perceiving the fact that I was actually looking right at her. She turned her eyes away quickly, almost as if my look had burned her retina. I turned my eyes to the paper once more. 60

“I can tell you a story. It’s not a very pleasant one. I’m not even supposed to disclose this sort of information with patients, but since you guessed right…” So she talked to me about herself for once. I listened just because no one had ever told me anything about themselves. In a way it interested me, because it was something new. 61

From her story it resulted that her grandpa had always beat her as a small girl because she didn’t work hard enough on the farm. She was an orphan and had to be taken in by her grandparents, which obviously found it hard to materially support her. Of course, I thought…typical trauma of rejection. I started playing with my white-blonde locks. The therapist talked slow and then faster at certain points, sometimes stuttered but never halted. Maybe I should be a therapist. I probably understand more about body language than Elaine. She looked like a pathetic bag of scum; she had turned back to the rejected little child she had always been. 62

When she finished her story, she shook her head absentmindedly and then tried to smile slightly.63

“Well, that’s that…we are here to forget about the past and move on, right?”64

“Why don’t you tell me something about your childhood that you wish to forget or that you regret?”65

I started thinking. There was nothing really that I wished to change or forget about. I had lived my life very passively, intuitively, not really interacting with the people around me. Clearly I didn’t really care about what they thought about me, because to me they were absolutely insignificant. Well, maybe…66

I suddenly picked up my pencil. I drew a little girl, and she was killing a bird with a stick. This memory went back to when I was six years old. I had been at the park, sitting on the grass, just patting it with my small hand, when another little girl had sat down next to me. Her hair was the same shade of white-blonde as mine, but longer and straighter. Her eyes were gray and big. She had small chapped lips. I looked curiously at her, but she seemed to be thinking too intensely to bother with me. 67

Suddenly she looked me straight in the eyes. She smiled at the edge of her mouth, half-happily half-something else, and took my hand. She led me to a quiet part of the park; far away from where my mother was seated, reading a book. She giggled and started running ahead. I had to try my hardest just to keep catching a glimpse of her long hair. Then she stopped. There was a small blue bird just walking around the grass. I was intrigued by its beautiful feathers and the way his head bobbed slightly back and forth as he walked. The girl crouched down next to it. 68

It didn’t fly away or ruffle its feathers, instead stopping to look at her. His small pitch black eyes were intently looking up at her pale face. The bird was so pretty…and then the girl picked up a nearby stick and forcefully passed it through the bird’s frail body. Dark blood started tinting the sky blue feathers. The little thing didn’t even have time to react. I opened my mouth, awestruck. I was mad at the little girl. A surge of rage came over my thoughts. I wanted to kill that pale child just like she had ended the bird’s aimless walking. But in a way I was also curious about the dead bird, just like I had been curious about my dead grandmother. 69

We stayed very still for a moment; the erratic chirps of nearby birds and insects were the only thing that disrupted the knowing silence. And then the girl had slowly risen. She had turned mechanically to look at me. I was at loss for words. Nothing in my six year old brain had prepared a response for such an instance. The girl giggled and crinkled her beautiful gray eyes. Then she ran away, faster than before, while I stayed rigid and immobile, watching her disappear. I never saw the girl again. 70

After she had left and I was again immersed in the quiet, I picked up the little bird curiously. I sort of looked at it for a while, everything dead still intrigued me. I looked to see what was inside the wound, at its inner organs. I took all of them out to examine how they worked. Then I dug a hole with my plastic shovel and buried the creature’s hollow body surrounded by all its organs. I talked to it the whole time…sometimes asking questions. The thing I regretted the most was not stopping the little girl…the bird was so gorgeous; I would have liked to observe it more. Or maybe I regretted not killing it myself? It didn’t really matter anymore. All I knew something about that incident gave me a strong sense of longing and regret.71

The therapist looked at the picture for a while, trying to understand. 72

“Is this you killing the bird?”73

I shook my head.74

“So this is another girl…do you know who she is?”75

I again shook my head. I wished I could see her again…if anything to ask her why.76

The therapist reached into her purse and took out a box of pink bubblegum. She handed me a piece. I didn’t know what the significance of this gesture was, but I took a piece nonetheless. I liked the rhythmical motion involved in chewing gum. It gave me a pleasant feeling. We remained curtained in silence for a while.77

“Why do you regret this?”78

I looked inside of my head for an answer, but the blank space told me that I did not have one. I just regretted it. So that’s what I wrote down; I just do. 79

“Oh…” She paused for a second, debating to herself.80

“Just as a curiosity, will you tell me your favorite color?”81

My favorite color? I liked many shades of colors. But I liked lavender better than all, I think. Lavender had this majestic but relaxing look, it was soothing but intriguing at the same time. I associated a lot of pleasant sensations with that shade of purple. I wrote Lavender down, because there was no way to represent it graphically without having that particular colored pencil, which I did not. 82

“You know that’s a very nice color. Mine is blue. You know that our favorite colors say things about who we are?” 83

This logic seemed slightly flawed to me. Sure, maybe the colors had something to do with the personality of the person picking it, but it couldn’t describe the person. I’m sure there were millions of people whose favorite color was blue, but they probably did different things every day, picked different jobs and thought about different things. But maybe they were all peaceful people. I didn’t really know what lavender meant.84

“Lavender represents spirituality. So usually someone who picks this color likes getting in touch with or thinking about God. They are also very peaceful people that perceive the world differently. Does this describe you a little bit?”85

Well, not really. I guess I thought about God sometimes, but he was not my priority. I thought more about my own mind than God’s. And I wasn’t exactly peaceful in the connotation of the word…I got angry easily and my fury was blinding, but I never actually did anything. I didn’t hit or kill people, simply for the fact that I contained myself. But I wouldn’t have minded eliminating quite a few individuals. 86

Perceiving the world differently? I didn’t know how other people perceived the world, because I didn’t talk to them. And everyone perceives the world slightly differently; even stupid people. But in that case it wouldn’t matter because the differences would be so small they would all just be mistaken for one another in the flow of blatant stupidity. So I didn’t really agree with the interpretation.87

I shook my head.88

The woman bit her lips. Maybe to her this last shaking of the head had signaled another potential failure. But then again I was probably one of her most difficult patients, because I didn’t talk or made things clear for her. 89

Suddenly, I just wanted her to leave. Sometimes, when I was doing completely normal, everyday tasks, I would just wish ardently for a feeling of security, which to me signified being alone. But in this case I just wanted her to walk out the door. Her presence, not because she was Elaine, the therapist, but because she was a vulnerable human being disturbed me. But then again, I was bothered by many things. Most people and objects gave me an overwhelming wish to destroy or simply a rising feeling of distortion in my stomach. I didn’t like the way people smiled, the way they walked or tossed their hair. I didn’t like the way they always spoke in the same fashion, pausing between words and always using the ‘uh’, ‘like’ fillers.90

I had the urge to bang their pathetic heads on the wall and watch them writher in pain, just so they could finally see something real. Maybe that was the cure to human stupidity. Torture really brought us out: our instincts, our pure, subconscious sides. Because pure pain doesn’t have time for polite coatings or social distortion. Pain is the most ultimate form of humanity: no rules, no limits. But people would rather wallow in nothingness than feel pain. Waking from a sleeping reality is harsh and difficult; sometimes it’s not the best choice. 91

“Emily…what are you thinking about?” 92

I jerked back to the room, with all its rules and common human actions. I bunched up my legs and held them with my arms. I placed my head on top of my knees to calmly look at the therapist. I didn’t want to write or draw anything, my arms felt tired and limp. So, instead, I mouthed the word pain. The woman looked quizzically at me, trying to understand this new form of communication, and then nodded.93

“Pain…why such a disturbing subject?” 94

I wondered if she had said disturbing because she herself associated the word pain with being disturbed or because that would have been a commonly accepted answer. I couldn’t really explain to her what I was thinking without going into a long winded essay, which I had no intention or inclination of doing. I was tired. I looked down, and then lifted myself off the bed. I crouched down, and pushed myself under the bed. I sat there, enclosed in semi-darkness, rays of light forgetting the existence of that small, reserved place. 95

“Emily, why are you under there?” 96

The therapist sounded a little curious, a little concerned. She got down on her knees with a couple of grunts, in order to face me. Her eyes were desperately searching for an answer; maybe she thought I was afraid or alarmed. The truth was, I liked the smell that reigned under the bed, I liked the dust that made me cough. I liked the sound of myself coughing, it made me almost jolt with pleasure. The dust bothered my body, and in a way that was my favorite part of the torture. The sun would soon dip into the forever-stretching horizon, and the therapist would finally leave. 97

I shut my eyes, letting my senses go. Between a slight cough and another I would feel the puzzled but resigned presence of the therapist. And then, footsteps followed by the slow closing of a door. A door shutting myself in my favorite but feared realm, a door rejecting the troubled therapist and her worries of dysfunction. What is best? To lie unconscious while birds sing, flowers live and die, or to suffer throughout the turning of all these events? Isn’t this the big question every human being asks themselves…isn’t this what we all look for? Some people have hastily answered, favored the unconsciousness and forgot what life was like. 98

Most people are scared, the dilemma laughing at them from different, dangerous heights. What is true and what is false? Am I as real as this dust that slowly suffocates me, or am I just another image in someone else’s mind? I told myself to stop. I didn’t like thinking about all these puzzles. I hated as much as loved the ability to think. I disliked my disgusting ways of being and my madness as much as I disliked people’s passive living. I shook my head, my eyes still closed. I just wanted to sleep for a while. 99

Maybe if my mind welcomed itself to the dance of sleep, my thoughts would rearrange themselves and fit perfectly with one another. Maybe I would wake up holding the key to life, to that door that always shuts behind us…maybe one day I would be master not only of silence, but of screams. 100

The room slowly dimmed around me, as I drifted in a sense of semi-consciousness. At a certain point I curled up into a ball and let my mind be carried off to the other realm. I woke up to my mom’s urgent pleas.101

“Will you get out from under there?” 102

Her voice sounded cracked, whispering but rising, trying to hold back intense pain and regret. I didn’t move. The room was dark and the bedside clock said it was 10:26 PM. I could see my mom’s thin legs from under the bed, immobile as her tired voice rang through the room.103

“Emily…” 104

She tried a softer but more direct approach. Was she trying to compose herself or feel indifferent?105

I rubbed my tired eyes and wearily got up from under the bed. I looked at my mother’s indistinct features in the dark. From this lighting she could have been anyone…just another face in the passing of dawn, unimportant, a shadow. And she really was. 106

“I made you supper if you want…”107

As a response I laid down on the bed, unwilling to accept food. I was tired, slightly irritated and certainly not in the mood to switch on the fluorescent light and try to accomplish a basic human function. 108

“Alright then…good night.” 109

She walked slowly to the door, opened it so light briefly shone to penetrate the darkness and then closed it creaking behind her. I put my head down gratefully on the cold pillow, urging my thoughts to part again and rest until the morning. I liked sleep. It was where the world was centered around me, and everything that happened in my fantasy realms wasn’t seen by anyone else. 110

My brain rested, my tired body rejuvenated…sleep was the medicine to any affliction of the soul. And then the alarm would sound…loudly disrupting my fresh current of musings. If I had the strength I would bang that clock on the wall until it would lay mute for the rest of my life. But after all…it wasn’t the alarm clock’s fault if it was deigned to annoy and irritate people. 111

Maybe some people were designed for certain actions, and others to perform and display other skills. Just like machines, we were only good for certain tasks. Well I felt like the majority of human beings were the annoying loud objects…like alarm clocks or police sirens. Yes, most people were just that. Without them, the world would be immersed in a contemplative silence; thinkers could think in peace and lovers could love in curtained secret. But the world had to be a vulgar, noisy place…how I despised all of these noise makers. 112

So this is who I am. My days seem apparently normal on the outside, leading on endlessly awfully close to one another, but my thought process changes and matures with the passing of each second. I don’t find myself in tune with people; actually I would kill quite a few humans if that was lawfully permitted. I’m not a mean person; actually I find beauty in most things and animals. People know as much about me as if I was living in Japan and I am easily irritable. I dislike my ways incredibly and sometimes wished I would have just been born a floating consciousness…so I could float and liberate my senses above the clouds and leave reality behind in a blur. In that case I could observe but not be seen; constantly judging but not being asserted…living as a dead presence among humanity. 113

Don’t all dreamers wish that?114