fiction
1 min
Dramatic Irony
Reed Wang
"What does it feel like?" asks the social worker to us, a roomful of fourteen-ish-year-olds. I admire her for being here, for choosing to stand in front of us while we whisper and mock her behind her back. She is here to give us information that may one day save our lives.
Her question had been rhetorical. She answers herself. "Some describe it as writing with the wrong hand. Or having a pebble stuck in your shoe. You wake up. And you know it feels wrong."
That afternoon I slip a pebble into my shoe before my walk back home. I try to do it when no one would see me, because it's a silly thing to do. It drives me mad. I want to stop and take off my shoe and shake it out. I force myself to carry it all the way home.
That evening I write all my homework with my left hand, the wrong hand. It takes three times as long and I am frustrated to tears. Dozens of times I drop the pencil with my clumsy fingers. I always go to retrieve it with my right. I make myself pick it up with the left, every time.
That night I lie in bed and think long and hard about my... me. I ask myself if it feels wrong. I compare what it feels like to exist to the feeling of that hard little stone grinding into my heel. To my right hand's disappointment every time it lunged for the tool it instinctively wielded so beautifully, only to be stopped.
And I come to the conclusion that it isn't like that at all. I can't pause myself, step off the path of my life, and dump the pebble of me to the side of the road. I am not fighting to stop the more polished, effortless version of me from swooping in from and taking over because there is no easier version of me. There is just me. I wake up. I am.
Satisfied, I close that chapter of thought. It's now time to work on falling asleep. Tomorrow, I'll have to wake up, and work on being myself. It's thankless work, but I have no choice. What would it feel like, to have a choice? I'd often wondered before. That morning, the social worker had answered that question for good. I don't have it. If I did, I would know.
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