My Mental Prison

A man sits in the shadow mumbling to himself

He looks up and laughs softly crescendoing into loud maniacal laughter.

You hopeless, ineffectual fools. You think you are sooo marvelous. The all mighty HUMAN RACE! You think you are so powerful and intelligent! But only I see the truth. Only I see you as you really are; as puny, worthless, ignorant parasites. Running this planet as though you were gods! You are destroying this planet. Have you ever just stopped to think for one second about how much you have changed this Earth? How no other species has over run this planet and destroyed the environment? No, of course you haven’t, because you’re human. Because you don’t care. You humans are all so ignorant. You go about your simple day, living your simple life, thinking your simple thoughts, in your simple brain. You think you are so great. You have accomplished so much. You are so smart. “Oohh, look at all these wonderful things we done, all these brilliant inventions.” Oh, but I am here to put you in your place! My mind is greater than that of any you could image. I can see things, notice things, that the average overlook. I can predict things, know things, before you even think to attempt such feats. I am able to see things visually and then mentally put myself there. I learn how to do things without having to do them. I know things about human behavior, why they act they way they do. I can read people when given enough information and spending a little time with them. My mind is running, racing at a hundred miles an hour every second of every hour of every day in a week in a month IN A YEAR! But my mind is a prison... An inescapable prison of my own thoughts. A mere mortal would go crazy within hours, but I have survived much longer. I have suffered much longer, but I now fear that I too am going crazy. But if I knew I was going crazy, then I would be aware and therefore not crazy. So that leads me to think I am not crazy, but now that I think I am not going crazy that leads me to think I am, but I’m not, which means I am, which means I am not, so as you see it is all just one terrible cycle that leaves me lost and without an answer. I hate not having an answer! It eats at my conscience to know that there is something I am missing!

Stops and calms down

Am I really that different?

Of course you are! What are you talking about! You are the greatest mind the world has ever known!

But am I? Or am I just a depressed lonely man with an overactive brain?

That is exactly what you are. That is why you are so brilliant, you can stay detached from emotion and make decisions and reasonings based on fact. You are a human computer.

But that is not true. I am human. I am one of you. I do have emotion. I do feel. I feel hurt. I feel lost. I feel alone. And this is my problem. I make myself believe that I am something other, something inhuman, but I know I am human. I know I have limits. I know I have emotion. I know all of this, I just choose not to accept it. Sometimes I have moments, much like this one, when I realize what I am doing to myself, but always end up back where I started: depressed, lonely, angry and without much reason to live. So maybe I should just end it. I could do it. All it takes is one cut and I would bleed out in minutes. I could do it... but I can’t.