The Precious Effect...

As a kid, my parents said I felt too much. "Sensitive," they called me. Kids at school had other names for it, but sensitive was the least offensive. I wanted to be stoic, cold and unfeeling so I practised, everyday I practised. Staring into the mirror for hours, I perfected my detached and unemotional face. I would not smile, I would not frown. I paid some older kid to rent for me Faces of Death 1 and 2 and watched them hundreds of times, desensitizing myself to all its horrors. I thought I felt nothing, I thought I was cured until the day Precious, the dog went missing. I saw him playing, noticed the gate was open but didn't care, Face of Death 3 had just been released and I needed to find a 9th Grader to rent it for me. A few hours later, the neighbor came frantically knocking at the door, crying that Precious ran away. I tried to get it out of my mind, focusing on the video, but it didn't work. Precious was now being decapitated, Precious was now being electrocuted and the autopsy was now being done on Precious. I felt so guilty. If I would have just shut that gate. Sensitive or not, I felt responsible for things, and eventually as my sickness grew, I felt responsible for everything. Doors, mine or not, must be shut and locked, someone could get in. Out-of-towners, even the French, to whom wrong directions were given must be found and set straight, they might end up someplace they shouldn't be. It's all up to me. All of it. Tommy said so.

This illness I have, this thing in my head can be destructive in so many ways. It sees what it wants to see, never mind the truth. I have scared people who have been nothing but kind to me, whose smiles have been misinterpreted as an invitation...to watch, to follow, to protect. She was so precious. Standing below her window each night, bloody and bruised from fights Tommy had no business getting me into, babbling incoherently, trying to explain how I was responsible for the safety of others. It was up to me. I see a fight, I have to stop it, to step in and if necessary, fight my way out. Paul-David may be a 145 pound geek but Tommy was crazy. Crazy Wins! From her window, dark, the curtains ever so slightly open, she heard the rants of a sleepless manic, saw his cuts and the hypocrisy of his words.