On Boethiah

It’s 10:30 in the morning. You are ten years old, and you’ve decided that you can no longer endure the soul-crushing boredom that comes with having the same video games and the same toys and the same books and the same house. You decide to go stare at the fridge and pretend that you want to eat something, though you’ve memorized everything in that cold white box by heart. When you emerge from your room, you see that your baby sister is making a house of cards, and by now it’s going on four feet tall. You stare intently as she works, and you feel a burgeoning sense of… something. Envy? Pride? Love? Adoration?

As you pass by, you drop the weight of your whole body onto your left heel, which connects with the hardwood floor with a resounding BOOM. The plates in the cabinet over the sink rattle, and there’s a pathetic, fluttering sigh as the palace of kings and queens and knaves collapses. You watch with fascination as the labor of two and a half hours disintegrates in the span of as many seconds, and each scattering petal reflects in the tear-blur that’s starting to fill your sister’s eyes.

Don’t you just hate the sameness of it all? And maybe you’re an adult now, and you’re standing in front of the mirror, thinking about how much you despise what you’re turning into. Every day, you wake up, you go to work, you listen to people you despise bicker and bullshit about the same tired subjects. You drive home, staring at the same sea of red brake lights. You turn on the TV, and some petty trillionaire with aspirations of greatness is trying to take over the world. Again. You catch yourself thinking the same thoughts, and you have to bite back the urge to stab yourself in the stomach with the shitty plastic fork the cashier at Chipotle gave you.

Boethiah is there. Just long enough for you to realize they are, because to remain any longer would be agony. They are only around long enough to get you to do what you’ve wanted all along. The urge to pull the trigger, the urge to press the button, the urge to take that infant on the plane three rows behind you and spike it out the emergency exit, none of these last more than a second or two at best. Then it passes, and you feel even more disgusted with yourself.

The first time, anyway.