There is a Tool in everyone's mind. You should have it, and you don't.
At least, that's what people tell you. There is a thing in their head, needing no conscious direction-- a Tool. It shapes almost everything they do. They assume that it shapes everything you do, too, and maybe it does, but only in your reaction to its absence.
You should have it, and you don't.
Growing up, you're told to remember your Tool. "Use your Tool!" a common refrain when speaking to children. First you assume you're bad at using it, but when you can't feel it, when the world stops making sense to you, you realize. When you ask what the Tool is, people shrug off the question, or explain in contradictory, circular ways. It's a handsaw, or a hammer, or a toothbrush. It's delicate, or robust. You must always use it, especially when talking to people, or doing your chores, or engaging your mind in anything the adults find important. It shapes everything. You have no idea what anyone is talking about, when they describe it.
You should have it, and you don't.
When people notice it-- that gap in your facade, that slight strangeness to your demeanor-- they become confused, or angry. They say you are a bad person, or else bad at being a person. Unless you are lucky, you will live in one of those labels for a long time. (Perhaps both.)
Everywhere you look, you will see the importance of the Tool. The ways that not having it separate you so thoroughly and irreparably from People (not just other people, but from the idea of being a person-- because people have Tools, after all). The Tool-less are villains, or fools, or more dead than alive, really. Bad people, or bad at being people.
You should have it, and you don't.
Maybe you will fake it. You say, "yes, my Tool, just like a toothbrush," and you look at what actions are Tool-like, and do those. You swallow your doubts, paper over the gaping hole where that Tool would be. And if you get strange looks-- if you are struck, sometimes, with the overwhelming fear that everyone sees right through you-- at least you can pretend you are like them. You are not a monster, the way the Tool-less are. You are not cast out entirely.
But you should have it, and you don't.
