I like to think my soul was born with its eyes wide open. Not closed, still dreaming of happy realities and true love, but open. So open that fantasy was better than reality. I guess that's what writers are then. Theyâre the souls thrown into existence with their eyes open. We see our world, and we distort is so that someone else will like it better. We take our pain, our lives, channel them into another life, a book or a poem or a phrase, and give it away in the hopes that some reality can permeate their delicate eyelids that we were born without. Hoping that somehow we can tell them, âYes hello there, life hurts.â And sometimes we disguise these attempts as fantasy or horror or dystopian universes, but its still the same thing: a knife we're hoping they'll take and open their eyes with. But we so often hand them a butter knife, and they take our reality, spread it across their blindfolded eyes, smile, and live out their blissful idiotic existence. But every once in a while, we give them a steak knife, a cleaver, perhaps an axe. And yes sometimes its too much, too heavy, and they cut their soul into pieces, cleaving themselves apart, instead of just sliding the sharp edge along the soft membrane that separates them from realities harsh blows. Sometimes we, us writers, shatter lives, and sometimes we open eyes. Is there a difference though? Ignorance is bliss. Reality is painful. But we both go about our existences trying to close eyes or slit eyelids. We hand each other sleeping masks, used for dreaming happy thoughts, and scissors, used to cut them off. But whether we put on the mask, or we cut the strings, no one wins. Someone smiles, someone cries, but every last one of us will die, chained to the fountain of time, a slave to optimism or a prisoner of reality.Â
