"Are not the sane and the insane equal at night as the sane lie a dreaming?" ~Charles Dickens

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Blackholes: a region of space-time where gravity is so intense that even light cannot escape, commonly formed when a star collapses in on itself.

While most blackholes are found in outer space, there are some that can be found on our very own earth. You need not look far and wide, for hidden beneath most cloaks of skin and flesh and bone are blackholes not bigger than the size of one’s fist. Born from the death of the stars that twinkle in a child’s eyes, these dark chasms of nothingness pull and tug and tear at one’s insides until there is nothing left to ravage.

I should know, because there is one inside me too.

It pulls at my lungs until I am suffocating, until all my breaths come out in short irregular bursts of air, only seconds away from turning into sobs. The back of my eyes sting and I press my trembling hands to them in an attempt to push back tears. The fear of bursting into tears in public, of everyone finding out how weak and pathetic I have become, looms over my head like a ghost, willing me to walk faster, faster towards the classroom I know is empty, where I can let all my sorrow flow out of me without someone calling me crazy.

Or insane.

Or mad.

Demented even.

There is no escape from these words. No matter how hard I clamp my hands over my ears, they will never stop echoing inside my head. Every glance in my direction is a reminder, a reminder that I can never rise above these words, that no matter how hard I try, the jury has announced its verdict and now I have to serve my sentence.

Whether I like it or not.

But that doesn't stop me from seeking reprieve. Today my reprieve comes in the form of the rusty handle on my classroom door. My pulse hammers in my throat as I reach for it. Wrap my hands around it. I pull it down, but my hands slip and the handle jolts back into position.

Taking a deep breath, I wipe my hands carefully on my skirt before trying again. This time the handle turns and the door opens. I rush inside and close the door behind me before sinking to my knees as the overwhelming emptiness takes hold.

A harsh sob pushes its way out of my throat, ricocheting off of the walls so loudly that my first instinct is to clamp my mouth shut. I claw desperately at the ache inside my chest in an attempt to get to the centre of me, to pull open my skin and fish out that blackhole and throw it as far from me as possible.

I just want this pain to end.

I just want them to know what this feels like. 

Just once, I want them to feel the helplessness I feel, want them to feel what it is like to hate yourself.

I want them to know what it is like to doubt your own sanity.

You are crazy.

Get away from me, you stupid psycho.

You’re useless.

Don’t listen to her, she’s mental.

For so long, these words have been my kryptonite. In the start, they were just whispers, a faint buzzing that followed me wherever I went, but too soon, the voices gained momentum to the point that they echo in my head every night I lie down to sleep.

What do they know about crazy?

Nothing. 

And now it's time to teach them.

Wiping the tears from my eyes, I pull myself up. The classroom is shrouded in shadows, the sunlight streaming in from one of the back windows the only source of illumination. Rows of desks lay asleep in orderly harmony, awaiting their rightful owners to come back and bring them to life.

My vision hones in on the cluster of desks in the middle of the room. After six months of being trapped with the same thirty people in the same classroom, you eventually learn everyone’s seating arrangement.

Now let’s begin.

Step one: Be random. The more unpredictable you are the better, because then they can’t deduce your motivations or emotions and that scares them.

Keeping that in mind, I make my way to the desks. Littered with pens and pink pencil boxes, they do not betray in any way the darkness in their owner’s hearts. One by one, I empty the contents inside them onto the floor. Pens, notebooks, hair ties fall onto the floor with soft thuds, the noise like the soft patter of rain. 

But it’s not enough.

Deciding I want more, I turn one of the desks on top of the other, then proceed to smear ink onto each of the desks to form a random assortment of letters.

Now for the next step.

Step two: Plaster an odd looking, preferably child-like expression on your face. Crossed eyes,exaggerated pout, any of these work.

I am looking at the mess before me with a crooked smile painted on my face when it hits me.

This chaos, this mayhem. All of this is just like him.

Just like my dead brother.

The thought that I have reduced him to the embodiment of these two stupid steps makes me want to punch myself in disgust. I can imagine the look on his face if he ever sees this part of me.

The part of me that had started to believe that insanity equals tantrums and destruction.

That insanity equals danger.  

Because it doesn’t. And I should never have forgotten that. 

Because insanity is not danger or tantrums or chaos or destruction. Insanity is its own language, one that I had tried to decipher my whole life.

I didn’t realize that once he would leave, the image of him I had translated for myself would be blurred out by all the countless voices rising against him. That my few happy memories with him would be clouded over by all the countless sad ones.

I didn’t know a lot of what went inside his head, and now, I don’t think it matters.

Because now I know for a fact that I would give my right arm to have him back. It doesn’t matter that all the world sees of him is a maniac that was beat to death because he just couldn’t be normal. And it doesn’t matter that everyone sees me as a ticking time bomb, that everyone is just waiting for me to snap.

Because at the end of the day, they will never know you the way I do. 

They will never know the boy who camped outside my crib while I was asleep, for fear that I would be taken away from him in the middle of the night.

They will never know the boy who would get agitated if someone touched him, but allowed me to hold his hand every once in a while.

And I will never again let them take that boy away from me.

But just as I make up my mind to clean up this mess, the lights turn on. With ink staining my clothes, I have been caught red handed at the scene of the crime.

“Anne, you are coming with me to the principal’s office, right now.”