BOOKS. Oh, how I love my books. I read and read and read. People ask me, “What causes you to read so much?” I never knew the answer until now. I read my books of stories and knowledge. I learn from them. I learn more from them than I do from school. I finally understand why I read so much. I read to hide the world. For when I read I am sent to another place and time. A place where dragons rule the skies or a place where a young couple in a small town find each other and journey into many adventures. In these places I hide, I hide from horrible lands where wars with bombs and holocausts exist; A land where the bad guy seems to always win. I read to block out defects in myself, defects like being a sissy, goodie-two-shoes, the nerd. All of the defects I have along with the world. There are too many to list.

SCHOOL. Horrible, wonderful school. A place to meet bullies or friends. A place to be hurt and to socialize, learn. Where difference is bad. So bad you can be shunned and claimed an outcast. Called names of “emo, gay, retard.” They say words of hatred, and find every little defect that exists within you, and make it grow into something horrible. They treat you worse than the dirt beneath their feet with the cliques they form and the small social groups. Rumors spread like wildfire on an African grassland with exaggerations each time it is told. But then, at school you can learn. You learn to read and write, or the “Three R’s.” Learn what things are made of what and the earth and the moon. You learn new things. Things like past defects of the world in order to stop future mistakes that happen anyways. Defects like how humans are slowly killing themselves and the Earth they live on with everything else. But how can this life cause death. Such a simple question; yet so hard to answer.

LOVE. Love is such a brilliant thing. Yet wonderful things lead to destruction. Love causes hatred and jealousy. Lust and envy gather and wars begin to wage. Love brings death and sadness with its presence. Love has confused me and many others, rising into the world and learning of its troubles and defects. It hurts and pleases. Hiding from love, until death, in my books. Should I avoid it? As the story goes, it will always find you…

DEATH. The shadow fuels our society into a mass of fear and the cowering fact that we, as a race and individually, are imperfect. We, as a race and individually, contain defects that run our lives. In the human perspective, all things must end and begin, as we ourselves exert this process. We are born as helpless, sinless, and pure babies and die helpless, sinful and old. Hopefully old, that is. Death is a constant threat to all of our lives as it can happen at any point of time or space. Any given moment can result in the loss of many lives or just a single life. A life that has touched many other lives and has left an original impression on the very fragments of their souls. So the question arises: “What happens after death?” The undeniable fact, that no one really knows, adds to our own fear of this curiosity. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the defects of human kind. We as a society have lived with this fear of death, but have forgotten it over our lives. When the time arises, however, and time has been found to take effect, the fear of death practically takes over our lives. There are such things as peaceful deaths, such as the mental deterioration of the brain and drowning. There are horrible, painful deaths, such as physical deterioration and burning alive. Yet perhaps the worst deaths are those in which we do not know we are dying, or were going to die. Breathes stop in the late early hours of the night, never again to rise in a great morning. There are the sudden, dramatic deaths of a plane crash, a heart attack, a drive-by, a car accident, or in our imaginations a falling rock of once gossamer, now lethal, flames. No prior notice, no signs, just the sudden revelation of death, and then the unknown envelopes the dying victim and the world is left to wonder, eventually going to go through this process as well. The phones begin to ring at early sunrise and the clouds weep for eternity over the fallen and the defected.

RELIGION. Religion is a very strange topic, shunned by many conversations and people. And here I am stating the defects in this small section of life. Religion has both caused death and happiness, like love. It has caused wars and saved lives through the following of the golden rules. Everyone believes something different, creating defects. One group will always believe something different creating the many different religions. One group believes in a different all-powerful being or beings that have created life and will take it away.

All is unknowing and has caused fear. Another defect: fear. Scared; scared of difference. Those scared of defects, unable to accept varity and individuality.

The main defect.

THOSE WHO CAN’T ACCEPT

DIFFERENCE.