I GOT MUCH MORE THAN A PILL TODAY

His refusal only angered me more.

"But I was promised, guaranteed actually," I responded with confusion.

"You were no more guaranteed than anyone else," he responded.

"But your wrong, I was! In fact that is the very reason I'm here today."

This argument continued for several minutes until I left in a furious anger. The kind of anger that scars one from the inside. The kind of anger that slices and dices rational thought. This anger carried me outside into the street and it was there that I met my new fate. A fate I could not imagine living before.

"Try this," came a voice from behind me.

I had been warned not to trust strangers as a youth. Strangers such as this.

"What is it?", my internal curiosity instantly spouted out. "I have never seen a pill such as this."

"That is why I give it to you now," he responded with compassion.

I did not ask this question out loud though. Or did I?

"Go with it," I said to myself. Hell, maybe I could Shine, who knows.

As I took this pill into my hands I felt a burden, a lifelong burden, being lifted. That preverbal weight of conformity being ripped off of me. I loved it, I relished in it. F%#k the world I knew before. This is what I've wanted and now it was in my own hands.

Changing one pill inside this building for another outside seemed crazy at first, but not in this desperate situation I had found myself in. It was in fact a new pill of unconditional acceptance for me to enjoy.

I had it in my hands now. I had it and it was about to fill my brain with new concepts of reality. New dreams and a new architecture for my so called soul! I was about to be re-born and I somehow knew it. Screw what others told me I was supposed to be. SCREW ALL OF THEM! In my hands was my future. One that was not pushed upon me, but was presented to me.

This new pill was not gilded in hypocrisy or filled with empty rhetoric. This pill was in fact the forbidden fruit that was looked down upon by those very followers. Those that blindly march in lock-step, those that had long ago drunk that nasty bitter tasting Cool-Aid. This pill was in fact for anyone who would listen and I was this man now. Others had called it a dirty four letter word. Still others insisted it was filled with stories of people who do not understand.

I took my new medicine and brought in internal daylight. I took this medicine in defiance of a system that had now rejected me and my mind. I took this pill this stranger put in my hands today. But before I did I had one more question.

"What is this new pill called stranger?"

He smiled with enthusiasm and said, "BOOK".

J----------