401. The Crime Of Existing

We’re always making you into something you’re not. We’re always categorizing you, putting you into a little box with a neat label. The box is far too small to hold you, but it’s the only one we’ve got.

We force you into the box and then when some part of you sticks out, we criticize you for it, as though it’s your fault that you don’t fit into our box. We measure you against a standard that you can’t fully see or interrogate, a standard that is somehow both fixed and variable at the same time. Fixed when you exceed its limits, and variable when you somehow manage to stay within them.

We’ve chosen your box based on the description we have of you, a description we’ve also compiled without your input. If you fit this description, then you get this box. It’s like you’re a suspect in a crime for which you’ve been immediately convicted and now imprisoned. The box is meant to hold you in the same way a prison would. Its purpose is to make sure you behave within its limits at all times. That you cannot know what these limits are is part of your punishment.

You might have the audacity to ask what you are being punished for. But this will only be met with silence or platitudes. This is just the way it is. The truth, of course, is that you have unknowingly committed a serious crime — the crime of existing, which is never truly acceptable. For it means you are the manifestation of the other, of something that is not us, and how can we possibly tolerate such a thing?

We can’t be blamed for wanting to mitigate your impact when we don’t know what you are. To satisfy our overwhelming desires and placate our fears, we’ve put you into this box as a kind of peace offering. Stay in here, stay exactly this. Then we might allow you to live. Because then we’ll know what you are and what you will be. We don’t have to figure you out. We don’t have to understand you. You are no longer our problem because now you have been contained.