Conjurer of Words

They call what I have a condition as if it’s a sickness to be cured but the longevity or quality of my life has not diminished in the slightest because of it. I physically see two different versions of the world simultaneously at any given time. Initially, doctors thought it was an ailment of my eyes but they would later discover that a unique network of synapse connections related to my sight is what resulted in my so-called condition. The first of the realities I see is the same world that most of you see every day: a tree looks like a tree, a car looks like a car, and people walking down the street are just people walking down the street. But imagine a second layer over that, a layer in which words are literally floating in the air like specks of dust, seemingly random at first. That’s how I see the world: draped in words.

Some of them are small, simple words, and some of them are large complex words that nobody has used for hundreds of years outside of dusty old books. When a certain something catches my eyes like a squirrel in a tree or a beautiful building downtown, certain words gravitate towards that something like a reverse explosion of abstract vocabulary. Those certain words, I learned early on, described the object of my focus perfectly. I’ve learned to quickly remember the face of a pretty girl walking down the street before she is swarmed by a multitude of words, some of which would make me blush if I were to tell you what they were.

“It seems your subconscious has materialized itself in your sense of sight,” the doctors told me, “Your thoughts seem more concrete and contextualized to you in this manner. It’s fascinating. There’s never been a case like this before.”

“Will he live a normal life?” my mother asked.

“I’m afraid not. I’m sorry but it’s likely that he’ll see the world like this for the duration of his life,” the doctors responded. I thought that was silly. Why should anyone be sorry? The condition is in no way a hindrance to living my life. In fact it’s a great boon to my aspirations to become a writer. It’s sad that it has become safe to assume that seeing the world differently is a something to be pitied.

After some research, I found that my ailment has been around for centuries and the data suggests it has been around for thousands of years. Because it is a condition of the brain while the eyes get most of the blame, many past cases were dismissed as either dementia or witchcraft. The older carriers of this genetic “defect” were wise enough to recognize, as I was, that it was more of a gift than a burden and they used this to convince everyone that they were wizards who could conjure up words, words that no one had ever heard of, for any and every possible scenario. Of course that only amounted in what were essentially writing positions. But in medieval times that was a relatively powerful position. But today the roles have reversed where you know what a writer looks like by the measure of natural sunlight they don’t get.

My first visions of floating vocabulary occurred sometime in high school during the awkwardly necessary rite of passage known as puberty. While others either coasted through the typhoon of hormones and others embraced their awkwardness, I succeeded in enjoying the shroud of anonymity. A dance was approaching and the few friends I was fortunate to have urged me to ask out this girl that they, somehow, knew I had my eye on for some time. However, I noticed early on that words would swarm anything or anyone I would be focused on which made reading facial expressions difficult. The words would get in the way and I would have no way of knowing if someone was impressed or annoyed with me. That was when I realized I could use writing to my advantage. I wrote a short note and discreetly slipped it into her locker.

It would be a few days before I got a response and to everyone’s surprise she agreed to go to the dance with me. Unfortunately the joy of my first date would be short lived when the following school day she publicly humiliated me by agreeing to go to the dance with someone else over the school PA system. What I thought was a step in the right direction towards a more normal life turned out to be a ruse for a group who happened to be as cruel as they were bored.

That little stunt made college miserable for me as I had trouble trusting anyone that wasn’t in my inner-most circle of friends. Eventually I had trouble even trusting them as they went on to find their own callings. In hindsight, I know it was premature to mistrust them for finding their own life’s path but I had enclosed myself in my introverted shell, away from the rest of the world. There was really no one left to console me except, of course, for my words. And they sheltered me from all the pain the world had to offer. Unfortunately, that meant keeping me from taking the risks necessary to leading a happy life. I assured myself that I wouldn’t be making any more mistakes in life and the words would all agree with me because, well, the words were mine. But that all changed when I saw the concept of mistakes from a different perspective.

I knew words. I had been surrounded by them my entire life and no matter how crazy life got, words were there for me my entire life. I grew fearful of making mistakes until I realized that “mistake” is just another word. And I can change words when I wanted to. Realizing that a mistake is just an opportunity to learn was the greatest epiphany in my young adult life. It was then that I learned to tame the words that I had allowed to hold me captive for most of my collegiate career. I decided to take a creative writing class and hone my abilities and I soon mastered the swarm of words that had once plagued me. They were now my allies.

In no way do I claim to have figured out the meaning of life or figured out some great wisdom that wouldn’t have otherwise been found in some older or more eloquently written story. If anything, the lesson I hope you take away from my story is that life will always be difficult but living doesn’t have to be. Sometimes the universe decides to give you some sort of disorder that makes you different, or maybe the cruelty of others decide, for whatever reasons,  to bear down and crush your spirit. But you can always choose to move forward and learn from your circumstances rather than become a victim of them. I hope to continue to hone my skills as a writer and maybe one day I’ll take a place among the conjurer of words upon whose shoulders humanity’s libraries were filled. And while the rest of the world pities those of us who seem to be different, we smile knowing what they’re missing out by trying so hard to be the same.