Made You Up

by Francesca Zappia

Einstein’s definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I kept taking pictures, hoping I’d look at one and know its subject was a hallucination. I did my perimeter checks, thinking I’d eventually be able to walk around paranoia-free. I spent every day hoping someone would tell me I smelled like lemons. If I wasn’t insane by anyone else’s definition, I figured I was at least insane by Einstein’s.

Was everything made up? Was this whole world inside my head? If I ever woke up from it, would I be inside a padded room somewhere, drooling all over myself? Would I even be myself?

Believing something existed and then finding out it didn’t was like reaching the top of the stairs and thinking there was one more step. Except when the thing was Charlie, the stairs were five miles high, and your foot never found the floor again.