Black and white

are all I see . . .
red and yellow there came to be

    My mind has been programmed, wired, through a cosmic combination of chemicals, synapses, electricity, words and actions, fate, environment, and things I will never understand to see only extremes, the black and white of the life around me. I  have lived on one end of the spectrum or the other. The sun that keeps me alive also burns my fragile human skin, the words that I live to create with also destroy my self-esteem, my motivation, my will.
    As I have often said, life is full of great ironies. Another being the fact that one cannot know that their view is skewed, distorted if they have no basis of comparison. How do you explain light to someone who only knows dark? Where do you start with such an abstract topic?
    There are many ways to see the world; there is black and white and countless shades of gray in between. What’s your shade?
    For as long as I can remember, there has only been the black and white, I have lived my life in extremes with the illusion that it was normalcy. These extremes have allowed me to see both the most euphoric happiness, an extreme sense of creativity, of passion as well as the deepest depth that the human soul can experience, a sadness so dominating that it consumed me, literally forced all of my senses into dormancy. As many words exist to us, there are none that quite explain these highs and lows.
    It has been through brief fleeting glimpses into the lives of others, and their reaction to my extremes, that have allowed me to entertain the possibility that there was something in between, shades of gray that I can control, while even possibly adding some color. There is the possibility that I can step outside this, this comfort zone of cold and hot to feel the simple warmth that perhaps we are all intended to experience.
    Synthetics with names I cannot pronounce have opened a window into this world, they’ve slowed my racing thoughts to the pace equal to a steady walk. Controlled substance. . . it slings a rope around the untamed monster and brings it down to size, subdues and tames.
    When one breaks a wild horse, does the creature lose it’s spirit, or does it simply accept that this is the way life is supposed to be? Reined in and calm, predictable?
    This sort of numbness is frighteningly unfamiliar to me. It is as if I am high, drugged, the world around me is moving in slow motion. Even colors seem softer, my dreams have lessened in intensity and frequency. But, I can breathe. I no longer feel the tightness in my chest, the stiffness in my body that the intensity my mind had filtered into my body.
    These colors are beautiful, but are they real? I always try to look at both sides of things, and I wonder, was my mind the exception? Is the intensity, the extreme the way we are supposed to feel, and most of us have just evolved into living in some parallel? Remember the movie The Matrix? Ignorance is bliss . . .
    It is difficult to make the choice between living with my brain the way it was created and choosing to alter my chemicals with more chemicals. The lesser of the two evils, at this point in the game, seems to be to choose the calm. I have lived much to long in the reality, the reality that causes me to self destruct but also grants me the greatest creativity I have ever known.
    But, as much as it pains me to use an already overused expression, the branch that does not bend in the wind will break.
    Hand me the blue pill.

“What is real? How do you define 'real'? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.” Morpheus