“I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.” – George Orwell

It is something worse than death to be blamed for a thing that is not within your control. Unfortunately it is often a person’s lot in life to be set by the elements of his birth. Personality is shadowed by a misconception so deep that it is rare to find someone that is willing to dig through the layers of grime shrouding the feeble soul housed inside. I know, for I have always been categorized by my birth and heritage, but never by my actions or self.

I can hand a coin to a homeless man on the street one moment and find myself being beaten by a mob the next for my “filth.” In this world, it is considered a crime to be one such as myself, nothing but an elephant, much like the one of Orwell’s imagery. That is where they pull my classification from. The forever stained impression of an elephant born to madness from madness. For to the world madness is filth. Yet they are the ones mad with their misconceptions.

And they believe that I should be shot. Shot so as to be in pain before my eventual death. Shot in order to be put through misery for my father’s crimes.

Of course there are those who pity me, but they eventually turn to the ways of others. In order to prevent their looking foolish, they spit in my eyes, stomp on me when I am down, and see only the heritage strapped to my arm, dragging behind me. For to them heritage is everything.

And criminal genes run through my blood. They are evident in my supposed black spritz of hair, fiery dark eyes, and greyed skin inherited from my father, the features of a maddened elephant that denote an inherent ability of destruction. “Elephant,” to them, is nothing but synonymous with “criminal.”

I can walk by a store with doors wide open and come away with tomato juice dripping from my face, my hair soaked red from their dyes and the meat of the fruit dangling from my ears in the aftermath of rejection.  I can walk into a coffee shop and come face to face with a dozen scowls that cut me to the bone in their animosity. But by far the worst is when I walk up to a vacant building.

For on a vacant building, through the ill will of those who only see the elephant dragging on a string attached to my soul, are the signs. There are thousands of them, all proclaiming the same thing: “strictly no elephants.” It is a cruel moment when you realize the world sees nothing but the ghost of reality. And it is in that moment that you realize that attempting to stand up against the force of the shot of misconception piercing your skull will never get you anywhere. For it is through fear that the world ostracizes you, not for reason. And the fear of the world can keep you from experiencing even the smallest things in life