Aaron

Aaron never really thinks about me anymore. I mean, who would? I've been there his entire life. Sure, when we were first starting out, I was this thing of fascination.  Something to be roughly manipulated and played with. I remember when we were seven, we would stay up late with a flashlight just to play make believe. But now, it’s like I don’t even exist.

Time passes in the same old routine. We go to work at the office, trudge through the day, and spend the evening doing even more work from home. Aaron isn’t even exciting anymore. I think about the ones like me on TV that get to do fun things like flicker over trees in the amazon or run down bad guys in Alaska. I even get jealous of the poor fools that have to spend hours in old warehouses switching from one old piece of junk to the next. At least they get to be doing something.

I remember once that our third grade teacher read us Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll. That is one of my favorite books. I can relate to Alice so well. She is lost and confused in Wonderland because she is constantly changing. She doesn’t know who she is anymore because of all the physical changes she is subjected to. That is how life is every day for me. I’m constantly moving and changing. One moment I could be chilling on a nice brick wall and the next I could be split in two! I change color! Well, not color really, values. One minute I can be pitch black, menacing, and the next I can be pale gray with barely any substance! And don’t even get me started on what it’s like to be 2D in a 3D world.

 When I first wake up, I’m this huge giant, but around the middle of the day I am merely a circle that Aaron stands on. The good part about that is, I always know that as more time progresses, I will once again become a giant, just on the other side of Aaron.

But after that is when the worst part of being me happens. People talk about death all the time. They talk about how it is inevitable, theorize what it could be like, whisper how scared they are about their own final day, and grieve when death takes someone else. People don’t know what real despair is like. At least there are theories about an afterlife. For me, there is nothing. Every single night of my life, sometimes more often than that, I just disappear. I become nothing. My existence ceases, until suddenly I am again. I loose time. There are just these huge jumps in my life where I know I have stopped. 

Every morning, I rejoice in existence. Every night, I despair over deletion.

I don’t expect Aaron to change how he lives his life.  He has enough to worry about without the guilt of knowing he erases me every time he walks into a movie theater. I just wish, that once in a while he would appreciate the fact that I’m there. I will never leave Aaron. He is never alone with me around. We are, literally, stuck together forever. Can’t a shadow just get some appreciation around here?