A common philosophical whimsy of mine is that the world exists only within my own head. Subsequently, the world, in its entirety, revolves around me, with all conflict set up in order to test me. I’ve been fascinated with this idea ever since I was very little.

I would pretend that the world was a video game; I was the main character and every other living being was set up to interact with me in some way or another, fulfill their purpose, and then disappear forever. I remember being scared of making the right choice, taking the right path, because in the video games, the wrong one always resulted in destruction.

I shared my thoughts with my dad one day, while I stood near the shadowy doorway and waited for him to walk up the path and unlock the door with the key. He told me that some Greek philosophers of old used to think that too. Then, either he or I (in my memory it was me; I seem to think of my young mind as quite the capable place) suggested that even the existence of this theory disproved the theory itself. I gazed up at the stars and the black sky and all the vastness that came with it and I knew it to be false. Yet somehow, even today, when I feel alone and distant, the people I walk next to, speak with, and even love, seem like two-dimensional stick figures, drawn limply on disintegrating paper.