THE DEATH OF A BOY

A FABLE ABOUT KILLING YOUR EGO AND ACCEPTING THE TRUE YOU
 “Start where you are, and
do what you can with what
you already have.”
INTRODUCTION
You may think you know who you are, but can you ever
really know?

The Self is constantly maturing, adapting, and evolving.

You may think you are your job… until you have to get
another job.

You may think you are your body… until all of your cells
replace themselves.

You may think you are your name… until you change your
name and find out you’re still the same person that you
were before.

To make things even more confusing, in addition to

constantly maturing, adapting, and evolving, every day
you walk around unknowingly lying to yourself, feeding
delusions of grandeur, holding on to preconceived notions,
and repeating cultural and religious indoctrinations — all of
which you probably inherited from someone else.
It may not be today, it may not be five years from now, but
one day, you will be forced to come to terms with who you
really are.

Not who you wanna be. Not who your parents want you to
be. Not what society wants you to be.

But who you actually are — right here, right now, in this
moment in time.

What if the people I’ve come to love and respect don’t love
the new-and-improved me? What if I realize that I’m gay?
What if I have to let go of all of my old friends and start
over new?

From personal experience I can tell you that this process is

nothing short of terrifying. Embrace it. The emptiness you
feel inside you is not a hole to be filled, but a window to
look through. And look you must.
Because before you can be who you were born to be, you
must first identify and kill off all the things that aren’t the
real you. So not only is this process terrifying, but it is also
incredibly painful.

You will mourn the loss of who you once were — or at least
who you thought you once were.

And that’s where the 5 stages of grief come in.

There’s Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and

Acceptance.

Traditionally, these five stages of grief are associated with

a physical death — a death of the body.

The following story, however, explores a psychological

death — a death of the sense of Self — that occurs in the
transition from Old Self to New.
My hope is that it will help you get to know who you really
are and visualize who you were born to be.

In the end, you will be better equipped to to start where

you are, and do what you can with what you already have.

Good luck.

Experience may vary.

Viewer discretion advised.

CHAPTER 1:
DENIAL
“I know who I am,” said the boy who did not know.

When Reality heard these words, as he all too often did, he

roared into the room on his motorcycle, which came to a
screeching halt as it skid in broadside in a giant cloud of
smoke.

The boy coughed. Reality dismounted. He seemed to move

in slow motion as he walked up to the boy and casually
leaned against a mirror, which had magically appeared
there.

A smirk danced across Reality’s face and he shook his

head as the boy forgot his shock altogether and instead
admired his own reflection.
“How can you know who you are?” said Reality, though
nobody asked him. He lit a cigarette and awaited the boy’s
response.

The boy’s eyes narrowed in disgust. The boy never liked

Reality that much and didn’t talk to him very often. As far as
the boy was concerned, Reality was a party pooper, and
today was no exception.

Reality continued, “I’m not tryin ta be rude, kid. I’m just sayin…
you’ve never been out in the real world. You’ve never cared
about anyone else more than yerself. You’ve never paid
the bills. You’ve never even had a full time job. How, can you
know, who you are?”
None of that mattered to the boy. What mattered to him
was the feeling of knowing who he was. And when you’re
young and dumb, you always feel good.

“So what?” said the boy. “I can still know who I am. I sing. I
dance. I write. I act. I play the guitar, the ukulele, the drums,
the harmonica, and the saxophone. I’m gonna be rich and
famous one day! You just wait n see…”

“Okay…” said Reality. “That may be true. But as Aristotle once

said, ‘We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not
an act, but a habit.’ My question to you is, do you practice
those things every day? Or are you just naturally good at
them?”
“I’m just naturally that good,” said the boy with a shrug as
he brushed some imaginary fluff off his shoulder.

Reality rolled his eyes. It was gonna be another looong

night.

“What do you do everyday?” said Reality.

“I —“

“Wait, don’t tell me, I already know. Yer a pot smoker. Yer a
beer drinker. Yer a socializer. And yer a masturbator. Typical.
In yer defense, though, yer also a reader and a writer. But
even those you don’t do every day. Just most.”
“You don’t know whatchyer talkin about,” said the boy. “I’m
gonna do amazing things. They’re gonna write books about
me one day. They’ll make movies about the boy from the
small town who defied all the odds and made it big. Maybe
I’ll even go down in history with all the other Greats like
Genghis Khan and Napoleon and Dr. Martin Luther
King.”

Reality could see the stars in the boys eyes as he pictured

himself bathed in glory, swarmed by beautiful women, and
welcomed by thunderous applause wherever he went.
“Genghis Khan and Napoleon and Dr. Martin Luther King
worked their asses off,” said Reality, bursting the boy’s
bubble. “They gave up their friends. They sacrificed their
relationships with their family members. They gave up
everything they had in order to pursue their craft. Martin
Luther King even gave up his life. What have you sacrificed?
And by the way, what is yer craft?”

“I don’t know, and what does it matter?” said the boy. “I don’t
wanna limit myself. If I can do it all, then why should I
specialize in any one thing? I wanna be a jack of all trades.”
Reality thought for a minute, then said, “I mean… You can be
more than one thing, sure, but you have to be one thing at
a time — hone one skill at a time — carefully and
meticulously. You could start with your singing or
dancing or acting.”

“What?!” said the boy. “Whaddayou mean?”

“Well… again… I don’t mean ta be rude, but I saw you

perform in the musical Bye, Bye, Birdie…”

“And???” said the boy. “I’m the lead character. I must be

doin somethin right!”
“Yer not bad for an amateur, but you couldn’t remember
half the words, and you were off tempo the entire ti — ”

“That wasn’t my fault,” interrupted the boy. “If anything it

was the band! They were dragging their feet! And what
about Mr. Samarzea, huh? He was the one yellin at the
band and distracting me. If he would’ve just let me do my
thing, then none of that would’ve happened in the first
place!”
“Okay, okay, no need to get upset,” said Reality. “I was just
tryin ta illustrate my point. I’m just sayin, if you would’ve
practiced that one song over and over again, then you or
the band or Mr. Samarzea wouldn’t have had those issues.
But singing and dancing and acting are each just one
part of the puzzle. What is it that yer trying to accomplish?
What is yer goal in life?”

“I already told you,” said the boy. “I’m gonna be rich and
famous. I won’t even know what to do with all my money.”

Reality sighed. Just to humor the boy he said, “What do you

think you would do with all that money?”
“I don’t know,” said the boy thoughtfully. “Maybe I’ll give most
of it away since I don’t even really care about material
possessions that much. Maybe I’ll pay off my parents’
mortgage. Maybe I’ll buy Jeremy that custom Audi R8 he’s
always wanted. Maybe I’ll put Murphy and Ezra through
college so Terra and Josh won’t have to pay for it
themselves.”

Reality walked around the backside of the mirror in order to

hide his smile. He whispered to himself, “the Dunning-Kruger
Effect is one helluva drug.”
“What?” said the boy.

“Nothing,” replied Reality, feigning innocence. “I was just

saying that those are some noble intentions. But yer
focusing on being someone, instead of focusing on doing
the work itself.”

“Whaddayou know?” said the boy. “I’m not exactly like other
people, if you haven’t noticed by now.” The boy shook his
head in disbelief and continued, “Yer just like all the other
doubters. I don’t need you. I don’t need them. I don’t need
anybody. I’ll be a self-made man, and you and all
the others will be sorry. Just don’t come asking me for
money when I’m successful.”
Reality raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Ya got passion, kid,
I’ll give ya that. But ya got naive passion, and there’s a
huuuge difference between naive passion and actual
passion.”

“Oh yeah?” said the boy sarcastically. “Enlighten me.”

“Well… naive passion is all force and no direction, or all

direction and no force. Naive passion is innocent and
sincere but not based in reality. Actual passion, on the
other hand, has both force AND direction. Actual
passion leads to mastery and discipline and strength.
Actual passion shows, but doesn’t tell.”
“Would you just fuck off already?” said the boy. “Do you
know how pretentious you sound?”

“Yer the one ta talk,” said Reality. “But yeah, I know how it
sounds. And I understand why you’d be hesitant to listen to
a guy like me. But… if I may be so bold… d’ya wanna know
what I really think?”

“No, not really,” said the boy.

“Well… I’m gonna tell ya anyway… For starters… I think ya hate

yerself.”

“What!?” said the boy. “I hate myself?? Yeah, okay! I’m

confident and cocky. Aren’t those synonymous with self-
love? And I’m positive and sociable. Aren’t people who hate
themselves just emo losers that have good reasons to do
so? Get real. Next!”
Reality saw boys like this every day of his life. Without
missing a beat he continued, “If life gets ‘too real’ and
makes you question yer sense of self, you quickly escape to
a different world in the form of a book or Netflix. It’s
also why you turn to drugs and alcohol. Sure it’s fun, and
yer young, so yer experimenting and all that jazz, but you
also do it to escape the pain and avoid addressing the
issue at hand.”

The boy pursed his lips. He would never admit it, but the
boy was starting to recognize himself in the mirror — not
who he wanted to be, but his True Self, as he was, right
then and there. The boy thought for a while, but said
nothing for once.
When Reality was sure that the boy wasn’t going to short-
circuit, he said, “And last but not least… I think that maybe —
just maybe — whenever someone else gets too much
attention, you do something drastic to draw the spotlight
back to yerself. Because yer insecure about who you are.
And when yer insecure about who you are, you need
constant reassurance that whatever you are, whoever you
are, it’s someone worth attention… someone worth
admiration… someone worth love.”

The boy gulped. Reality was seeing right through him and
the boy didn’t like it. He didn’t like it one bit. The boy didn’t
know what to do, so he processed his feelings the only way
that he knew how.
CHAPTER 2:
ANGER
The boy punched the mirror, which shattered into a
thousand pieces before another one magically appeared
to take its place. Blood ran down the boy’s hand and
dripped onto the floor.

“Feel better?” said Reality.

The boy’s eyes flickered. His nostrils flared. He flashed a

wicked grin as he sauntered up to Reality, swaying side to
side like a silverback gorilla. The boy balled up his fists and
seethed through a clenched jaw, “Fuck. You.”

“Fuck me?” said Reality.

“Yeah, fuck you! Fuck this, man! Why did you even come
here? Huh? I was doin just fine before you came along.
Now I don’t even know who I am anymore!
The boy stormed out of the room, slamming the door on
his way out.

Over the next couple years, the boy took his anger out on
anything and everything that came across his path. He got
into fist fights. He vandalized federal property. He broke into
people’s houses and cars. He drank more alcohol and
smoked more weed.

Reality was there every step of the way, shaking his head in
disapproval.

He accompanied the boy as he did all of these things to

keep an eye on him and to let the boy know that he was
there if the boy ever wanted to talk.
One night, however, when Reality sensed that the boy was
ready to take the next step, Reality joined him in his
mischief.

The sun went down. The curtains danced as a light breeze

rolled through the open balcony door. The boy sat on the
couch. Reality paced up and down the length of the room
with his brow furrowed and his hands behind his back.

The two of them were balls deep in a deep life discussion,

slightly tipsy, rolling on molly, with the purest of pure
cocaine blitzkriegin’ through their veins.

“Come to think of it,” said the boy with a stroke of his chin,
“I’ve been pissed off my entire life.”

“Hmmm,” said Reality. “Interesting. How come?”

“I don’t know. I guess I was just pissed off at the world.”

“Hmmmm,” said Reality again. “Interesting. But what if this

goes deeper than that? Why don’t you give it another go.”

“Uhhhh… I don’t know, man… maybe it was because my

parents got divorced when I was 3 months old… And I never
really knew my dad even though he lived just down the
street… And my step dad and I didn’t get along because I
reminded him of my dad… And my mom has always
rejected me for who I am as a person…”

“Hmmmmm,” said Reality a third time. “I think yer getting

closer, but what if this goes even deeper than that? Think
on it and get back to me.”
A few days later, the boy paced up and down the length of
his room with his brow furrowed and his hands behind his
back. His skull shook from the music in his ears. The song
ended and a new one began.

“Look…
If you had…
One shot…
Or one opportunity…
To seize everything you ever wanted…
Would you capture it?
Or just let it slip?”

The boy acted out the lyrics in front of his mirror. He lip-
synced the words. He sauntered up to his own reflection.
He snarled the Ice Cube Snarl.

And that’s when it hit him.

“Holy shit,” said the boy, relaxing his aggressive stance. “This
whole time I’ve been pissed off at myself. For not knowing
who I was. For not living up to my own expectations. For not
having the courage or the ability to communicate my
thoughts, feelings, goals, and dreams. For not being
able to change the world. For not being able to change
myself. I’ve had countless opportunities to seize everything I
ever wanted. And I just let them slip… Huh… Who knew?”
CHAPTER 3:
BARGAINING
“I knew,” said Reality as he once again magically appeared
beside the boy and his mirror.

The boy, not in the mood for Reality’s antics, turned back to
his mirror, took it off the wall, shook it, and shouted at his
reflection, “WHO AM I???”

“You’ll figure it out sooner or later,” said Reality. “But we don’t

have much time right now. Speaking of, are you about
ready ta go?”

“Go?” said the boy. “Go where?”

“It’s yer first day of college. Did you forget?”

The boy looked around his room to see that all of his bags
were already packed. His older sister’s used mini fridge and
microwave sat next to his bed, covered in Purdue University
stickers.

“Oh…” said the boy. “Yeah… that…”

“Everything alright?” said Reality.

“Yeah…” said the boy as he plopped down on his bed. “I

guess… I don’t know… Not really…”

Reality plopped down on the bed beside him.

“What’s on your mind, kid? Aren’t you excited?”

The boy shrugged. “I mean… I’m excited to learn and to
have new experiences and to be out on my own for once
and all that, but… I just don’t see the point of going
thousands and thousands of dollars in debt when I don’t
even know who I am or what I wanna be when I grow up.”

“So don’t go to school,” said Reality.

“Easy for you to say,” said the boy. “If I don’t go to college,
then my parents will disown me, my friends will laugh at
me, and Sarah will break up with me. They’ll think I’m a
loser.”
“Naaaah,” said Reality with a dismissive wave of his hand.
“Yer parents will come around eventually. They just want
you to be happy. And if yer friends and yer girlfriend really
love you for who you are, they won’t really care what you
do for a living. Just because you don’t wanna go to college
doesn’t mean you don’t have any ambition.”
“No, I wanna go to college,” said the boy. “I’m just not sure if I
wanna go right now. I feel like I’m just going through the
motions, doing what everybody else does, adopting other
people’s identities instead of trying to find my own, ya
know? I smoke weed when my friends smoke weed
even though it makes me anxious. I drink when my friends
drink even though I feel like shit the entire next day. I wear
the same clothes. And I watch the same mindless TV
shows. But the more I try to fit in, the more I feel like an
outsider, watching the ‘normal people’ go about their day.
And I feel like I have to say club passwords like, ‘Have a nice
day’ and ‘Hi, nice to meet you. What do you do?’ When
really I wanna say things like, ‘tell me something that makes
you cry’ or ‘what do you think deja vu is for?’ I don’t know…
does any of that make sense?”
“Totally,” said Reality as he smiled to himself, thinking back
to the first time that he met the boy. “Have you talked to
any of your friends about this? What if they’re all thinkin the
same thing? Maybe you should speak up and tell em how
you feel.”

“Yeah, maybe,” said the boy as he looked at the floor. “There

just has to be more to life than graduating high school,
going to college, getting married, getting a dog, buying a
house, having a few kids, climbing the corporate ladder,
retiring, and dying.”
“Well…” said Reality. “What would you do instead?”

“I don’t know.”

“Nonononono, you don’t get to say ‘I don’t know.’ That’s a

cop out answer. Think, man, think! What would you do with
your time if money didn’t exist? If you didn’t have to worry
about paying your rent or putting your kids through college,
how would you really enjoy spending your life?”

“I guess I always thought it’d be cool to be a writer.”

“Then do that!”

“I can’t…”

“Why?”

“Because everybody knows you can’t make any money

that way.”
“Listen… when you do finally decide what you wanna do
with your life, then do that. Forget the money. Because if
you say that getting money is the most important thing,
then you’ll spend your whole life doing things that you don’t
like doing in order to go on living — that is to go on doing
things that you don’t like doing! It’s stupid. And after all, if
you do really like whatever it is that you choose to do, then
you can eventually become a master of it. And if yer a
master at something, then you’ll always be able to get a
good fee for whatever it is. So don’t worry about it too
much. Anyway… listen, kid… it doesn’t really matter to me
either way… But you’ve already packed yer bags… and yer
mom is waiting outside so… you goin ta college or what?”
The boy said nothing. He just sat there and stared off into
space. In order to give the boy some time to think, Reality
got up and excused himself from the room. And finally,
when the boy had failed to come up with a better idea, the
boy got up and walked right out the door to go to college.
CHAPTER 4:
DEPRESSION
“What’s the point of living if my life lacks all purpose and
meaning?” said the boy.

Over the past two weeks, the boy had dropped out of
school to avoid going further into debt, moved back in with
his parents, got a job as a pizza boy in order to continue
paying for the expensive house on campus that he was no
longer living in, and on top of all of that, to make matters
worse, Sarah broke up with him, just as he had feared.
The boy laid in bed for hours on end, sometimes for days
at a time. He ugly cried in the shower. Eating felt like a
chore.

One day, when the boy couldn’t take it any longer, he sat
up in bed and said, “I’m going out to the Hickory Ridge Fire
Tower.”

“What’s that?” said Reality.

“It’s a giant tower in the middle of the Hoosier National

Forest. Back in the day it was used to spot forest fires, but
now it’s just a hangout spot.”

“Huh. Whatcha goin out there for?”

“I’m gonna jump off the top and kill myself.”

“Oh,” said Reality.

“Aren’t ya gonna try to talk me out of it?” said the boy.

“Nope. Why the fire tower?”

“I have a lot of memories there. Back when we first started

dating, Sarah and I used to camp out by the tower and
experiment with psychedelics. We stared into each others
eyes for like three hours straight one time.”

The boy half-chuckled to himself before he remembered

that Sarah broke up with him. He sighed, then said, “Good
times. Good times.”
The boy closed his eyes and pictured the forest
surrounding the tower. He inhaled. The trees did the wave
in the wind. He exhaled. Peaceful, he thought, a little slice of
heaven before I go to hell.

Reality interrupted his reverie. “Think it’ll be tall enough?

What if it doesn’t do the trick and you just end up paralyzed
for life?”

“Dude,” said the boy. “Aren’t you supposed to tell me that it’s
all gonna be okay or I’m being over-dramatic or some
other bullshit, like committing suicide is selfish? Or that I
should think of the people that I’ll leave behind?”
Reality shrugged. “Looks like I don’t have to tell you any of
that… Look, kid, life is hard. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t. And
you never asked to be born in the first place. Maybe you
should be able to opt out whenever you want. And I’m not
gonna sit here and try to say that I know exactly what
yer going through because I don’t. All I can do is offer you a
little bit of perspective. And if you ask me, yeah, suicide is
always an option. But ya can’t un-kill yerself. Once it’s done,
it’s done. So take yer time. Think it over. And, if, in the end,
that’s what you really want, then by all means, kill yerself.
Just give it six months, why don’tcha.”

“Why six months?”

“Because there’s a good chance that 6 months from now
things won’t be as bad as they are now. Maybe you’ll be
able to eat and sleep again. Maybe you’ll find someone or
something that’ll give yer life purpose and meaning. Maybe
you’ll realize that one of the reasons yer going through this
right now is so you can help other people get through it
later on down the road.”

“I don’t think I can make it another six months,” said the boy.

“Can you make it till tomorrow?” said Reality.

“Yeah… I think so.”

“Then make it till tomorrow. And tomorrow do the same

thing all over again. Then just keep doing that, and sooner
than you know it, it’ll be six months from now. C’mon. You
can do it. I have faith in you. Yer tough. And listen, I don’t
mean to belittle yer situation, but let’s face it, yer a good
lookin middle class white male with loads of potential born
in America in the 21st century. If you can’t make it through
this, then we’re all screwed.”

Just then the boy’s mom came into his room and sat on
the edge of his bed. Though the boy had never given her
any indication that that day was to be his last, his mom
grabbed his hands and said, with tears in her eyes,
“I don’t want to lose my son. Listen… look at me… I can’t lose
my son.”
CHAPTER 5:
ACCEPTANCE
“If I can’t get through this for me,” said the boy, “then I can
get through it for my mom.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Reality. “Yer finally starting to care

about someone else more than yerself.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” said the boy. “Well… now what?”

“Let’s review,” said Reality. “You’ve been in denial about who

you are, right? You’ve been pissed off about not knowing
who you are, you’ve tried to be other people, you’ve gotten
depressed about your life having no purpose or meaning,
and now?”
“And now I’ve accepted that I’m not who I wanna be. And
that I have a lot of work to do. And you were right before
about me hating myself.”

“Explain,” said Reality.

“Well like I said, I thought only emo losers hated themselves,

but hating yourself shows up in many different ways. For
instance, when I was in college I was given a writing
prompt: ‘Why do you want to be a writer?’ But instead, I
wrote an essay on why I didn’t want to be one. Now, looking
back, I realize my problem wasn’t with being a writer, it was
the ideas I had about what it meant to be one. I always
pictured them as people who were broke, loners,
depressed, or otherwise mentally ill. And because I pictured
them as such, I didn’t want to be one of those people, even
though, deep down, I knew that I was, whether I wanted to
be or not. And now that I think about it, all of the things you
mentioned when we first met were just a matter of
perspective.”
“How so?”

“Well… like I said before… in the beginning I was upset about

not knowing who I was, but now I realize that it’s okay not to
know, because I’m not alone, I’m not that different from
anyone else, and my problems are not unique. The
question has haunted philosophers and painters and
poets and thousands of other people smarter than myself
for thousands and thousands of years. Take Aristotle for
instance, what was the quote you said before? ‘We are
what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an
act but a habit,’ right?” But that doesn’t answer the question
of ‘who am I?’ Because if we are what we repeatedly do,
most people would answer ‘who are you?’ with their job
title. But if you left your job, you wouldn’t cease to exist, now,
would you?
“And then you said that I had naive passion instead of
actual passion. And you were right, but at the same time,
isn’t that just a matter of being a realist or of being a
dreamer? And if that’s the case then I could look at
that and think, ‘I need to be more realistic,’ or I could just
surround myself with realists so we can work together and
balance each other out. Because dreamers need realists
to keep them from soaring too close to the sun. And
without dreamers like me, the realists might not ever get
off the ground in the first place…
“And then you said I use Netflix and books to escape my
problems… So what? Sure, that can be a problem if done in
excess, but isn’t that what stories are for? Stories entertain
us and allow us to escape reality when needed. Stories
inform our perception of the world. Stories allow us to
organize and relay information. Stories allow us to travel
without moving our feet. Stories teach us right from wrong.
Stories create community and build empathy. Stories give
us clarity, purpose, and meaning. Stories make us human.
And on top of all of that, stories feature heroes - the best
kind of humans — who show us what’s worth seeking, worth
having, worth doing…
“We’re not trying to be like our heroes, we’re trying to see
like them. We’re not trying to steal their style, we’re trying to
steal the thinking behind their style. For every time we try to
be like them and fail, we become more like ourselves.
Because at the end of the day, we’re not supposed to find
ourselves, we’re supposed to create ourselves…
“But you wanna know the ironic thing? This whole time,
we’ve been talking about me, but this isn’t about me. It
never was. This is about learning how to serve other people
and helping them learn who they are. Because the only
way we can truly know who we are is by by creating
things that only we can create and helping other people
do the same. But we can’t focus on the end result — what
we get out of it — because like you said in the beginning of
this story, we have to focus on doing instead of being.
We’re only entitled to the work itself and not the fruits of our
labor. The work - creation - is all that we really need.”
“Lol,” said Reality. “Well, kid, I think my work here is done.”

With that, Reality stood up, put on his jacket, and climbed
back on to his motorcycle, which purred as Reality pulled
out onto the dimly lit streets and rode off into the night.

The boy, tired from trying to comprehend the

incomprehensible, went back inside and tried to go to
sleep, but, finding himself unable, the boy went to the
garage and dusted off his mom’s old typewriter. It wasn’t
until sunrise that, at last, the Man finished writing this book -
The Death of a Boy.
THE END