The pale morning sunlight filtered through the blinds creating a glowing mosaic on my dull bedroom wall. I held up my hands. For a moment, they didn’t feel like mine. The mosaic of light emanated, flowing across my skin as if it were liquid gold, illuminating every crease, every wrinkle and every faint candent vein beneath the opaque surface. I curled my fingers into my hand. They obeyed. Yet something felt strange as if invisible threads were pulling them, as if I was merely a spectator imprisoned behind my own eyes. Are you for real? The question haunted me, lingering like an inescapable shadow. I gazed down at my hands; Palm. Back. Palm. Normal enough. Five fingers, each with freshly trimmed nails and tiny scars scattered across my knuckles like fading constellations. The more I stared, examined, the stranger and more warped they became. My skin seemed fake and fragile, stretched and pulled over bone like thin paper wrapped around heavy machinery. The air’s icy tentacles tickled my spine and I jolted upright. My room suddenly felt blurry, distant as if I were looking at it through a thick glass screen. The regimented ticking of my clock became muffled, as if it was being smothered. The walls compressed, they felt flatter somehow, like scenery carefully painted onto a canvas. What if none of this existed? My thoughts twisted and coiled, circling each other like vultures around a carcass. What if I was dreaming? What if I had always been dreaming?
I pressed my thumbnail into my hand until a crescent shaped indent arose. Pain bloomed sharply, yet even that felt suspicious, as though it was simply an idea my brain had constructed to keep me convinced. Outside, rain was growing heavier, drumming against my window, droplets combining creating a threatening symphony on the glass. Each tear racing, desperate to escape like tiny convicts. I envied them in a way because at least they were certain of what they were. My heart spasmed, pounding against my delicate ribs, skipping beats. Am I real? The question echoed through the empty spaces of my mind like whispers in a deserted temple. I gazed down, inspecting my trembling hands. I realised something I had previously overlooked; they were shaking, moving. Not because the fabric of reality was tearing, but because I was afraid. Afraid I would never know the answer. Afraid existence was simply a jigsaw with pieces lost in the abyss. A salty tear trickled down my rosy cheek, then another, and another. I watched as they crash landed on my hand and dispersed through the labyrinth of lines and creases on my skin. One of the droplets caught the light, shimmering like a tiny diamond, and in that moment something in my brain clicked and shifted. Maybe being real wasn’t about certainty, perhaps nobody knew why they truly existed. Maybe being human meant asking questions without answers but continuing anyway. I closed my fingers into a fist. Warm. Present. Solid. And that was somehow enough. For now.