Jonathan Friesen

“My world had become his, or his mine; it was hard to say”

“How easy it was to slip through the cracks alongside him. To fall in the very same trap I had committed to free him from.”

“The moment was surreal. A sometimes-autistic young man with two identities lecturing a room full of zombies on feelings and realities.”

“We are often reminded how peaceful our world has become, a world without a police force or prison, where crimes and uprisings have nearly disappeared. But we’ve paid a price. The emotional root of all conflict — fear, anger, love, especially love — is prohibited. The goal of our schooling is to master a life of total self-control. A life without wrinkles, without feeling, without soul.”

“No, no. Not a genius. This is like what reading is like for you. You look at the squiggles and loops, and the puzzle opens until suddenly nothing means something, something more than the sum of the parts, right? I see one hunk of metal and then another, and the puzzle opens. They turn in my mind and just make sense. Together they all mean something.”

“I miss home. I miss ignorance. I've seen a beauty I can't fathom in the Aquifer, and met a girl who moves my heart.”

“Frightened that you'll be overcome by yourself? That a gentle monster inside of you might take over and never let go?”

“My whole life, I prepared to come down in order to save the world above.. Now I have to ascend to save the world below..”

“What's wrong with me? I lose my footing, in here.' He touched his head. 'When a neuro-typical looses their footing, they yell or escape to the TV, or maybe the doctor throws them on depression meds. But when I slip, I fall all the way through. I feel the ground give way and I'm gone. It's a crack -- a crack in what's real, and beneath there I'm stuck. Then, I guess I become someone else. Mom says I still know my name, but I walk a different world. The shrink calls it DID -- Dissociative Identity Disorder -- with a little added autism to spice up my other personality. I suppose he's right, but only I know how it feels to slip through the cracks. Then the monster shows up.”

“I belong everywhere and nowhere, and I alone can save two worlds.”