It shouldn’t surprise you. If you read my essay on having a Passion for Truth, you may have realized what I realized when I read it. Writing it, I only knew I was writing it. Coming back and reading it, I was able to learn something about myself. Have you ever wondered what you look like to other people? From inside yourself you know yourself well. But if you could also see from outside yourself, you would know yourself so much better. I read the Passion for Truth essay and learned this about myself: I am a tortured soul. I live in constant agony.

As all humans do whether they realize it or not. No matter how they try to numb the pain or how hard they try to deny it, all humans live in misery and anguish. No one’s life is simple; no one’s life is easy. Only God knows if mine is easier or harder than yours; that information is simply not available to human beings. Rock music numbs the pain as I write this. If only curing the disease were as simple as this partial numbing of the symptoms!

There are so many kinds of insanity. Mine is not the kind where everything you think is absurd; it’s not like I’m out of touch with reality; I’m probably insane because I’m in touch with reality. It’s likely that I’m more in touch with reality than the rest of you.

Which would make me Winston Smith’s “minority of one.” That’s not what I think insanity is, but such noncommunication with one’s fellow-man does have this effect: it makes me wonder if I’m insane, because I wonder if I’m wrong because I’m the only one who knows what I know.

Fortunately, it doesn’t mean I’m wrong. Unfortunately, I’m probably right in most of what I know. It’s unfortunate because the truths I know are not pleasant ones. The stress of knowing them is what drives me to madness. Human beings should not have to know such difficult things. At least they should not have to know them alone. It doesn’t help much if a few people you know also know, if they aren’t around. It doesn’t help so much as we’d like to know that God knows. Knowing that God knows means we don’t have to think we’re wrong just because we can’t communicate with our fellow-man, but it doesn’t cure the problem.

We humans are designed to need each other. What I need I do not usually have these days. I feel as if I am drifting farther and farther away, not into any sort of untruth, but into madness just the same. Will enough sleep over Christmas break solve the problem? Will better food than Aramark’s help me? No homework, will that help? Or will these things only numb the pain, give me the chance to spend more strength on my insanity than I’ve been able to muster lately because it all had to do elsewhere?

Speaking of strength, I have plenty of it; I’m practically invincible. But it doesn’t feel like it helps much. The greater the strength, the more it is spent, because I am not lazy. The more strength I spend, the wearier I become. Like Spiderman, my gift is also my curse.

Do not envy me for my intellect. Do not envy me for anything else I have that you may not have.

Do not be grateful you do not have my intellect, or anything else I have that you may not have. Be who God made you to be, that is all. Do not compare yourself to me, or to anyone. Compare yourself only to . . . yourself. To what you could be or should have been.

And as for those of you who also know the truths of which I speak. As for those of you whom those truths concern. You may think what you want about triumph and victory. You’re doing fine because so many terrible truths do not make it onto the Snipe site for so many different reasons. Know now if you never did: you have made my life miserable. I live in hell as I walk on earth; I am in torment, anguish, agony, I am alone, I live in utter misery and madness. You shouldn’t have done those things to me, lying to me and treating me with disrespect, treating me as a child, perhaps, should be treated, but not as a college student deserves. You should not, also, have blasphemed so many other things that had nothing to do with me specifically: infantile chapel messages, Scripture taken out of context, weak and pathetic theology.

You may think what you want about triumph and victory. In my state of madness I have a hard time even imagining that you people are not malevolent, yet I know (logically) that most of you probably are not. Pathetic, perhaps. Stupid and foolish, maybe. Simultaneously malevolent and benevolent, possibly (what contradictions we humans are!). Merely malevolent, I admit you probably are not. So maybe you don’t cruelly think, “I’ve won” or “We’ve won” or “Take that!” as you watch we writhe in the agony you had a hand in causing.

But let’s just pretend you do think that. Fine, I can live with it. Such cruelty will hurt me more, increase my madness and rage. Fine. I am strong; I can take it. But don’t you dare think for a minute that your peace and the tranquility of your little kingdoms, contrasted with my madness, are a victory.

I have the truth. The truth is an end in itself. Sometimes the truth wins because people figure things out and fix things. The rest of the time . . . even if we don’t see truth known and published on the internet, it still wins. Those of us who know it and love it, we win with it. I am practically invincible; but the truth is invincible, period.

And winning never came easily. So be it. I still win.

Dear readers, know that I am, indeed, a tortured soul, but do not feel sorry for me. It would numb my pain to know that someone feels sorry for me, but . . . my gift is greater. Greater than yours? God only knows, and why should any human ever even care? Greater than my pain? Oh, yes. Oh, yes, indeed. Bring on the agony and madness. I enjoy this; it’s so much more interesting. It’s so much better than boredom, and so very much better than having peace without truth.

It is the truth that is special, dear friends who are not truly malevolent (are you only misguided?). And, since the truth is that all of us are abused, it is all of us, whether we post on the Snipe site or not, who are special. Apologies to me are unlikely to be accepted. Apologies to everyone, and fixing things for everyone, have a much better shot at it.