The Trial of Identity

​​"Please rise for the honorable Judge." Everyone stands so I do as well. A man in a robe traipses down the aisle, sweeping the dust from the floor though only moving it barely, as if pretending to clean it without making any progress. In fact, it doesn’t even move that much dust, it only makes a long trail on the floor, dust moved to the side as if shamed. As he passes, his air suffocates me. An air of pretentious prestige. An air I will have to breathe to plead my case. What case? 

The Judge sits at his desk and bangs the gavel, “order in the court,” he shouts. “Do you, the accused, have anything to say before your sentencing?” Anything to say? I have many questions to ask but nothing to say so I hold my mouth shut and stay standing as everyone, everything, else falls behind me. “The sentence is ten years without chance of parole.” Regardless of what I’ve done, I must face it and hope that someone will be brave enough to stand up for me should it be wrong. But then again, maybe I’m a cold-hearted serial killer who was finally caught in my sordid act. 

“I’m sorry.” The Lawyer says to me, already turning. He’s wearing a pinstripe suit, fashionable and modern. He gets paid well. His socks are baby yellow as if unafraid to stand out and draw attention. His shoes are platformed and next to me he appears taller than he should be. A man of his stature is defending me, I must either be important or wealthy. If it’s the latter, I guess I wasn’t wealthy enough. His highness walks down the aisle, avoiding the dust and pacing the Judge’s path as if the tiny bunnies were vermin. 

A man in a uniform, equipped with a baton, taser, and gun pulls my hands behind my back to handcuff them. I should scream. I should cry out that I don’t know how I got here. I should complain and demand a retrial. I should do many things. But in that moment, as everyone filters out, I hold my vigil. There is a reason for everything, I believe, and this is a way for me to find myself and create myself. This is an opportunity given to me by a higher being. Higher than the Judge or the Lawyer and way higher than the Officer. 

“Officer,” I ask, “what was I charged for?” But he, like me, keeps silent in the face of that question. Perhaps he believes I am being ludicrous, that I am only faking it to get out of the sentence. Or perhaps he believes in me and is saddened by the results of the Sentencing. “Officer, what was I charged for?” I repeat, but still no reaction. I am pushed out of the room by another door and steal a glance at the Judge. He is making his way down the stairs from his throne and his sword and his robe continues to follow him, pushing the vermin away. What a holy endeavor it is to be the determiner of one’s future. 

I am not the Officer, not the Lawyer, not the Judge. I am akin to the vermin on the ground. Mistaken and pushed to the side and hidden from as if the ugliness of humanity itself. This begs the question, what did I do? 

I am further pushed onto a bus, a blue bus which rides for hours upon hours across the countryside. No complaint from me here for I am the sole passenger on this ride. The only other passengers are the Officer and the Driver. How ironically lost must one be to drive others to their destination? Taxi drivers and bus drivers, they are midway jobs, stepping stones to higher places once enough money is scrounged around. Yet, they are the determiners of others’ destinations. How twisted. 

After the bus and the beautiful countryside, my last glimpse of freedom if I was ever free, I am pushed into a cell. Fitted in orange, hands no longer cuffed, I sit on my bed looking down. Red circles band around my wrists, a remainder of the painful mistaken situation I have been dropped in. I look around my cell, a prison of metal and concrete. Again, it appears, I have no partner in this struggle, only myself. 

As night falls upon the prison, the nightmares start. Banging on the walls echo in my head as I start to thrash and wave my arms wildly to get someone’s attention, but alas, there is no savior. I start to lose hope. Shouts and screams and paranoia ricochet through my skull as the moon rises and sets and the sun rises in its place. I rise with it and look in the mirror where looking back is a skeleton. Without an identity, without a meaning, without a purpose, without understanding, I am the bare bones of a human being. How much longer can I take such torture? How much longer can I suffer such a meaningless existence?

Days turn into weeks turn into months turn into years. On the final day of my sentence, the Officer returns. Neither he nor I have aged a day. I turn to the mirror one last time and again it reflects the same skeleton. I have not found a piece of myself here. It seems he has not found himself either. The bus ride back is solemn, a reverse of the journey to the prison. The Driver has changed as I presumed he would, after all, they are only intermediaries. I return to that fateful courtroom I was dropped into. 

“Please rise for the honorable Judge.” Everyone stands and I as well as I have learned. His robe again swishes against the floor, those poor mites blown into piles on the sides of the trail. His air hasn’t changed, hasn’t staled, it has only maintained. I suspect he too has not found a part of himself in the last ten years. “Order in the court. Do you, the reformed, have anything to say before your freedom?” But I withhold. I am not reformed for I have not changed. But I bite my tongue regardless, scared of the consequences. “Then you are free to do as you may please.” The Judge says, returning to his chambers with much speed this time as if he feels the mounting loss of time. 

This time, I leave the courtroom by the doors that everyone else uses. I am the same as them though I am not one of them. I still have yet to find myself. None greet me. I walk through the exit and find myself face to face with a yellow cab. “Are you coming?” He asks, so I get in. Intermediaries. 

After exiting, I find myself at a brownstone, the curious thing being, I have no idea how I got here. Is this my home? But I own just as much as I know, nothing. The keys dangle from the lock and I wonder if any other passerbys notice this as I do. None turn their heads. I enter the brick structure, the same brick as the prison and I find myself in a comfortable abode. 

I head to the bathroom and the first thing I see is myself in the mirror. The same bare bones reflect back. A punch heads straight into the reflection, shattering it into a million shards. Bad luck they would say. I pick up a shard and no longer see a skeleton but a person. In another shard, another. The whole mirror was made up of shards of a million different people. The whole skeleton was made up of bones of a million different people. I am none of those people yet all of them. 

Maybe, I am not meant for this world. Maybe He erased my identity for a reason. Not the Judge, not the Lawyer, not the Officer, not the Driver, not the other Driver, Him. Maybe He knows I am not meant to know, maybe He thinks I have realized too much. I am not meant for this world. 

The shard in my hand plunges into my wrist and the pulsing of my heart throbs and then dims. Red circles band around my wrists, a remainder of the painful mistaken situation I have been dropped in. Blood drips on the perfect tile floor, I’m sorry for that my dear friend, as I put shard after shard together. It seems impossible, but I am just as impossible and so is He. Maybe He is me. 

In the final reflection I see myself. A true consolidation of all I am and all I ever will be. I see all of my family, all of my friends, all of those I’ve ever loved and hated. I see the Judge and the Lawyer. I see the Officer and the Driver. I lay down and lean my head on the cold and red tile floor. I close my eyes and darkness envelops. Then, and only then, I see Him.