Dear Paranoia, 

It must be exhausting. Muslims are terrorists, black people are gang bangers, and Latinos are thieves. How do you allow people to sleep at night? As your fear adjusts society’s eyes to focus on the sight post, adjusting the hands to grip tighter, adjusting the volume of hate. Turning the hate on so loud, that it stifles the murmur of humanity before it even escapes our lungs. We all carry a piece of you within us-you’re inevitable. I’ve experienced you on the playground as a child. All it took was a tiny trip over the sidewalk to send me spiraling into a mayhem of uncontrolled delusions. Those girls are laughing at me... they must not like me... I can never come back here. I’m sure every child goes red with embarrassment one way or another, that’s how you make yourself known at first. Paranoia, you never quite go into hibernation, instead a home is built for you in the back of our minds. Dusted from cobwebs and prepped with all the essentials you need for survival. You grow there as we cross the street in the night-everything is scarier in the dark right? Was that a phone? I can’t tell, I draw first from your whispers in my ears in this dog eat dog world we dreamt into reality. Amanda Michelle Tod, Tamir Rice, Sayyad Milne. Names that should bring an outcry upon the nation, names that should weaken your force upon our hearts. Yet, I doubt you can place a face on the names that you placed a bullet inside. We’ve all heard the stories: I couldn’t see his hand... she shouldn’t have worn that... their religion scares me. It’s all because of the hunger you possess. Fear is your energy, your fuel, it’s what you crave for.  
         

Do you recognize the following names? OJ Simpson, Osama bin Laden and Lee Malvo. Of course you do, you yelled these names into our ears so loud we couldn’t keep our eyes open wide enough to see details; only color. The color of skin, the blur of smoke, the flash of red. You so dutifully painted a picture with the murky stains we stumbled blindly through our past, but you don’t allow us to look up from your canvas. I’m aware that you are smart enough to figure out once we do, you’ll be evicted. Uprooted. Your presence will be a long-gone memory located in the history section of the library. You will only serve society as a reminder of the progress we have created. Paranoia, you use unrelenting fear to keep heads bowed and eyes glued to that canvas. A canvas that binds the colors to whoever it may fit, a canvas that will make fictional shadows take form and dance. Something’s lurking in the distance, covered by a color you sketched, you whispered “suspect” and since we are one, since you are in my head, what else am I to expect? 
         

Ted Bundy, Nikolas Cruz and Brenton Tarrant. I know these names hold significance to you, but you always manage to sweep your paint brush under the rug. We don’t distinguish the color white as dangerous because you justify that there’s no room amongst the dismal collage already laid out. Everything is scarier when it’s dark right? Would you see a difference if the colors weren’t there? We learn the colors of the rainbow as soon as we start school, each one beautiful as we recite them together. How did we allow you to build a society that idolizes the absence of color? To white. To somehow make me, a white female, feel blessed. For I know I will never fall victim to your canvas. My face will never be held in fear of the mind’s eye. And someday when I look behind me to see flashing blue lights, I will see it as an inconvenience. But on behalf of my colored brothers and sisters, I'm fighting for this spark to become ablaze. A fire so bright that it makes the shadows disappear. So loud that it makes our ears fall deaf to your screams. So intense that it makes you hide out in the house we so respectively kept air conditioned for you. A fire that will act as the sun in the night, so your fabricated colors won’t torment our dreams as we slumber so ever peacefully. Paranoia, without you, nothing is scary in the dark. 
                                                                                                              Sincerely, 
                                                                                                            Sydni H.