The Trolley Problem
by Tanielle Dlamini
North East School of the Arts
Tanielle "Honey" Dlamini is a 16-year-old writer at North East School of the Arts. Her eccentric personality, love of pop culture, and Jamaican-South African background influences her work, as well as her life. Tanielle one day hopes to work in the film industry as a writer and producer.
Wynter sat in the office, staring at the paintings behind her therapist's head. The paintings weren’t intriguing at all, but they took her mind off of the smell of the room. Fabricated Febreze scents filtered through her nose hairs, and she wanted to rip out her hair.
“Wynter, you’ve been coming for weeks, and we’ve barely made progress,” her therapist said. She sighed and finally put down her clipboard to stare Wynter in her eyes. “I need you to talk to me.”
“I have been.” Wynter wasn’t lying, she was, but self-depreciation, anxiety, and harmful thoughts don’t go away overnight. They take a lot of nights. Too many that Wynter doesn’t want to deal with it. “Why can’t you just put me on meds, Dr. Brown?”
“Because one day the medication isn’t going to work anymore, and you’re not going to be happy with the reality that you live in. You need to learn how to live before we even think about putting you on anything.”
Wynter sighed and let her head fall back in the chair. All of her problems could be solved with a set of braids and nails. But what happens when the beauty wears off? What happens when Wynter is alone in her room, confronted with all of her thoughts?
You’re too black.
You’re not smart enough. You’re too smart. You’re too good for this, but nothing good will ever come to you.
You’re not pretty. Your stomach has rolls and your thighs have cellulite. You would be so much prettier if you were thinner.
You’re never going to find love. Such an unlovable little black girl. Too dark to be loved.
Be better. Do better.
Be understood.
Be normal.
“Living is overrated,” Wynter said, crossing her arms over her chest.
“That’s the teenage angst talking, dear,” Dr. Brown chuckled and stood. She walked over to her coffee machine and grabbed two cups. “Would you like some? I know it’s cold outside.”
Wynter nodded as Dr. Brown poured two cups of coffee. She adds creams and sugars but takes ever so slightly too long.
She then hands Wynter the coffee, as she goes to sit with her own coffee. She flips over to a new page on her clipboard. She clicks her pen and pushes up her glasses. Oh God, she’s going full therapist. “Wynter, I have a question. Do you know the Trolley Problem?”
Everyone knew the Trolley Problem—the test between morality and ethics. Wynter took a sip of her coffee. It was far too sweet for her liking, sugar, and cream blocked the strong earthy taste, but Wynter didn't complain. Dr. Brown made it out of the kindness of her heart, so the least Wynter could do was drink it. “Yes.”
“Let’s say you’re driving a trolley, and you come to a fork in the road. The left side of the road has your past self, the memories, the joy, the pain, and the right side has your future self, all the joy, the memories, the pain. Which one do you choose?”
“My past self.” The words left her mouth with hardly any hesitation.
“And why?”
“I wanna get rid of her.” Nothing good came with a young Wynter. Insecurities followed her laughter. Her laughter followed racism. Racism followed jokes from “friends”. Friends she hated with a burning passion.
“And why?”
“She’s terrible, she’s sad, she pleases everyone, she doesn’t know who she is. She is-”
Dead.
You are nothing. A floating mass of nothing is what you are. The blackness of the void of nothingness is comforting. You float and swim in nothingness until your atoms and molecules make something new. But you are nothing.
“What happened?” Wynter’s voice rang through the nothingness. Light flashed as her vision came.
A baby cried in her mother's arms while being rocked back and forth.
A young girl with twists and barrettes ran around. She squealed as she ran with another little girl—joy radiating off of their skin.
A boy ran next to her, devil horns sprouting from his head. His eyes were nothing but a black abyss. He stared directly at her, smiling. Tearing noises sounded in Wynter’s ears as Damien’s smile got wider and wider and wider. It reached ear to ear, sharp teeth ready to tear her limb from limb.
He did nothing but watch her. Watch. And wait. Watch. And charged.
Wynter fell face-first, the moment Damien charged at her. She pulled herself up, letting her eyes adjust to her surroundings.
Blurred silhouettes of people surrounded her, all wide-eyed and smiling that same smile that Damien had. One of the silhouette's heads shifted to a camel’s, hurling the largest glob of spit she’d ever seen directly at her.
She hissed in pain as it hit her arm, gliding off leaving a white word behind. Wynter didn’t think she’d see that word ever again. A small tear slid down her cheek. Raucous laughter bounced off of the void. More spitballs came her way, each word worse than the last.
She waited for it to stop. She’d already known that she could do nothing about this.
Cheering took laughter’s place, as Wynter finally opened her eyes. All of her was white. From head to toe, she was covered in white ink. The silhouettes cheered for her. She smiled a little bit, this was what she wanted—to look like them, to be acceptable.
The cheering got louder and louder, as her smile got wider. The silhouettes ran to hug her. They shook the void. Wynter heard cracks coming somewhere.
A drop of water hit her head. Then another. Then one more. Then the floodgates opened, washing off her newfound happiness. White ink slid down her body, slowly dripping off of her fingertips. The silhouettes screamed, pushing her off of them.
Her face collided with the ground. She flipped her body over. Tears streamed down her face, as she felt the cool metal of trolley tracks hit her palms. A bright light blinded her. Her bones were crushed in no time.
She is dead. There is none of her. No past, no present, no future. Nothing. You float. You swim. You fly in the black cloud of nothingness. It’s comforting.
Then it burns. It tears your skin apart, cell by cell, cell structure by cell structure, atom by atom. You are a scattered mess of atoms, and it hurts.
Death. It hurts.
Wynter wanted to wake up from whatever kind of psychotic dream she was forced to have.
Her chest rapidly rose and fell as her eyes peeled open. The uninteresting paintings of her therapist's office lined her vision.
“What was that?” Wynter panted. “Why did you take it away from me? I was finally happy, then you took it.” Tears fell down Wynter’s face. Her hand rushed to her face to make sure they were in fact tears.
You weren’t you, but rather a facade created by the people around you.
“They finally liked me.” Wynter wiped more tears away.
You hated yourself.
“What if I want to hate myself? I just want people to like me.”
Those weren’t the right people to like you. At some point, you are going to have to realize that facades are not true, and you will not know who you are in the end.
“I’m already at the end. Facades lead to self-hatred.” Wynter said. “Self-hatred leads to me wanting to kill my past, present, and future.”
Okay, so you choose to kill the future too. Congratulations, you live, but death is coming for you. You don’t have to worry about that for a long time, though.
Wynter found herself in a garden, looking at herself, but much much older.
Older Wynter lay on a blanket in a pink sundress. She had a few snacks and drinks next to her and soft music playing. A white cat jumped into her lap, much to her delight. She pets the cat while reading a book: Magical Negro by Morgan Parker.
Her natural hair kissed the sky with a flower sitting neatly behind her ear. A person lay next to her reading as well, but their eyes traveled to look at her every so often.
She seemed so content with her life.
Wynter’s heart swelled. She looked just like her mother in all of those photos that she’d seen when she was younger. Her dreams of experiencing the same peace as her mother did at that time found themselves back in her mind.
“I want to be her,” Wynter whispered, “So so bad.”
Self-hatred also leads to self-discovery. Isn’t that nice?
As soon as Wynter sits in the grass, it disappears from beneath her; the void taking its place.
“No. No. I wanna go back.” Wynter looks around. “What happened? Where’s the garden?”
The whistle of the wind runs through your ears; the scythe drags up your spine. Death is coming for you.
“No, wait.”
But be grateful because you don’t know when. You can live in your ignorant bliss, but death is coming for you. It kisses your neck and tugs on your hair. It has a hold on you. The grip can never be let go, dear.
But your lungs are fine. You breathe in and out. Air flows through your lungs rejuvenating your blood cells. The blood pumps to your heart going to your brain. You are alive.
Tick. Tock.
“Stop it, I wanna live.”
Your lungs are starting to close. Closed bronchioles make it hard to breathe. There have never been any issues breathing before. This is a new development.
Tick Tock.
“Please.”
Your lungs don’t really work anymore; shallow breaths are all you know.
Tick Tock.
Your heart falls through your chest. Your blood cells have no more oxygen, and your bones become brittle. The skin is dry and ashy. It flakes as it falls to the floor.
Tick Tock.
“Stop this.”
Your brain doesn’t work. You can’t comprehend that you need to move. Well, you can’t move. Your bones have no use. Your legs have no power. The light that shines in your eyes is frightening. The sound that rings through your ear should tell you to move. You don’t move. You can’t. It’s coming for you. Coming faster and faster.
Tick Tock.
Time has run out.
Wynter gasped. She begged, pleaded, for air. Her chest rose and fell—it was real this time. She could feel her atoms, her cells, her bones, her fingers. She wasn’t dead. Life wasn’t a void. She was breathing. She was alive. She was okay.
She had time.
“What did you do to me?” Wynter shook in her seat. Her breathing finally steadied, but the shaking of her hands refused to stop.
Dr. Brown sat across from her, sipping her coffee. Her hand moved a mile a minute on her clipboard, making her too busy to respond to Wynter.
As Wynter went to go drink more of her coffee to try and calm herself down, Dr. Brown quickly got up to snatch the coffee out of her hands. “No need to drink anymore of that.” Dr. Brown threw the drink in the trash can, handing Wynter a water bottle instead. “Coffee’ll just make you hyper.” She let out an awkward laugh.
“What did you do? Why-What happened? What was that? Who was that?”
Dr. Brown finally set down her clipboard. “Wynter, that was the Trolley Problem. You see, Wynter, life cannot exist without the past, nor can it exist without the future. Life is the present. Your past is your present because your present soon becomes your past. Your future is your present because your present is soon to be your future.
“This makes it sound like life is linear, but I assure you it’s not. Life is full of twists and turns that are necessary for the growth and progression of us as beings. You don’t live life on a trolley, rather a roller coaster. You have your ups and you have your downs, the twists, and turns. Not to mention, the puking.” Dr. Brown let out a light chuckle.
Wynter sipped the water, letting the words that Dr. Brown said finally register. She couldn’t kill the past; she couldn’t kill the future. She was the present. All of her was the present, there was nothing but her. In simple terms, it was her world, and everyone else was just living in it.
“Wynter, do you know the Trolley Problem?”
“Yes. According to you, I just lived it.”
“Let’s say you’re driving a trolley, and you come to a fork in the road. The left side has your past self, the memories, the joy, the pain, and the right side has your future self, all the joy, the memories, the pain. Which one do you choose?”
“Neither!” Wynter yelled, God the things she would do to never go through that again. “I-I wanna go back to the garden. Please, I liked it there. I felt happy and at peace and…What do I have to do?”
“Past or future?”
“Do I have to come to terms with this? What do you want to hear from me ‘I’m black and that’s okay’? That this isn’t such a curse, and it’s not my fault. I’m not the problem.” Wynter buried her face in her hands. “I can live like this and it’s okay.”
“Would you look at that: a third track?” Dr. Brown finally puts down her clipboard. “Keep riding that track. Live in the present.”
