The first time I recall taking the red pill was 36 years ago when I was 13 years old. I've taken that red pill most of the days of my life since then. My oldest coherent memories, in fact, date to the earliest days of my birth at age 13. Everything I experienced before then happened to someone else, and just a few bits and pieces of that one's leftover memories somehow got lodged in my mind and stuck there when he died.
There have been a small number of brief but blissful periods of my life where I retreated to the comfortable numbness afforded by the blue pill. They were always during times of great stress, when I simply had realized too much and needed a mind-numbing rest. But even during those times I was aware that the red pill was there, and I knew that I would be drawn irresistably to taking it again. And so it came to pass, time after time.
In recent years I've come to realize that I cannot live my life without the red pill. It has changed me so much, that now I depend on it; I must have it in order to make it safely and sanely through each day. I do not think I will ever take the blue pill again; I don't think I can now.
Almost nobody takes the red pill, you know. I know the rare ones who do when I meet them, and they are few. I also know that the blue pill takers sometimes imagine that they are taking the red one, but it is just a peculiar color-blindness that afflicts them. They just can't see that the pill they are taking is blue.
