"They can see us waving from such great heights, come down now, they'll say. But everything looks perfect from far away, come down now, but we'll stay."

I hate everything I write. I want to hold my breath until I see spots and stumble around like someone on a bad acid trip. Then I'll breathe, when I really appreciate it. But it lasts only a minute before I have to do it all over again.

I hate everything I write. I want to stand on the railing of a bridge and let the wind blow my hair across my eyes. Then I'll grab onto the railing to steady myself and think about how I almost died.

I hate everything I write. I want to step out into oncoming traffic just to see if people are paying attention. I want to shove myself at the mercy of perfect strangers and test their compassion, their selflessness. I want to make a census of people that would save me and people that would take pictures to show their families. Who really cares, right?

I hate everything I write. I want to put a single bullet in a gun and point it at people on the street to watch them jump out of the way, behind a newspaper stand, behind a baby carriage, behind a four year old with a yellow balloon. I want to pull the trigger with it pointed at my own head and watch people sigh in relief that I wasn't after them. I want to be disappointed when the bullet doesn't come out with a single shot.

I hate everything I write. I want to steal an SUV, drive the wrong way on a one-way street and honk at the people going the right way. I want to toss a beer bottle out the sunroof and watch it hit the police car behind me. Am I a risk taker?

I hate everything I write. I want to shave my head and dye my scalp bright orange. Is that weird?

I want to streak down the street and jump into strangers' pools one after the other after the other. I want to spray paint, "you're next" on my neighbour's front door and prank call her when she's home alone during a thunder storm.

I hate everything I write. I want to dump an entire can of gasoline on the model home down the street and light it on fire at four am. I want to call the police and tell them there is someone trapped inside and then show up with the rest of the neighbourhood and gawk at the firefighters trying to save someone that doesn't even exist. I want to listen to them speculate on who could be trapped in there.

I hate everything they are. They gossip about everyone other than themselves when they are the ones with the deepest secrets. They are the ones peeking out the blinds, just in case anyone is around to witness one of their many indiscretions. They lock their closets with three padlocks to keep the skeletons inside. They beat off their creeping shame with a stick so they can continue on living their hypocritical, condescending lives without a care in the whole fucking world. They breathe their filtered air and eat their organic food as if they are entitled to it just because they were born into the high-class suburban wasteland of fresh apple pie, chrysanthemums and PTA meetings.

I hate their water bottles full of vodka, their glove compartments full of cocaine, their underwear drawers full of lingerie for their son's football coach. But I have no right to hate them. They never did a damn thing to me. At least they didn't until that night. The night I slipped up. I may be an expert on doing what I want but no one is perfect, at least not up close.

I took the gas can from a shed they must have purchased at Canadian Tire and paid someone to paint so it looked like an original. Please, nothing in suburbia is an original. Everything is ripped off the person before them. The illicit affairs, the late night drug deals, the drunken fathers coming home late from work. None of that is shocking, none of that is even a little bit surprising. They see themselves as perfect drones that no one ever doubts, but no else sees them that way. They are diluting themselves. They water down their vodka so their breath doesn't smell as bad, but it doesn't make a difference, the stench is still there, right in your face, forcing you to breathe it in. I hate what they did to me, I could care less about what they do to themselves.

I stole the can and I siphoned the gas out of the SUV in the driveway. I carried the bright red can right down the middle of the street, people glanced out their windows but they were only thinking about who might be out there to expose them, always them. I went to the model home. The one that was supposed to advertise what it would be like to live here. The people that took tours of that house didn't know what they were getting themselves into when they entered the suburban nightmare I was forced to call home.

I hate everything I am. I rebel because it's the only way to keep myself apart from them. But I realize every day that the only thing I am accomplishing is making myself so much like them I can't even distinguish between where their shit ends and mine begins. I hate everything I am. But I won't change, not for anyone. I took that can and I poured it all through the house. I broke open a basement window, expecting a deafening alarm that would bring the whole neighbourhood out to gawk, but there was only silence. I was nervous and I hated myself for it.

I hate everything I do. But I still do it. I threw the match in through the open basement window after climbing back out. The concrete floor burst into a carpet of blue flames and I turned around and walked away. I wondered how long it would take. I hated waiting. I breathed in the smell of the smoke and watched from a block away as the house slowly lit up. It took the neighbours a few minutes to emerge from their own little realities but they did emerge. Their mouths dropped open and they gravitated towards the destruction taking place in front of them. They couldn't look away; it was too fascinating. Kind of like the way I can't look away from the train wrecks they insist on calling lives. I watched them huddle together like a close-knit community when in reality they couldn't be further apart from each other. They pretended to be concerned, they pretended to be worried, and they pretended to care. Even though they had to know that everyone was aware of their fake exterior, that everyone knew they were pretending. They pretended they didn't.

I called the police from the phone booth at the gas station and might have mentioned someone might be inside the house. Chaos broke loose when word got out that someone was trapped. They speculated, they gossiped, they even mentioned who they hoped it was. I stood outside the crowd, just like I always did and listened in on conversations.

I hate that I care enough to do this to them. I hate everything about life, which is why I do whatever it takes to make it interesting. Then, one of them did something I didn't expect. I didn't think it was possible. I thought I had them all figured out, but they outsmarted me. I hate to admit it but it's true, they outsmarted me. The woman in the house with the blue shutters, the one that kept a little plastic baggy of cocaine in her bed side table, the biggest hypocrite of them all, turned around and looked at me through the crowd of people. She looked at me with disgust. As if I were a parasite, as if I was the one that snorted cocaine in the bathroom at Chuck E. Cheese while my kids played in the ball pit.

None of them ever looked at me, they avoided me. They pretended I didn't exist. Just like I pretended my parents didn't exist. But she stared at me, her bloodshot eyes burning right into me to read all my secrets. I had secrets, but I never tried to keep them that way, now when it looked as though they might be revealed, I would do anything to keep them away from these people. These apron-wearing drug addicts, these alcoholic neighbourhood watch members, these bored housewives with nothing better to do than hide secrets.

I stared right back at her, trying to intimidate her, but she refused to back down. Without looking away she called out to a police officer that was guarding the police barricades so no one could get by. I hate boundaries. He leaned close to her and she said something right in his ear. I couldn't look away now, that would look guilty. And as far as this fire was concerned I was totally and utterly innocent. And that is what I told them in the interrogation room and in the courthouse and then again and again and again to my cellmates in prison. But no one listened. I should have been used to it by then. I had spent my life being ignored and doing whatever the fuck I wanted. I got away with everything and I hated it. What can I say now other than I hate everything I write? Maybe I always will.