...A lost utopia...

A very long time ago in an age long forgotten to the denizens of my mind, the control centre and its surroundings looked very different.

A kind and gentle young girl known as "Joy" was the well intentioned and fair leader over the emotions and sought to better the life of her human host in any way she knew how while making sure none of the other emotions felt left out even if their opinions didn't always align with hers.

The building where the emotions lived was always clean and tidy, and beautifully decorated withcolourful mosaic wallpaper and carpeting.

Every emotion worked for the betterment of their host with a crisp grin on their faces as they went about their day, even fear and anger could not help but let the smile tugging on their lips be seen.

It was an age of celebration, of moonlit feasting and singing and parties. Every day was another party of rejoicing the joy of being alive and being a part of a happy young boy's guardian within his young and inquisitive mind.

"Fear" spent his days keeping the young boy safe from hazards so that he need never shed a tear over a cut or scrape. Fear knew that the boy's worst fear of all was the idea that one day he would be thrown into a wooden box and put into the ground and his entire job revolved around feeding the boy the smallest amount of fear needed possible so that the boy need never experience his greatest fear.

At least for as long as he was able, for the then kind hearted fear could not help but realize that the wooden box under the ground was a place no one could avoid forever.

Fear also knew the boys second greatest fear revolved around exams. The boy suffered a yet undocumented and untreated disease known as "Examaphobia" which the doctors in the world were too lazy to try and diagnose let alone try to cure. And yet if the boy couldn't pass the exams he could not help but shiver at the thought of, the boy's third incurable fear would come into place transforming the usually happy boy into a cowering husk unable to do more than shiver and cry.

The fear that no one would love him as he was. The fear that no one would want his broken parts.

Anger spent his days keeping the boy's temper in check, despite how much he would have loved to simply mash the buttons in the control panel and have the boy throw a massive temper tantrum every day. It was all because he loved the boy so much that he instead responsibly spent his days finding the least hurtful and least harmful ways of helping the boy release any anger he had as well as minimizing the number of things that could cause the boy to be angry in the first place by sometimes carefully triggering a small amount of anger to prevent much larger bouts of anger later on.

Like fear, anger knew that the emotion he embodied was not one that was good for the boy even in small doses, but that sometimes small dosses were necessary to minimize the negativity of the mind regardless. Anger knew that the boy's greatest anger was directed at two things that could sadly never be completely solved. The boy was angry with the hard fact that when every person was created, they were created with an invisible clock in their body that was set to start ticking down from the second when they were even conceived in their mother's womb before they were even born.

And when the clock ticked to zero, their eyes closed and they could no longer do or feel anything else. Lucky people had this happen when they were hopefully too old to move or do much anyway, in the luckiest cases being maybe over the age of one hundred years or so and having been around long enough to see both their grand and great grand child. Unlucky people had it happen when they were yet helpless embryos unable to even scream as the invisible black hooded man with the scythe came at them with his bony hand outstretched.

But lucky or unlucky, it happened to everyone sooner or later and the boy was angry that the creator of the world if one existed, was unkind enough to enforce such a cruel time constraint on the creations he was supposed to love and care about.

The boy was also angry at the thought of exam after exam, and how even after several thousand years of getting more and more advanced in technology that mankind was still not clever or careful enough to recognize Examaphobia (The fear of exams) as a serious medical condition. And that all because he couldn't do well in something so difficult and frightening, his closest relatives would stop loving him over that. And yet the boy only claimed those were his two biggest angers. His true biggest anger was far worse than either of those.

The boy was angry at himself that he wasn't like other people. People who took exams in stride and walked through them like walking through the park on a sunny day beneath the crystal blue skies licking a popsicle and listening to the smash hit song number one on the charts. Angry that the chances of himself becoming anything remotely better than a smelly pile of rags on the sidewalk with a cup of coins was less likely than the chances the average lottery player had of winning the jackpot even with just one ticket. And angry that he would not be able to achieve the four things every man knew it was their duty to achieve from the day they were born.

To get rich, to be famous and then to be in a position of great power before finishing a lifetime of glory by tying the knot to the cheers of their family, their friends and eventually their little kid who would hail them no less than civillians would hail superman and batman. The boy knew that he'd not be able to achieve any single one of them and his anger at himself knew no bounds, even back then. But anger made sure the boy never released his anger at others. Any anger the boy felt was redirected internally and only externally when the boy was in a private place where no one could hear or see the boy's words of rage. Anger also made sure that the boy never injured himself through his fits of rage.

Then there came "disgust"

Back then, disgust was a much more mild tempered and tolerant man who knew the value of restraint and altruism. He was also clever enough to realize that no amount of disgust however small could be good for the boy. The boy's disgust at the idea of having a limited amount of time to live rather than an unlimited amount. The boy's disgust at having to take difficult exams which made it difficult for him to enjoy his life or develop himself as a person. The boy's disgust at himself, and how he never seemed good enough to anyone. Not even himself.

As the boy often sang to himself when he was on his own.

"I am no stranger to the dark"

"Run away, they say, cause we don't want your broken parts."

"I've learned to be ashamed of all my scars"

"Hide away, they say, no one will love you as you are"

Disgust did his utmost to convince the boy that this disgust on himself was unjustified. After all, beauty was in the eyes of the beholder and it was what you thought of yourself that mattered more than what other people thought of you. He helped the boy to unload some of his disgust at the shallow others who unfairly discriminated against him. He tried to make the boy see that not everyone was the same and that some people did indeed love the boy as he was.

The efforts of "disgust" were not perfect but the boy appreciated them anyway and they helped keep the boy clear of too much self loathing.

The kind efforts of the emotions made the boy's mind something of a paradise despite the sad world outside it. A sanctuary of sorts for the boy to turn to when every star was falling from the sky, every last heart around him was breaking and every ship was going down including the one with him on it. The boy wasn't the happiest boy, but he was nontheless very quick to laugh and easy to please while difficult to anger. Riley's emotions would have had a field day with those of the little boy. The two Joy's could easily have become besties and Riley could have become enamored by the little boy'soptimistic views on life and ability to make his companions laugh in even their bleakest moments.

It was all bearable, until he came.