A person must understand what happens before they can know why or how. If you don't know what's happening, then why bother knowing why it's happening or how it does so? The what is the most essential. A person can add 2 and 2 and get 4, even if they don't know why. Like in math a long time ago, I was told that oh, say 17 = 14 -(x-3) and was told to find x. I understood that to get the x-3 out of parentheses that an understood 1 came right after the minus sign, so that the equation would become 17 = 14-x+3
I got it. Pretty simple. But I had this mental block... I needed to know why in order to get it fully. But I knew what I was doing, so it was alright.

Who knows why a person does anything? All that matters is that they do. The unique way someone does something shows more of why they did it than anything else. A caterpillar could complain of a rotten apple it ate to a fish in the river. It could wriggle around and make dramatic sounds, but all the while the fish knows how bad that apple was. The fish ate a caterpillar that ate part of the apple and was feeling quite miserable themselves. But no, such a lowly thing as a fish surely couldn't understand the plight of the caterpillar...

x=0. zero. as in none, nothing, not there. It's the part of the whole that's missing, yet isn't because it shouldn't be there in the first place. It doesn't have a place. It doesn't exist. If the whole had it, it wouldn't because it wouldn't be there. Not simply shattered or scattered or missing. No, that's too easy to piece back together with that expensive glitter glue. A smile and a kind word won't make nothingness something. Once something's taken away, it's zero. Nothing, nothing at all to try to build that something back with. And somehow, that quicksand you didn't know was there destroys that paper doll with its thick grin on.

Sacrifice. A bloody word, isn't it? I can just see the rivulets of blood pouring down a face reflected in a warped and smokey mirror...

(but zero's always going to be there, isn't it?)