Me, My insanity, and I

How will I know when I go insane? An 'Aurora of lunacy burns about me as I close myself off to the world in the hope that my flames will not touch the 'Flammable hearts of those I love. I know 'Indubitably that there is no hope for me, not on this plain of existence. When my parents first began their long goodbyes with rational thought, I noticed nothing until they turned from me as well. Eventually they will turn from each other, but my mind was not upon that when I went to my mother for comfort one day and she threw me to the floor. When I rose and walked away, I took with me the 'Gloomy cloak of self-loathing that has been wrapped around me in my greatest needs of warmth.

My attire of late has been mostly black, though the graying hues of apathy seem to suit me better. My 'Attitude, in contrast with my constant depression, is usually of a rather sunny disposition, though occasionally I still come to school with my mind’s eye black and bloody from where they hit me in the face. Then I take up my black cloak and wrap it about me until I can come out of my cocoon of hatred. More and more often, however, I find I cannot merely struggle free anymore. Instead, I take my knife and slice through my depression. My silver salvation leaves red welts, contrasting with my pale complexion, as rock hard proof of my 'Psychotic ways of dealing with the world.

My true delight is not in the marks on my skin that fade within weeks, but more from the less permanent strokes of 'Sharpie upon my hand, expressing feelings that I cannot show the world. Though, I must admit, this parchment serves not just that noble reason, but a more dire and irrelevant need as well. With all the turmoil on the home front, how can I (for I am but a child) be expected to learn the rest of this, this knowledge, impressed upon me from my waking hour to that time when I unhappily return home? And so I spill the excess from my 'Cranium, and pour it onto my body, where it will be forgotten shortly.

But still, think not of me as some 'Warrior or Crusader blinded by my own delusions; I am very much aware of my own insanity, though sometimes I think I am the sanest of us all. Someday my inner voice will become the voices in my head, and then the clamor in my mind will reach a 'Crescendo and I shall be conscious no more. Every day, I think that it is the last. And then I saw him.

He is a relatively new fixture in my life; I knew him last year and wanted to be friends, but my efforts were not to much avail. Now, when I see him, I feel something. This is very unusual for me, as the only feelings I have experienced to my recollection have been hate or pain. The rest are self induced. But now, there is a new emotion, one I have no name for. I doubt it is love, but I wouldn’t know, would I, while I fail even in my attempts to distance myself from the world.

In my usual attempts to gain sensations, any at all, I have the practice of collecting hugs, just to feel that little connection with a pseudo-caring human being. When I asked for a hug from him, one day when I was feeling particularly bold, his expression showed the surprise he felt before he smoothed it and obliged me.

Suddenly, action! 'Electrifying touch! Momentary Emotion! Feeling! Passion! then nothing again. We let go and parted ways. My senses tingled with the remnants of the electrical pulses racing through my neural pathways, and I wished I could stand motionless until the sensations stopped, but I satisfied myself with a look over my shoulder as I walked my usual path. I suppose that I had sensed innately the reality of his similar flaming depression, alive with lunacy that I came to know later.

And so began my non-relationship with this 'Inflammable character, who shared a passion for writing, and art, and poetry much like my own. We were very different in our author’s talents, however; while I would focus on elaborate language and precise meanings, he would just get his point across. Always a very interesting point, too, for his creativity knew no bounds, including those that society attempted to set on him. He was a rule breaker, but in no way dangerous.

The first story he shared with me is an excellent example of his devious genius. It was a first-person narrative, in which a depressed man goes off his medication and sees a penguin. The apparition appears malicious as it incorporates itself into his everyday life until it drives him to paranoia, climaxing in a dramatic one-way fight during which he falls out the window. His death is ruled a suicide.

Such amusing contrivances mixed with lingering depression were characteristic of his works, though often they were completely nonsensical, including such comic inventions as 'Wild trousers or his collection of stories based on the phrase ' “WHOOPS... it was an accident”. And so I began to know him.

Yet, as I tell my own first-person narrative, I feel compelled to explain why I share nothing of my own stories. While his have an undertone of this depression, mine have no such cover. Since we have met, I have poured more black ink on the top of my arms and written less in red, red ink on the pale, scarred underbelly that adorns my wrists.

I wish to tell him all of this and feel the old pretences ripped away, but I cannot, for fear he’ll turn on me. Or, worse, we will slide together into our pit, and so I will use him to lever me out, and tell him when we are both on high ground and well away from the edge of this cliff.

Even as I write these hopeful words I know this will never come, as I gather up my 'Gloomy cloak lying about my feet and don the hopelessness. I feel better here, for now at least I won’t be disappointed when I learn this is only friendship, nothing more. I can relish in his loss of the depression he has had for so long, but that is it. He have his goodness now. God forbid I take it from him.

This is not an unrequited love. This is one who refuses to try again when such a love would only hurt us both.