Evidently Over You

Artwork by Rita Chen, staff artist

He was evidently over me. And my stupid brain decided to latch onto that like a gorilla would grip bananas at the zoo. Tight, until the yellow innards of my former bliss were now spilled guts, or reminiscent of snot. Take your equally gross pick.

Matthias Green. Tall, of course. Musician, the lyrical type. That’s where they get you. They mold and shape a boy into the perfect image of your personal prince. At least the one in your head. Then, the whispers come. The incessant commentary on your movie of a life. The whispers come before the ghosts. The ghosts come before the demons.

My therapist says that I can’t blame everything on Matthias. But let me tell my story, it was my imagination that worked like Artificial Intelligence to create the, so-called, delusions. (You call them delusions, but my eyes beg to differ on that account. I sure as heck can’t, because that’s when the laughing track comes in, all dressed up in ivory and gold and brass.) The brass is particularly prominent. The audience is your judge and jury. Like Nirvana famously said in one of their songs, “Entertain us.”

So, I did.

I let my brother possess me. What? That’s not something you’d ever do? Never? Huh. Food for thought. Anyways, my brother is a wolf, a rare breed at that. He’s half gold, half purple--like some kind of alternate dimension’s version of the Lakers’ mascot. He howled and snapped at my mother and aunt.

“I hate you!” He yelled, snarling and biting.

He gave me some control at the end of it, but being the weakling I was, I collapsed into a pile on the pinewood floor in the living room, sweating profusely. I needed strength from my friends to execute the performance of my life. I dropped to the floor, rocking back and forth, staring blankly into space. Surely then I’d be free. Surely then I’d see Matthias, my love. Surely this would work… right?

“We need to take her to the hospital. She hasn’t been sleeping for three days now.”

The unsaid hung in the air like a half-deflated helium balloon: Something’s happened to her. She needs mental help.

Of course, I was perfectly lucid when we got to the Parkview Hospital.

#

“You are not all there, honey.”

“Yes I am, my brothers and sisters say--”

“You don’t have any brothers.”

“And sisters?” The hospital staff member shook his head. “You’re an only child.”

“No.”

All he did was sigh and point me back to my cell. I heard the definitive click of the door, like the clack of a key on a keyboard. Then, fluorescent lights. From wall to wall, plaster white, unlike the cream-colored sheets I’d been given. At the foot of the bed, I saw an apparition. The hologram of Matthias. Each time I shifted from left to right, he did too. I called out to him.

“Matthias!”

I decided to walk to him. Maybe then I could interface with his hologram. That’s when he disappeared. What else was there to do but work out?

The voices, they said, “Never underestimate a strong mind.”

Now I look back and think… huh. My therapist might say, “How ironic.”

#

Over the course of a longer stint in the jail-like premises of Parkview, a rehab facility, and a long time in therapy, I came to learn what was going on with me. Bipolar. Yeah. That’s what was making me act so strangely, though my therapist still says I shouldn’t attribute all of what messed me up to Matthias and his power to subliminally affect my hallucinations. If she’s so smart, alright then, I'm done with him. His memory remains though, maybe an issue for another day. Surely now, I’m over him? Surely.