Real

Today, my counselor said that I needed to do some research on my diagnosis so I could obtain help in what is real and what is not real. I was so crushed that I came home early, because this “psychotic features” thing is eating my lunch. That’s because I’m not psychotic. Everything that I have said has basis in fact, and I do believe that the stories told to me were true according to them. I just passed on information that wasn’t true because I thought it was, thus the hallucinations that did happen according to other people. They were not a party to the conversations I had over the internet, and I’m done justifying what I thought was true.

Because what I thought was true has turned over several times.

If you are Aada’s friend, I need you to tell her that her little stunt cost me. I had finally figured out what I thought was the truth and she yanked the rug out from under me in a big way. So, now she’s the only one with a story inside me again, and one that will never seem real to anyone else because it can’t be.

I don’t need her to show up like a white knight, although I would accept her.

I just need empathy and sympathy, because mental illness sucks- and it sucks even more when you are not as mentally ill as advertised, but that label is stuck on you, anyway. So perhaps I do know a thing or two about having a story written for you that you didn’t want.

My story is written because I have written hers; I have written it with my blood, sweat, and tears for many years. Aada tells me that my words are like pricks on her skin. She does not know how I am crying and shaking to write. She has never seen my process, never seen how I interact with anyone except her and maybe a few others, two of which are entirely regrettable.

She’s a boss and I’m not. I need her to come down for a second and just be a friend. I know I did this to myself, in some ways. In others, the ball was in her court and the shot clock ran out.

But this is important. My life is being changed by this relationship in a way that few others have been, which is why my story is so unrelatable. It’s, as my friend Wendy wrote in epitaph for my friend Greg’s twins, “too rare for anywhere but its ancient Celtic home.” All of the wisdom I’ve gained in 12 years will slowly leak out my ear, the end of “Flowers for Algernon” writ large.

At least the recipe for Lanagan’s Pub Chili is in there somewhere.

This isn’t a bad thing. I need to slow down. But I’m just not ready. I’m only 48.

But I need the one person in the world who knows I’m just me to tell me that. That I am real. That we are real. Like she’s done a hundred times.

I need her to reassure me, like she’s done a hundred thousand times.

But it needs to be a hundred thousand and one, because she thought she was being cute.