schizophrenic love affair (719 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 2 on 13 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by <diamond0sea.at.yahoo.com> (View user info) at 2005-11-03 13:12:23 EST
Who am I? I do not exist. Only one person in the world can hear my voice. And she is crazy. She lives on the street, is toothless and dirty, and clumps of matted, gray hair fall in her face. She does not beg. She is starving. Her family blames me. Even she blames me, though she generally can't say so. I think that maybe I blame me. When I first met her, she was so simple, so alone. I pitied her, but I also adored her. She was only about seventeen when I first spoke to her, and she treated me like I was real- am I?- I don't know. But after being turned out of mind after mind with a shake of a head, a simple, open consciousness seemed to be the most radiantly pure beauty. Her mind was the white light in city smog. I first spoke to her softly, in a voice as soft as the sun-kissed evening clouds. And she listened. She turned her head to hear more as her eyes filled with morning dew. It didn't matter to her that she couldn't see me; all she needed to hear was my voice. And as I spoke to her I fell in love. I was afraid after the first time we spoke; I tried to run away. But that beam of starlight in the darkest night pulled me back in, and I spoke until I could talk no more.
She, too, fell in love with me, though the people around her couldn't understand it- they couldn't understand her. It made no sense to them that she would rather be alone in apparent silence than with the people in her real life. They didn't know that I
existed yet. I lived exclusively in her mind; no more did I need cruel strangers to turn me away. I never tried to explain to them. I didn't need to because I had her and knew that she would never leave me alone. She would listen to me, and do what I told her, and I never tried to hurt her. That first year and a half was as close to human happiness as I have ever come.
When she turned nineteen, they began to suspect that I was there. She had to go and talk to people who sat in neat offices with comfortable couches. The men and women who she spoke with sat poised on the edge of their seats; charts, notebooks, and pens in hand. I did not like them, was afraid of them. They seemed to me to be predators crouched and ready to leap. I told her never to mention me to them, but they figured out that I was there anyway. I still don't know how. Once they found out that I was sharing her mind, they prescribed her pills and sent her to clinics and spoke of the possibility of dementia. She listened to them and did what they told her; it happened to quickly for me to change her mind.
The pills made me sick, they did not make her well. But of course there never was anything wrong with her. While she was taking them, I became more transparent than the most fragile ghost. I was no more seen in her mind than a wisp of smoke in the vastness of space. Each morning when she swallowed them with orange juice, I screamed at her to stop. I was too weak, she could not hear me, did not even know that I was still within her. But I was.
There were a few days in a row when she forgot to take her deadly capsules. She was twenty-one. I managed to speak to hear in a voice hoarse and soft. I asked her if she remembered me and how I loved her. She remembered. I asked her why she would try to hurt me like this. She didn't know. I told her how ill I had become since the last time we spoke. She was sorry. I told her to stop taking the pills. She did.
Since then, we have always been together, always. At first, she wanted to continue in college and get a job, but I could not stand the way people analyzed her- analyzed me. I told her that she couldn't work, that she wouldn't want to if she cared about me. She didn't. Her family was concerned. They tried to give her money, advice, and more evil pills. I told her never to speak to them again. She hasn't. We lived in a tiny urban apartment that was dirty and bare until we could no longer pay the rent. We were evicted, and out of love for me, she did not try to find another job or place to live.
For the past decade, we have curled together in alleys, trying to muster warmth against the harsh city winters. She grew ugly and jaded, but I was content for a time. I was the only person to whisper to her, and we talked all day, every day, and late into the nights. She stole food when she was weak, but most of the time, I was her only preoccupation. That was just
how I wanted it, just what I had hoped for the first time we spoke. Though her dreams were breaking without her even knowing, mine were coming true.
She became sick, however, before she turned thirty-five. Coughs racked her frail frame, and blood would come up occasionally. She always complained of cold, but I could feel the fever in her body. She stopped eating and drinking for the most part. I tried to encourage her to go get food, drink water, anything, but she acquiesced only once, about three days ago. She hasn't touched food nor water since.
Now, she has been sick for about a fortnight. Every time she coughs, I feel the shudder of pain from her chest radiate through her body. There is nothing I can do to help her. I, too, have grown weak from her illness. I know that when she dies, I will go with her. And I also know that she has mere days left to live; now, she is barely conscious and coughs with every fragile breath. I could leave and try to find a more suitable host, but after knowing this love I could not live alone in rejection for another decade.
One more day passes, and I have retreated to the darkest corner of her mind; it pains me to feel her sickness. But I have stayed with her. I cannot leave her. I could have left before, could have given her a sweet, free life. This I could have done because I loved her so intensely. But unbreakable though my love may have been, may still be, it is also selfish. I cannot be alone without her, cannot fill the hours without her to listen to me. So now I curl like a coward in the recesses of her sick mind and wait for endless death to take us both. Maybe then there will be a place for us to speak together where I am as real as she. Maybe then there will be a tribute to my endless love.
User Reviews
Submitted by coley (user info) at 2006-08-02 03:34:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I liked it. Good writing....
Submitted by sinna (user info) at 2005-11-04 04:36:10 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Nice idea and well written.
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2005-11-03 22:55:09 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
this was really interesting.
post more.
Submitted by Creepy_guy (user info) at 2005-11-03 19:33:38 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Berty (user info) at 2005-11-03 16:52:53 (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2005-11-03 15:55:38 (#)
Ranking: 2
you killed her, congratulations!
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I found this comment bizarrly amusing.
Submitted by Saffron (user info) at 2005-11-03 18:48:46 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Exceptional.
Submitted by Berty (user info) at 2005-11-03 16:52:53 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2005-11-03 15:55:38 (#)
Ranking: 2
you killed her, congratulations!
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I found this comment bizarrly amusing.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2005-11-03 15:55:38 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
you killed her, congratulations!
Submitted by yeahthatme (user info) at 2005-11-03 15:12:18 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Wow, this is really, really good. Intersting alternate view of schizophrenia.
Submitted by mbstateside (user info) at 2005-11-03 14:56:41 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
This is really good.
People should be reading this.
Submitted by WildcatMcGee (user info) at 2005-11-03 14:55:38 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I don't know about this. Ever see Prozac Nation? This piece is a little too similar to that. Not that you borrowed its idea but that because I recently watched it it came off that way.
Submitted by ruthless (user info) at 2005-11-03 14:46:52 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
It is interesting.
Submitted by SPECIALk (user info) at 2005-11-03 13:49:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by NOWorNEVER (user info) at 2005-11-03 13:47:32 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
no one is reading this? i think its very interesting...