Bipolarparanoidschizophrenic

When I told the doctor about the people following me, he gave me pills.

 

“These should help with the anxiety,” he said. What he didn’t say is how they absolutely f*****g floor you. So instead of being anxious about the black, windowless van parked outside my apartment, I don’t feel anything.

 

On these drugs, it’s impossible not to melt. That’s what I’m up to right now; I’m melting.

 

It used to be, I would get home from a really long day at work, sit on the couch with a beer, and just melt. Absorb into the sofa. Those monks lying down on a bed of nails, ohming and meditating their way into enlightenment, that was me.

 

Ok, maybe “enlightenment” is a strong word. Still, the moment I sat down and became one with my living room furniture, it was like I hardly was. This wonderful, bizarre intermediary between sleeping and being awake, this plane of existence where I was one with everything.

 

Like bourgeois Buddhism. It’s not that a couch or a beer or a living room somehow completes you. It’s not middle-class complacency. Hell, it’s hardly like it’s a very nice sofa; I found it sitting outside someone’s house, waiting for the garbage man to come and put it in a junkyard. The beer isn’t very good either. And frankly, the water stains on the ceiling of my living room keep getting bigger and bigger. One of the stains is shaped like the bottom of a toilet.

 

It’s just about forgetting. Forgetting about all that s**t. It’s about being able to turn your brain off, climbing out of all the superficial crap that you use to define yourself, and just being.

 

Better than yoga, better than meditation, better than sex. Decades could pass by, and I’d hardly even notice.

 

And then, one day, there was a van parked outside of my apartment. Right in front of my window. All black with a black-tinted windshield. What people call a rapist van, the kind of creepmobile that a child molester would tell little kids has a piñata full of candy in the back.

 

Of course I knocked on their f*****g door. They were taking up my parking spot. Standing there, I heard people moving and shuffling around in the back, really poorly hushed whispers.

 

“The f**k is that?”

 

“Shh. It’s him.”

 

A second later, the window opens just a crack, just enough so that I can see a pair of black sunglasses staring back at me.

 

Just so you know, this is wintertime. The sun, it went down a few hours ago.

 

“Can we help you, sir?”

 

They sure can. The van is in my spot and I can’t park.

 

“Sorry about that, sir.” And the window rolls back up.

 

The issue with melting is, sometimes, it’s hard to forget. Sometimes, all the superficial crap we use to define our lives, sometimes that crap gets rubbed in our faces.

 

So I knock on the window again. And the black sunglasses greet me, again.

 

“Can we help you, sir?”

 

Yeah, move the friggin van. I ask, do they even have a permit? Up and down this block, you have to have a permit if you want to park, that’s how crowded this place is. Otherwise, you get towed.

 

In the back of the van, I hear an excited little voice murmur:

 

“F**k! He’s onto us!”

 

The sunglasses look back inside and I hear a shush. Then they look back at me.

 

“Yes, sir, of course we have a parking permit. Otherwise, we couldn’t park here.”

 

Just like that, the window rolls back up. When I knock, it doesn’t roll back down.

 

I end up parking 8 blocks away.

 

What I really wanna do when I get home is melt, but the whole time I’m trying to clear my mind, I keep noticing the van right outside my living room. I try closing my eyes, but I know when I open them, the van is going to be there.

 

And I’m right.

 

I try counting to 100, but I know that no matter how high I count, the van is going to be there.

 

And I’m right.

 

I try listening to music and watching TV and I drink an entire 6-pack, but I know that no matter how loud the music and how distracting the TV and however drunk I get, the van is going to be there.

 

And I’m right.             

 

And I don’t sleep a wink and I don’t shower and I don’t brush my teeth and then the morning comes and I know the van is going to be there.

 

And I’m wrong. It’s gone. Vanished. Just an empty parking space in front of my apartment.

 

And it doesn’t even matter, because I have to go to work.

 

The whole time in the car, I’m looking in my mirrors. Scanning the sideview and the rearview and out this window and that window, searching for the black van. Making sure no one is tailing me. I’m already halfway to the office when I notice a smell. The piercing, stinging smell of an onion. The rotten smell of stinky cheese. The putrid smell of a locker room.

 

It’s me. This is what I smell like when I don’t bathe.

 

My clothes stick to my body in ways that just feel uncomfortable. My underwear feels soaked. My mouth is dirty with beer and bacteria.

 

This is what happens when I can’t melt. This is how I’m going to work.

 

When I walk through the front doors of the office, you can hear the immediate change. The people who were talking around the water cooler, they stop their conversations about what the f**k ever it is that people talk about, just to stare at me. When I walk past, people hold their breath. Someone makes a gagging sound.

 

All the sudden, I’m the most interesting person in this whole building. I just keep my head down.

 

Sometimes, it can be really, really hard to forget. Especially when the entire office is watching you.

 

The whole time I’m wandering over to my desk, these two bimbos that work in the cubicles next to me, they’re cupping their mouths, exhaling an entire conversation to each other under their breath. They don’t look at each other; they look at me. When I sit down, I ask them what they’re talking about.

 

“Um, ah, the weather,” says one.

 

“The, uh, my cats,” says the other.

 

As if those are two topics of discussion that they have to whisper about. If they wanna talk about how I’m dirty and disgusting and smelly, maybe they should just say it. Just f*****g say it. Say it to my f*****g face. Because maybe if they’d ask what the f**k is wrong with me, I could explain that, yeah, there’s a reason behind all of this. The way I look, it’s hardly a conscious choice. And frankly, f*****g chitter-chattering about my appearance isn’t going to change anything. F*****g judging me isn’t going to explain who I actually am, why I’m like this, why I do the things I do. As if I’m the crazy one here. At least I’m not lying to other people right in their f*****g faces. At least I’m not denying the fact that I’m f*****g repulsive. The weather. Your cats. F**k the weather and f**k your f*****g cats, if you have something real to say, then f*****g vocalize it.

 

It’s not until I’m done that I realize I was shouting.

 

Sometimes, it can be way too easy to forget. Sometimes, instead of melting, you catch fire.

 

Now, no one in the office is looking at me. Everyone is pretending to be busy with something. The two women, they don’t look at me like I’m crazy. They look at me like they’re scared.

 

I’m not at my desk for more than half a minute before I just collect all my things and go.

 

 

The entire ride home, I’m subjected to this stupid conversation between my id and my superego.

 

“You shouldn’t have done that,” one says to the other. “That was bad.”

 

“F**k you. You can call it what you want. That felt good.”

 

“Yeah, but it was against the rules. You’re not supposed to do that. No one will like it, and that means they won’t like you.”

 

“Yeah, but f**k you. In case you didn’t notice, they already didn’t like me. I made their eyes water.”

 

“You should have showered.”

 

“I should have melted.”

 

I wish they would shut up. They’re way too loud when they talk.

 

The whole time they’re talking, I’m thinking how it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter, because when I get home, at least the van will be gone. At least I’ll be able to melt when I get home, not have to deal with bullshit, with having to park 8 blocks away. At least I’ll be able to forget about today and just calm down an-

 

And I’m wrong.

 

I won’t be doing any of those things.

 

The rape van, parked and waiting.

 

I’ve got my phone out before I can even think. It takes two seconds for me to dial 911, and only one second more for me to crash my car into a tree on the sidewalk.

 

Sorry. I’ll admit fault there; don’t use your phone and drive.

 

Again, my id and superego just start at it.

 

“FUCKINGGODDAMNSONOFABITCHMOTHERFUCKINGCUNTBASTERDASSHOLEFUCKER-”

 

“Look at what you’ve done now! Now you’re in trouble!”

 

“SHUTTHEFUCKUPYOUPIECEOFSHIT! IMGUNNAKILLTHOSEFUCKERS!”

 

“Relax, you fool! You’ve already messed up as it is! Just, just, I dunno, wait for the police! Or drive away! Park far away, no one has to know! Just us! Just us!”

 

And I’m just sat here, listening to them. Listening to a car alarm going off. Just the same monotone, the same thing over and over again.

 

“IMDONEWITHTHESEFUCKERSFUCKINGWITHMYLITTLESHITTYFUCKLIFE! THEYREDEADFUCKERS!”

 

Just the same monotone.

 

“Be quiet! This isn’t ok! This is bad! Stop doing bad! Stop being bad! Bad! Stop!”

 

The same thing over and over again.

 

I don’t wait for the police. I don’t drive away. I drop my phone and I get out of my car, and for whatever reason, I forget everything.

 

And sometimes, you explode.

 

I’m punching. I’m kicking. Screaming. Cursing. I’m looking for whatever I can, a brick or a rebar or a tree branch, something I can use to break the windows. Anything. Doesn’t matter.

 

Truth is, I’m not even there. It’s like I’m watching a movie. There’s no voice in my head, telling me what to do. Telling me stop. Calling me bad.

 

I don’t even notice that the cops have arrived until they tackle me.

 

 

The way I wake up, my brain feels like it’s gunna explode. When I touch my head, it stings like hell and feels 8 sizes too big.

 

I’m in the back of a squad car. There’s metal digging in where my a*s meets the seat, and I realize my hands are in cuffs.

 

In front of me, one bleeding cop says to the other, “Hey, look, the little f**k is awake.”

 

The van, officers. The van I was beating the s**t out of, there are people inside, and they’re following me. They’re stalking me. I crashed my f*****g car because of th-

 

“SHUTTHEFUCKUP!”

 

When he shouts at me, there’s spit and blood. He’s missing a tooth.

 

It’s one of the bottom one, not that it matters.

 

The f*****g van, the f*****g rape van, there are people in the f*****g rape van and they’re ruining my f****n-

 

“ITOLDYOUTOSHUTTHEFUCKUP! There was nobody in that van, you goddamn m**********r! We f*****g checked, you f*****g psycho!”

 

 

And that’s what I became.

 

Bipolarparanoidschizophrenic. That’s what the therapist told me after my second session with him. He manages to say it in less than a second, just one exhale. The court appointed 10 mandatory counseling sessions in lieu of jail time. My lawyer had me plead temporary insanity. He said I’m lucky, lucky I can behave myself in a court room. The cops’ testimony made it seem like I was really insane. Like, really insane. How I was screaming at the van, screaming for m***********s to come out. To stop hiding.

 

There was no one in the van, they said.

 

The windows were tinted.

 

It was parked, and there was no one in it.

 

They didn’t have a permit, and even if they did, you couldn’t see it. The windows were tinted.

 

The lawyer told me not even to bother trying to defend myself. It would make me sound crazier.

 

So now I take a pill. And I melt. Outside my window, the van is still there, and it doesn’t leave.

 

I don’t know how to feel about it. My id never really talks anymore. I’m pretty sure my superego must be lonely, because it doesn’t really talk either.

 

So I don’t feel anything. And I melt.

 

 

My ninth session, the therapist asks how I feel, and I tell him.

 

He nods and writes notes. He asks how my dosages are. And I don’t know what to tell him.

 

Am I supposed to feel anything? Am I bad if I do?

 

I say, yeah, I’m fine.

 

I promise.

 

 

Sometimes, you forget everything.

 

You get a new job, meet new people, and you’re essentially a new human.

 

And when the van doors open, and men in suits and black sunglasses start walking to my door, I don’t feel a thing. I hear them yelling, and then the door is splinters.

 

Men in suits and black sunglasses and guns and they’re yelling for me to not move.

 

No problem.

 

I’m under arrest, under the jurisdiction of the FBI.

 

Whatever they say.

 

They stand me up, and I melt into handcuffs.

 

I would say I told you so, but there’s no one there. No one to say it to.

 

The most I can say is, “uh”.