Delusions of Grandeur

It's a tail of ordinary madness. The underlining mechanism is how one may think they have things in control were else in reality they are far from grasping what is actually happening.

                                                            Delusions of Grandeur.

                                                                       For a Girl in a Blue Dress

                           

                                                                        By: Valentine Mabuza.

1 | P a g e D E L U S I O N S O F G R A N D E U R .

I stole a painting today. That‟s the WHAT part of the story, here‟s the WHY. Regrettably, a year ago I was diagnosed with depersonalize disorder. That‟s the medical term for it, but in layman‟s terms it just means that I am very, very crazy. The way my psychologist Dr. Palmer explained this mental illness to me is that I feel uncomfortable in my own skin, thus as a coping mechanism my brain pulls me away from my senses. The result is that I become an observer of my own actions and my body goes in a sought of automatic that can go on for hours on end.

At first it was all very harmless. I‟d laugh at the sight of finding myself three blocks away from my original location with no recollection what so ever as to how I got there. I would get lost somewhere inside my own head, my subconscious guiding me through the maze of people and speeding cars but consciously I was simply elsewhere. The good people at Harvard‟s neurological department call this, having an episode. Sometimes I‟d run errands, walk the dog, water my fichus, and get groceries at the local super market all bought and paid for yet no lingering notion of how this came to be. I would go to sleep secure with the knowledge that I‟d wake up to a fully stocked refrigerator in the morning.

One quiet afternoon in my apartment I had my favorite record on loop and as the music began to swirl I started meditating on the state of affairs then the entirety and weight of the situation really seeped in. What if something went horribly wrong as I was stupidly going on about my business in my daft state and say a bus or cab ran me over. I‟d stay up well into the night wondering if the shock of an occurrence such as that could render me forever sealed and imprisoned within myself. I could picture it, being a walking talking zombie in the flesh. Greeting people as they passed me by on the street, poor bus dads waving back with animated smiles not knowing that they were infect waving at a ghost.

2 | P a g e D E L U S I O N S O F G R A N D E U R .

I‟m in possession of an ungodly amount of useless items which I have stolen in various stores all over the city. This includes small decorative ornaments, tooth paste, cds, sunglasses, air fresheners, toy cars, belts, cuff-links, ties, duct tape, batteries, gum, coasters, T-shirts, books, scissors, wallets, not forgetting the beforehand mentioned painting, packs of cigarettes, the list goes on and on. I would find myself standing in the parking lot with a toaster in one hand and a magazine off readers digest on the other whispering to myself under my breath…

“Wow, it is amazing how f*****g insane I really am.”

Now don‟t get me wrong, I don‟t condone thievery. But about a week after I was diagnosed I realized that when I experienced a surge of adrenalin release for the remainder of that day I wasn't subjected to the episodes. As a kid, nothing gave me more of a rush than walking out of the mall with an unpaid for chocolate malt or kiosk muffin and it dawned upon me what I had to do. If I stole at least one Item a day I could have a permanent solution to this thing or so I thought. Like all criminals eventual I got caught and spent a night in prison having been found illegally in the possession of a limited addition fountain pen. With theft no longer an option, I was back to square one. 

There was no use denying it, That was a bad week for me, I had recently started drinking my own urine while I vaguely considered entertaining the idea of running down the street nude hoping the eyes of the befouled pedestrians‟ would fuel my addiction to an adrenalin gust.

Moths later the duration I spent in each consecutive episode was gradually increasing and with that I too grew increasingly terrorized by the thought of losing my mind completely. I was my own worst enemy. So naturally, I enlisted help. 

Dr. Palmer suggested that I attend meetings for people with disorders similar to mine, after a brief consideration and three terrifying incidents of fully stocked refrigerators and an apartment so clean you could smell the dense aroma of detergent chemicals in my bathroom all the way from the kitchen; I took his educated advice. The meetings took place between 09:30 am to 12:00 in the afternoon held in a basement like room on a building that was formerly a psych hospital.

3 | P a g e D E L U S I O N S O F G R A N D E U R .

The basement was predominantly dark with just a small rectangular window with vertical bars at the extreme upper left as the sole source of light, you‟d hear cars and tiny footsteps of people passing by and you‟d know that the window was what separated us from the normal people.

When sharing time arrived we‟d all sit in an uncomfortable circle, avoiding eye contact by staring downward as if the design of square black and white tiling was the most interesting thing in the planet. There were eight of us when I started attending the meetings, five males and three females excluding Dr. Palmer who merely ushered and kept track of the time.

 I‟d listen as Jody, one of two girls with a associative personality disorder which is another type of crazy in the same beating path as mine, explained how her life has changed due to the illness. Apparently while Jody was at her job at the butchery downtown slicing away to create the shape of stakes, the routine and boredom of the day to day pattern triggered an episode. She then commenced to walk into the large refrigerator were they store all the various meats, and wondered off to the back which happens to be the coldest part where she stood pointlessly till the next morning. An article in the local paper stated that Jody‟s boss assumed she got sick and went home early and paid no mind when locking up the freezer unknowingly with tombstone still Jody at the far end standing there and patiently waiting for something to shake her awake. Aside from her associative personality, Jody now also suffers from pneumonia. We all clapped our hands; we clapped for brave Jody for sharing her story.

Another interesting one was a guy named Stanley. He wore crumpled fabrics and had the droopiest bags I had ever seen under his exaggeratedly open eyes. His head always stooped and lowered as if it was too big or heavy of a load for his neck to curry, he had a general tiredness about him. Stanley was an insomniac who hadn't slept for weeks. When it was his turn to share he‟d say…

“Skip” or “next” angrily, and when Dr. Palmer insisted he shared his feelings with the rest of the group for the sake of his therapy he would snap into a fit of rage. Shouting out things like…

“I‟m not crazy like you people! I just need some sleep, god damn it if I could just sleep.”

4 | P a g e D E L U S I O N S O F G R A N D E U R .

He would then fade into a speech of babble and incoherence, shortly after weeping and one of the girls would get up from their chairs to console him with a hug, patting him on his back while she repeated…

“Shi… it‟s okay. It‟s okay Stanley. You‟ll see you‟re going to sleep. One of these days you‟ll go right to sleep.” in a soothing voice.

Besides the bizarre people at the meetings everything was normal, the therapy of being vulnerable and sharing your experiences and feelings with a group of strangers seemed to be working for me. I almost cried tears of joy when I opened my refrigerator to find expired soy milk and an empty egg container. Although I was healed I still felt sorry for the others in the group who weren't getting any better. A curious thing happened around the third week. Lesser people were attending the meetings, starting with Stanley. 

We all figured he finally managed to get that much needed sleep and didn't pay any substantial attention to it. Next was a guy named Roy who had either Amnesia or stage two Alzheimer's, I don‟t quite remember the trivia‟s but it was something about him forget his daughter at an amusement park or that he even had a daughter.

At any rate, I suppose I only became concerned when the girls stopped attending. After all they were the ones who made coming to the meetings almost bearable. First to go was Jody then the girl who gave Stanley all those hugs and back rubs. The remaining girl (though pretty) seemed to be invisible until the others stopped coming. She got a lot more smiles from the guys, smiles that cried out „PLEASE DON‟T LEAVE US TO.‟

5 | P a g e D E L U S I O N S O F G R A N D E U R .

We couldn't ask Dr. Palmer just what the hell was eating up all the people; he seemed more puzzled than we were. At the end of the fourth week it was just me, Missy (the invisible girl) and Dr. Palmer. But I kept coming to the meetings, and for some reason I was waking up too tired to do anything the next morning.

Then everything was answered on one faithful night. Walking out of the shower carelessly, I slipped on the wet floor hitting my head on the way down. I felt disorientated and started blinking non-stop, that‟s when I was bombarded by images of my group members bloody and mutilated. 

I saw flashes of their mangled and bruised bodies lying cold in isolated alleyways and trash cans with me staring silently above. Jody chopped up in nice little bite size sausage pieces in the freezer they‟d previously found her in that morning. Stanley smothered with a pillow while trying to fall asleep in his red silk Hugh Hefner pajamas. Oh he went to sleep alright, somebody made damn sure of it.

Terrified and close to passing out I dressed quickly and went to my bedroom to call Dr. Palmer and maybe try to make sense of what was happening. On my way to the room I passed by a broom closet were I kept all the useless crap that I‟d been stealing. Along the small space at bottom of the door was a puddle of blood peeking through as if it were some shy animal. I knelled down and felt it with my fingers to make sure that it was actually blood I was looking at. And sure enough it was. My heart now about to burst out of my chest with fear… still knelled; I slowly opened the door and Missy‟s dead corpse sprung from the closet, the stolen miscellaneous items following behind. She fell right into my arms. I was beyond emotion, shaking her cold, rigor and rigid body while yelling out…

“Oh god Missy…! Wake up! What happened to you, wake up!”

The phone rang in the kitchen and I gently placed Missy on the blood stained carpet. Sobbing in awe and utter disbelief I walked towards the sound of the telephone.

6 | P a g e D E L U S I O N S O F G R A N D E U R .

“Hello!” I said wiping the tears away from my eyes and trying not to look at the few strands of Missy‟s blond hair entangled with blood between my finger nails.

“Jack listen; I have something very important to tell you” said Dr. Palmer, the seriousness heavy in his tone.

“They‟re dead doc” I exclaimed, letting out a desperate cry “…they‟re all dead.”

“I know Jack, that‟s what I‟m trying to tell you”

“What! What are you talking about?”

“I miss diagnosed your illness Jack. You have multiple personality disorder.”

My heart stopped and the telephone fell on the floor as I began connecting the dots. When I was having the episodes I was actually becoming another person entirely. I lost sense of time, and fell in a deluded state of non-awareness. I became a violent thing absent empathy or compassion. A true killer. Was it possible I had killed everybody in the group? I had the vivid memories returning to me and blood on my hands to prove it. That was my therapy all along, the ultimate adrenalin rush.

                                                                          The End

                        

                                                                        Brainy Quotes:

“I mean, say that you figure that everything is senseless, then it can't be quite senseless because you are aware that it's senseless and your awareness of senselessness almost gives it sense. You know what I mean 

                                                                                                                        ― Charles Bukowski, Pulp

“Rage is really only for the good days. The truth is there's little of that left. the truth is that the forms I see have been slowly emptied out. They no longer have any content. They are shapes only. A train, a wall, a world. or a man. A thing dangling in senseless articulation in a howling void. No meaning to its life. It‟s words. Why would I seek the company of such a thing? Why?” 

                                                                                                    ― Cormack McCarthy, The Sunset Limited

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Author's Note

Hope you enjoyed it, your comment's would be much appreciated positive or otherwise. Cheers.