How Are You?

I'm....a bit different. I've never been one of the in-crowd, mostly because I've never been similar enough to other people to be readily acceptable. Never really had many friends, and I've been made to feel very aware of this when I was humiliated and victimised by a bully in school, a bully who no-one stood up to, and certainly not for me. Then, when I went back to college, I was now not only different, but older than everyone else. Maybe it was more of a difference to them than me, or maybe it was just more of a problem for me, still struggling to find some acceptance.

Then, I moved away from more general education, to the specific field I'd wanted to - the visual arts. And you know what? I found that acceptance. I was still very wary of it all, because I'd had the rug pulled from under me plenty of times before. But it was nice.

Then I did a pretty stupid thing. I let myself imagine that things were actually perfect, and someone who I seemed to make smile an awful lot, and made me smile, might be interested in me too. The whole thing was a mess, and made me a little crazy. It didn't end great when I couldn't accept they didn't feel the same.

What made it hell, was that there were a dozen people there to remind me every day that I was on the outside looking in.

In other words, that was the rug being pulled from under me, and pieces of it being waved at me every day. I really started to sink low again. My work was....non-existent as I tried to pick myself up in the face of alienation, I started to go to counselling, and I started taking anti-depressants.

Then, a year after that, I thought for a while I'd found someone, completely by accident, who fit the same, if not better, than what had happened in Art school. A short while later, she broke up with me for the second time, I fell apart, and so did my life. I still don't have many friends, but most of what I do have are far away, living their own lives. Me, I still can't wrap my head around the person I fell in love with being prepared to sick the police on me. I still can't figure it.

I go to therapy most days of the week, but for most of the day, I don't do anything. I can't draw, and I can't write, my mind constantly lives in fear of everybody's reactions to what I do, which is my way of presenting myself as who I am. So I sit. I chain-smoke these days, play some videogames, watch DVD's and tv shows. If I'm not living it up like that, I'm asleep, because I couldn't sleep the night before, because I'm too upset over everything. And I do, in fact mean everything.

Today, I slept in. Then I woke up to find Jac's dog Murphy having another fit. He's been having these for a couple of months, but this one was a shock, as it'd been a while since the last. So it happened, I comforted him like I normally do, and knowing what would normally happen, I shepherded him outside, where he urinated and defecated on the concrete. But then, it happened again. And again. And again. He also experienced these lesser "seizures", which are a portent to the fit that will follow. If he has a fit, he rolls over onto his side, his body convulsing while he cries in anguish and he foams at the mouth. When he comes to, he panics and has no idea where he is, who I am, or what his name is. A seizure involves him uncontrollably baring his front teeth(All of them) while staying on his feet, or however he was when the seizure started. His eyes look terrified as his head starts shaking violently, and he sends streams of saliva flying off in all directions, before coming to, exactly as he does after a fit. But then, after a seizure, he has a fit.

After around five of these fits and seizures to boot, I got desperate, and drove him to the vets, while using my left arm to stop him from roaming out of the back seat. He still had no idea what was going on, or who I was, or what his name was. We almost got to the vets, when he started having a seizure in the back seat, just as I parked. He was sitting there, rock steady, except for the wild movements in his eyes as they rolled around his head, and the shaking movement of his body. I had to drag him into the vet after that, such was his panic and fear at this confusing state. After what I would guess was half an hour of seeing the vet, I left the treatment room, Murphy being left with the vets for a couple of days. After a pep-talk with a nurse, where I slumped into a chair, and could do nothing but stare at the floor, I walked into the evening.

I walked home. My car stayed at the vets. I can't remember the whole thing, there are bits of my walk back to Jac's that I can't remember at all. But what I do remember was something crazy. I got back, opened up the pack of tabs I had in my hand, and I wanted to call Mel. I wanted to call the woman who was so delusional and offended by me, that she felt necessary to call the police on me, I felt like calling her, and just asking if we could talk, because I was just desperate for someone who already knew my name, to talk to me. And I would have, had I not deleted her number from my phone, and been unable to find it. And now I just feel a mess, because I don't understand my own idea to call her.


My name's Chris Johnson, and I don't feel so good.