They’ve finally all gone. I’m on my own again, by myself. Alone. They’ve gone back to their lives, and now I can get back to– you know, my nothing. The void, I like to call it. I can finally get back to all those pressing matters on my To Do list for today. Ten a.m., count the cracks in the ceiling. Eleven a.m., trace the grout in the tile floor. Twelve, pause for nutrition. Twelve thirty, repeat. My day’s scheduled solid.
I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’s nice that they still visit. Really. That they do feel some affection towards me, albeit in that desultory, misguided, apologetic sort of way. “Sorry we fucked you up like that, it’s a shame about, you know, everything–” It’s nice. They always come with such nice things to say, too, and I suppose it makes them feel better, saying polite things to me, even if I just sit and stare away. You know. Conversation is such an effort to begin with, and when you have as little to say as I do– well. You know. So I just sit and stare, and let them feel better, I think maybe the right word is comforted. Martyr.
And besides, eventually they always leave, and that’s the best part. Their noise, it makes the standard silence that much more appealing. I swear their voices echo after they leave, like the words got trapped in the cracks in the walls and the grout between the tiles, and the vowels and consonants clamor at me for hours afterward. It’s almost enough to make me leave.
Today, though, it’s not so bad. Their voices leave with them; their sentence fragments and misplaced punctuation trail into the hallway not long after. It’s quiet again.
No other place anywhere is this quiet. It’s a vacuum of solitude. Just to give you an idea of what I mean, the walls are cinderblock, but under two inches of soundproofing. The door is heavy steel. No windows. A bomb could go off in the hallway right outside, and I wouldn’t know it until one of the caretakers dragged his or her bloody ass in here and ruined my day with the news.
People who come in here for the first time are always uncomfortable about the quiet, and about the white-on-white-on-white. White walls, white spread on the bed, white table, white chairs, white sofa, white rug on the floor by the bed. It’s as close to nothing as you can get, hence, The Void. It’s the only way I can function at all.
I jumped out of a twentieth-story window once. The feeling of the wind rushing past me, it’s the only physical stimulus I’ve ever enjoyed. I still think about it a lot, falling through the air, the feeling of the wind all through me, just falling through the blue. I mean, it was fun until I hit the ground. That’s when they brought me back here, and here I’ve been ever since. That was, what, probably five years ago. I don’t know for sure. The days just seem to melt into one another, one long, endless white tunnel.
I mean, it’s fine. This is the only way I can function at all. Anything else, it’d be too much for me.
After they’re all gone, I sit down on the sofa and cross my arms over my chest. I could read, but after so long listening to them go on and on about every damn thing in the world, words are too close to talking. I could turn on the TV, but then that would be even worse than reading. Pictures of people moving around and talking to each other, and of wide open spaces and oceans and everything. My head would probably explode. I close my eyes, because right now, even the room is too much.
Don’t worry. I’m not going to start doing anything crazy, like actually tracing the grout between the floor tiles. And just in case you’re already starting up with the jokes, don’t. I’m no retard, either. Does this look like it’s written on construction paper, in big crayon letters? No. I’m probably smarter than you. I can walk and dress myself and feed myself. I had a job, once. I can talk if I really, really need to. I’m not deficient. I just can’t deal with too much at a time. It’s just how I was made. So I’m just going to sit here for a few minutes and close my eyes, and maybe I’ll be okay by the time the caretaker brings dinner.
But the problem with sitting here with my eyes closed is, I can still see things. Sure, these things are less upsetting than real things would be, because they’re just in my head. They’re not real. Sure, it seems real, when I’m sitting here and all of a sudden, I find myself in a green field. Verdant, you would say. Grass stretches around me in all directions, so so green that it makes you wonder how the planet can possibly be dying, like the scientists say it is. And the sky above, it’s impossibly blue. Not a cloud in sight. It’s too blue to be a dream. And the ground under my feet, the way I can feel blades of grass poking up between the toes, and the way the dirt is cool and wet beneath the soles, well, it’s just too much. I open my eyes again. It’s too much.
This is so not the worst thing I’ve seen. The worst is when I see myself, the way I look to everybody else. You think a mirror is bad, try seeing yourself reflected from somebody else’s eyes. Watching myself rock back and forth in the corner, or sit and gnaw on my own fingernails for hours on end, or stare, slack-jawed, into space-- it’s almost enough to make me want to finish the job I started when I jumped out of that window. Makes me want to just fade away.
It wouldn’t be so much a death in my case as it would just a cessation. You can’t die if you were never born to begin with.
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