Chapter 8a
Monday, November 11, 2002
What is happening to me? Why can I not make sense of even the simplest of things? I begin to find truth only moments before it uncurls into a poisonous viper and lashes out at me. For a moment, for a single fleeting moment, I think I have the answers, or at lease one answer. I roll the idea around, say it aloud, and only then realize what I'm thinking doesn't make sense. Not to say it's just illogical, although maybe it is, just that the words themselves have no meaning to me. And if it doesn't me anything to me, who else could make sense of it?
The problem has not gotten better. It hasn't gotten much worse either, though, which is also vaguely concerning. Everything is concerning. I still hear the same whispers of my voice. I rarely make out the words. It's always so real, it sounds like it has to be coming from somewhere, there's just never anywhere for it to come from. But from where?
There is something at work pushing me forward but yes, yes, it's absolutely true, that's the same something that drags me down, too. I don't know exactly what that something is but I can see it lurking on the edge of my peripheral vision. I try to ignore it, I know it is a symbiotic relationship we have, but it nags at me. How is this even possible?
The voice I keep hearing is strange. I know I've said it before but I just can't get past it. Why is the voice I'm hearing my own voice? And why am I hearing it, physically hearing it? Of course when I think to myself I think in my own voice and nobody confuses that with sound. I refuse to accept that I'm simply hallucinating. On the other hand, I accepted that I was insane a long time ago and I've worked well with my self diagnosis. My other problem then becomes, why am I so certain now that this isn't just my mind playing it's stupid games again?
Maybe because it's so new. Maybe because it seems so real. I know, at least at some level, that everybody who hears voices must think they sound real. I know I'm not special, I'm not so unlike everybody else who has ever lived that my experience should be unique but...I don't know, maybe I am, maybe I'm the only one like me. If I'm not alone, how many more like me can there possibly be?
People have found ways to measure the strangest things. Distances and weights, okay, I can see why you'd want to measure those things. But time? Specific light values of any given color? These are abstract measurements, to be sure. People say, no, they're not, they're scientifically sound and supported, but so what? Science tells you how many times an atom farts in one second but it doesn't tell you how much slower my seconds are for me than for you or how last year seemed to just drag. Science says there was no variation in subatomic flatulence but, no matter what they say, time still looks relative from here. When is not a question.
I suppose they've probably got some way to measure degrees of reality and I wonder, what would those tests say about me?