I remember the first time I actually realized there was something wrong with me. I was 10 in the backyard playing with a little girl I’d just met. I had seen her walking past the house and invited her over to play in the pool with me. After a while we went in for lunch. I’d asked my mom to make a plate for my friend and gestured to the girl behind me. My mom looked past me and then made a face, “honey, there’s no one there.” I was confused and insisted that my mom make my friend a plate but she refused saying she would not waste food on an imaginary friend. When I looked at the girl again she just shrugged and said she’d be back another time. I never saw her again after that. I’d even asked the kids in the neighborhood about her, describing her in vivid detail but know one knew who she was.
Another time, in high school, I had signed up to retake my ACT (a standardized test used for college admissions in the United States). We were in a classroom in the community college. There were at least a dozen students there. They were all talking quietly to the point there was a steady hum of hushed voices all around. When the test started I was expecting the room to be silent but that hum of voices still hung in the air and when I looked around, I could still see students up around talking to each other. I tried to tune it all out but the harder I tried to ignore it it seemed the louder they got. At some point one of the adults who was working as an administrator came up to me and asked if I was alright. I’d been tapping my foot and the sound of change jingling in my pockets was disturbing the other test takers. “What about all the people in here talking?” I had almost snapped at her. She looked taken aback and said “Miss there is no one here talking.” When I looked around the room again, there were only four other students in the room with me. Each at their own table staring at me, annoyed, and the room was completely silent.
Now, I work from home and keep to myself. I hate talking to people, I can’t ever tell who’s real and who’s not. The people I walk by on the street or the store. They all seem so real; I can hear them, I can seem them interacting with the environment.
They don’t always disappear either. The other day, a homeless man started shouting at me. It was mostly unintelligible nonsense and I tried to ignore him. As I walked home he followed, shouting at me. A few people glanced our way as we weaved through the sidewalks but no one stepped in to help me. He followed me all the way to my apartment and stood outside my door for almost an hour still shouting. The next morning I stepped over to my neighbors to apologize for the noise the night before. “Noise?” My neighbor had said, “I didn’t hear anything last. I heard you come home and you slammed your door pretty hard but other than that it was a quiet night. I was up until about 2 this morning studying.”
It seems the only consistent people in my life these days are my parents and my friend Kirko who strangely resembles that girl from when I was 10.