I’ll be writing in a flowery language at times. It is one of few ways I can deal with my affliction. Great many things can set it off; language being one of the first and foremost. So by expressing myself in unusual ways, I don’t fall into common mental pathways. You will understand.
So let’s talk about it. The Twice-Mind Fallacy.
Some of you have heard of it. I don’t think the “results” were ever published. They wouldn’t allow it.
But those who know, they know.
I studied clinical psychology at an average midwestern college. My tuition was mostly supplemented by my parents, but I had to work to get anything past the bare minimum necessities. I worked at a local gas station for a while, but the manager got weird when I asked to work night hours. Apparently, they got a “thing” about working the night shift.
I got word from a classmate that one of the tenured professors spent most of his time conducting social experiments. One such experiment was featured in one of the mandatory textbooks. Damn thing set me back $180.
Okay. Wait. Less slang. Hold on.
I’m bringing it back.
Salivate. Sa-li-vate. Nu-tri-tious.
Got it.
So I signed up for the big spring experiment. It paid $70 per session, and there were one to two sessions depending on how your participation went. There was also an additional $40 for those agreeing to come back for a debriefing once the experiment was over. Apparently, there’d be some kind of big public reveal.
But first, there was an orientation session.
I read through the disclaimer and entered my personal information on their website. Boilerplate stuff, nothing out of the ordinary. They even had a non-legalese (simplified) version for me to read. Basically, agreeing that they were entitled to the results of the experiment up until the point where and if I withdrew my consent. Also some attesting to my state of mind and general mental health. Those are a must in many social experiments.
At the first orientation session, I was put in a waiting room with six other people. I’d seen some of them around campus. I think one of them was a computer science major.
A preppy young man shook my hand and showed me a private room. A small, windowless room with all-yellow walls and a plastic table. The kind of table you usually keep outdoors that feels like it’d collapse if you put too much weight on it. Very cheap, overall.
“Thanks for coming,” he said. “Let’s see what we’re working with, alright?”
“Alright,” I nodded. “Don’t really know what to expect here.”
“So you are… Jess Gothe Hannon,” he said. “I can see that you-“
There was a rush of adrenaline coursing through me. Revealing someone else’s records was a big no-no. My left hand shot up like a flare, like my body was trying to physically silence them.
“No!” I interrupted. “No, no, no. That’s not me. None of that, that’s… that’s not me.”
The young man looked up, slack jawed. Ping-ponging back and forth between me and his notes, he seemed to have completely lost his train of thought.
“Uh… yeah,” he smiled. “Right. How embarrassing.”
He quickly found my notes and went through them. Name, age, address, family history; what I’d signed up with on the form. Took about a minute. He kept looking up at my apologetically, probably hoping that I’d just forget about that stupid name-drop.
I had to wait 45 minutes before the first real session started. I was shown a second room; this one much larger, with this 70’s-style patterned wallpaper, a corner couch, and two massage chairs. That’s when I first met doctor Stanson, formally.
Doctor Stanson had a fantastic track record. One of his most notable contributions was his field studies in what later became the overexposure therapeutic method. He was very proud of it, sporting an image where he posed with his co-writer, doctor Jane Bogan, on the university website.
To meet doctor Stanson in person was an absolute honor. There was just the two of us in that room, and having his full attention bear down on me was a bit overwhelming. This was a man who’d been asking questions for 30 years, and now he was aiming them straight at me. But it all started with a handshake.
“Thank you for coming,” he smiled. “Please, have a seat.”
We had a bit of small talk about his past accomplishments, and the study overall. He couldn’t divulge too much information, not wanting to spoil the experiment, but he assured me that it was meant as a diagnostics tool. For what, he didn’t say.
He had a recorder in the room, but seemed to forget to switch it on. I got the impression that he wasn’t really taking things seriously.
“I’m going to ask you to do a simple hand movement,” he said. “Starting with your index fingers.”
He hooked his index fingers and put his elbows out. I mimicked his movement, and he gave me a nod.
“Next, try to interlock your ring fingers as well.”
I did, trying my best to get a tight grip.
“Finally, point your little fingers outwards. Their tips should be less than an inch apart, but they can’t touch. Can you do that?”
It took a bit of trickery, but I could.
It was an awkward pose to keep, and doctor Stanson made some quick notes on his tablet.
“Now, I want you to slowly start pulling. Not so much that it hurts, but enough for you to exert yourself.”
“Alright…”
I started pulling. You can’t really “win” in this pose, you just sort of maintain a position. The pulling is just adding strain, there’s no hand giving or losing ground.
“Now I need you to listen carefully.”
It was almost like hypnosis, and I can’t remember his exact words. But in short, he wanted me to imagine the two hands separately. To imagine my left hand being connected to an unknown hand on the right. And to imagine my right hand being connected to an unknown hand on the left. Basically to slowly separate my thoughts into “left” and “right” but keeping them both contained in my head simultaneously.
He used this vivid imagery. Two fish swimming in a bucket, neither touching the other, but feeling the current. Two birds in the night, resting on the same branch; both feeling the weight of the other, without seeing them. It was very poetic language, sounding very… un-academic.
Short break. Sorry, I’m having trouble. Let me just type this out.
Granular. Gra-nu-lar. Top notch. Effervescent. Eff-er-ve-scent.
Picking strange words helps. It must be unfamiliar. Uncomfortable. Odd.
After a while, I could feel it taking hold. It became a struggle once I dissociated my hands with one another. It didn’t become a balancing act, but instead a competition. I could feel my “left” being frustrated by the dominance of my “right”.
Finally, without even realizing it, my left hand was also pushing - using the thumb. That wasn’t allowed, but I got so caught up in the moment. I was pressing down on a nerve on my right hand, actually causing myself pain. Not much, but I could feel it. Still, part of me enjoyed it; I was winning. But the other side of me was frustrated because of the disregard to the established rules.
“And time,” Stanson announced. “Thank you very much for your participation.”
“Yeah, uh…”
I tried to let go, but neither hand wanted to quit. I had to mentally tell myself to stop, to put both hands down in unison.
“How long has it been?” I asked.
“About 10 minutes,” smiled Stanson. “I know, time flies.”
I couldn’t believe it. It’d felt like hours.
As I left, another student stepped in to take my place. The young man in the reception wished me a good day and told me we’d keep in touch. I was a bit dumbfounded, feeling like I’d been sort of just… dropped. If there was to be a follow-up session, it’d be in a couple of days, but until then I had to deal with my feelings on my own. And my feelings, at that point, were complex. I didn’t know what to feel, but I knew that I felt different.
I drove back home and took the stairs up to my apartment, still flipping my car keys back and forth in my left hand. Then, I heard a clatter. I saw the keys tumble down the stairs, but I hadn’t felt myself dropping them. I flexed my left hand a few times, but couldn’t feel any strange sensations. I walked back down the stairs, picked up my keys, and that was that.
Over the next few days, I had a few similar incidents. Accidentally tapping too many times on my phone, adding an extra vowel or two while writing, that kind of stuff. The worst was when my hand refused to let go of a glass of water, making me spill half of it all over my keyboard. Luckily, my nearby $180 textbook came away unscathed.
I was called in for a second session. I was a bit relieved. I was eager get a chance to talk to doctor Stanson about what I’d been experiencing, if only to hear whether it was normal or not. Maybe I was just imagining things.
But doctor Stanson wasn’t there for the second session. Instead, I sat down with his assistants. One assistant stayed in the back, taking notes. I tried asking them questions, but they kept repeating that I’d get my chance to talk to doctor Stanson at a later date, and that they were not at liberty to discuss the experiment as-is.
So for the second session, they asked me to do the same movement. I interlocked my hands, listened, and got this sudden sense of unease bubbling up in my stomach. Like I was doing something wrong, something immoral. It was the same kind of sensation you get when you’re publicly naked in a dream, that you’re exposed and vulnerable. I didn’t like it. Not one bit.
And in that moment of uncertainty, just a few seconds into the session, my hands slammed down on the table; bruising the knuckle of my right index finger.
I shot out of my chair, clutching my hand. I bit down hard and swore, having pinched a nerve. I got this electric pain shooting right down the arch of my wrist. The assistants looked at me like they’d seen a ghost.
“Are you alright?” they asked.
“I-I… I don’t know,” I admitted. “I don’t feel… normal.”
“I’m calling it off,” the assistant said, getting out of his chair.
His colleague put her hand on his shoulder.
“No, we’re not. This is unrelated.”
I got some time to cool down, and I tried again. I had to put up an actual struggle this time. My left hand felt so much stronger than my right, and I could imagine myself wrestling a superior opponent. I was actually sweaty and watched my left hand for tricks. There’d be no slip of the thumb, nothing that broke the rules. I wouldn’t be surprised a second time.
We only did this exercise for a few minutes, then they moved on to different tests. Playing a game of tic-tac-toe, but closing my eyes for 30 seconds between each move while associating the circle with my left hand, and the X with my right hand.
Circle left. X right.
Bear with me. im typing thi8s part with just my right hand. It comes and goes. Sometimes that doesn’t work either.
Calm. Calm breaths.
Oligarch. O-li-garch. Balsamic. Sedentary.
Hokd on. Hold on.
Okay.
When I left the second session, I was dead set on seeing doctor Stanson again. I told them I wouldn’t do any further sessions until I did, and that I was ready to quit the experiment altogether. One of the assistants, the one who’d protested, just left the room. The other seemed a bit more hesitant.
“He’s in charge of the debrief,” she said. “You can see him then.”
“This is urgent,” I said. “I’m not doing well.”
“There’s campus health center. I’m sure they can advise you.”
I wanted to slap her. It was just an impulse, but it was enough to send a contraction down my left arm. I managed to redirect it into a clap instead, which I promptly used as a sort of… gesture to leave.
For the next few days, it got increasingly worse. I started thinking about that name they’d said when I first signed up. Maybe there’d been a mix-up, and I was never meant to be there in the first place. Maybe this ‘Jess Gothe Hannon’ was the intended subject, and I was a mistake.
Or maybe this was meant to happen all along. Maybe this was the experiment. Doctor Stanson had a record of mind-bending social experiments, and this could’ve been the power of suggestion. I could be the victim of my own imagination.
That night, as I went to sleep, I found myself twisting and turning. I kept losing my covers, and there was a constant chill going up the left side of my body. I had this half-waking nightmare about a second head growing out of my left shoulder. My ribcage expanding and splitting, like a cell dividing. I felt myself clawing at the side of my body, like a wounded animal trying to push its guts back inside.
I tried crawling out of bed, sweat stinging my open eyes. Something was holding me back.
My left arm, cramped and bloodless, digging into the wood of the headboard.
Having twisted and turned all night, it was getting late. Minutes before the break of dawn, I lay awake staring into the ceiling; feeling my mind slip out of my grasp. Like a part of my thoughts were bleeding out of my head, drenching the pillow with my emotions and memories. I blinked, one eye at a time. I had trouble breathing, not knowing when to swallow my spit and when to inhale.
I tried biting my dry tongue to feel something. All I felt was the bitter taste of iron biting back.
“Jess Gothe Hannon,” I mouthed out. “Jess Gothe Hannon.”
I felt my left hand release. There was a tingling sensation as blood started rushing back, tensing my muscles, causing a spasmic reaction.
“You’re… that’s you,” I said. “That’s it, isn’t it?”
An arch of pain as a nerve twisted.
“No! No!” I groaned. “That’s… that’s us. That’s us.”
Instant relief. Sweet, healing relief.
To someone from the outside, what happened next can seem insane. I know.
For the first time since the first session, I started having full control of all my faculties. No more dropped keys. All I had to do was think, clearly, about asking for permission. There was never a response, but just thinking about it was enough. There was nothing I wasn’t given permission to do, as long as I thought about asking.
Jess Gothe Hannon. Just acknowledging their presence made everything so much easier. But every now and then, intrusive thoughts crept in. I started thinking about calling for help. About talking to someone. About doing something. And Jess, well… retaliated.
By now, this foreign pain in my left arm had reached the lower parts of my shoulder, pushing at the edges of my heart. Even thinking about doing something “bad” would make my pulse soar. At one point, it made my heart literally skip a beat. I had to lean against the wall to catch my breath.
One thing I noticed early on was that thinking about it in flowery language seemed to help. I started reading a thesaurus on my phone whenever I wanted to plan something out in my head, and it gave a sense of relief. Somewhat. But looking away too long made my left hand either close the tab or throw the entire phone away.
It broke, eventually.
But I could run circles around myself. For example, if I wanted to think about seeing a doctor, I would instead think of “consulting a licensed physician”. I’d still feel a tinge of something, but nothing bad. It started to feel like a presence crawling through the back of my mind, little burning sentries looking for familiar brain signals to grasp. Using exotic wordplay and an outlandish vocabulary would pull them off the trail. Hence why I sometimes bring up irregular words to pull my mind in different directions.
Problem was, I couldn’t control my dreams. And in my dreams, I wanted out, and I wanted whatever this was to go away.
Every night was a battle. I’d get slapped awake or find myself struggling to breathe. My left lung would shut down, or I’d get a stomach cramp. Once, my left leg started to twist and turn, straining itself to the point where I thought the kneecap might get dislocated.
I tried pleading. I tried explaining out loud that I wasn’t consciously doing something bad. That I was only trying to sleep, to relax. But in the labyrinth of my mind, I could sense that strange presence, growing, making space for itself.
And for the first time, it spoke back to me. Using only the left side of my mouth, it whispered.
“I wan’ ou’. I wan’ ou’.”
It pulled to the left so hard I fell off the bed. And every time I was close to falling asleep, and those stress dreams took over, I’d be pulled back awake again, and again, and again.
I don’t know how I survived the next few days. One morning I just woke up in my shower, fully clothed and shivering. My fingers were blue. My left hand kept squeezing an empty shampoo bottle.
“Jess,” I tried to say. “Jess, please.”
“Wan’ ou’,” I twitched. “Wan’ ou’.”
“We… we can see doctor Stanson. He can help us.”
A hiss escaped my throat, burning into my vocal cords. We were in accord.
I was allowed to check the posted lecture schedules on my laptop. Doctor Stanson had a single lecture that day, right before lunch. I had about an hour to get there. I changed my pants, put on a jacket, and left. I didn’t even lock the front door.
“Wan’ ou’, “ I mouthed.
He could do something. He had to. Whatever it was, he could do it.
By the time I made my way back to the university, my left side wasn’t playing along. One leg was walking faster than the other, and my hand kept grabbing and punching things. I kept making these strange noises, like I was lifting heavy weights or trying to cough up a hair ball.
I didn’t care. I just had to see doctor Stanson.
Finally, I stumbled into the lecture hall. I was ten minutes late, but so be it.
I was shocked to see that this wasn’t an ordinary lecture. This was the debriefing for the experiment I’d been a part of.
My phone was broken. I’d probably missed all their calls and texts. Maybe they thought I’d quit.
I had trouble focusing. I saw another student, the computer science major, sitting just a few rows ahead. He seemed fine. Was this just me?
There was a burst of laughter. Apparently, doctor Stanson had just said something funny.
Funny. Humorous. Hu-mo-rous. Whimsical. Droll. Droll.
Stay in control.
“The Raskian identity theory revolves around the idea of formulaic identity,” Stanson smiled. “So for my 30th year of teaching academia, I figured I’d indulge myself with some pseudoscience. If only to put these ridiculous notions to rest. So for those of you looking to pursue a serious career – look away!”
Another round of laughter.
“So for the sake of argument, we followed the suggested method to point and order. And it required three steps.”
And right then and there, Stanson laid out the entire experiment to the sound of laughter and applause.
First step was to introduce the trigger word. Usually a strange name, an identifier. Something unique, that would open new pathways in the patient’s mind. He did this by faking a “mistake” during the interview process. All in good fun.
Second step was to open “vessel space” by creating a mental separation, a vacuum. This was done by a series of physical and mental exercises. Again, Stanson made light of things. Pulling fingers and making people play tic-tac-toe with themselves; it was based on the ideas of the original author, but made… ridiculous.
“Out of 80 people we tested, 58 couldn’t stop themselves from laughing, so we had some trouble getting them to follow along,” chuckled Stanson. “Out of the remaining 22, 13 had trouble understanding the instructions. 5 had some kind of arm or hand injury, making one side reliably dominant. The remaining four were the most interesting. One got so into it they slammed their hand into the table, frightening poor Patricia here.”
Another sensible chuckle rose from the audience. Stanson could be quite charismatic when he wanted to.
“The third step is a strange one,” he continued. “It’s basically just waiting. Once a seed has been planted, there is no guarantee that it blooms. It all depends on the seed, or the idea, and the soil, or the person. It’s like typing a random name for a website and hoping you get something good. Most of the time you just get spam, or, well, naked people. Or nothing.”
Stanson shrugged and clicked to the next slide.
“According to Rask, if performed regularly, you can eventually find and invite a name or concept that is so unique that it creates an identity. Or, that an identity was already associated with it. Like how the word for ‘cat’ differs in language, but we all know what a cat looks like. That means the meaning of cat is transcendental, even though the word isn’t. To Rask, modern language was a… broken model of an original intent, and that by exploring it we could stumble upon something more. Something universal.”
He showed another slide. A seed, growing into a seedling, only to bloom into different flowers. Some turned to roses, others were petunias. One branch turned into a weird blue sunflower.
“Plant enough seeds,” nodded Stanson, “and eventually, they might turn into something. That was the idea behind the Twice-Mind Fallacy. A routine to invite… something.”
A hand shot up from the front row. Stanson pointed to it.
“What would happen if they made it through the third step?” they asked.
“That’s an interesting question,” nodded Stanson. “If Raskian identity theory is something to go by, they’d be inhabited by a foreign being. Something not restricted by humanity. A completely alien entity, unrestricted and primal. Or a… a pig. Could be anything, really.”
Stanson changed slides, showing column after column after column of the various names he’d used in the experiment. Some were obvious fakes, like Charlie Chaplin or Abraham Lincoln. Others were just noises, or jokes. One of the entries just read “Toots McDougal”. But by the end of the list I saw one I recognized.
“I’ll admit,” said Stanson. “We ran out of stupid names, so we picked a few from Rask’s diaries. He uses this weird name to describe a personification of his writer’s block. We thought it fitting.”
He went on to speak about obscure references, like a man named Obsten, and some strange woman called Athoesa (I think?). But it was the final name on the list that made my blood run cold.
It didn’t read ‘Jess Gothe Hannon’.
It read ‘Jezgoth, the Have-None’.
There was a little clipart demon in the corner. More laughter.
I stood up. Not by choice. My left hand dug into the seat in front of me, tearing a hole in the cheap imitation leather. My fingernails bled.
At the same time, a bell rang. The lecture was over, and Stanson got a standing ovation for his presentation. I blended in with the crowd.
This was a joke. This’d all been a joke.
“I ill,” my mouth drooled. “I ‘ave non. I ill.”
I tried to stand still as students pushed past me. Some stayed to talk to doctor Stanson and congratulate him on his many achievements. The “Twice-Mind Fallacy” was meant as a footnote, a… curio. It was never meant to be studied; it wasn’t based on anything but the ramblings of an old poet. Rask was an early 20th century writer who mostly made children’s books to keep his paranoia in check.
This is getting harder.
So I pushed forward. I got up to Stanson. I knocked over a table, sending papers and drawings tumbling into the air. Stanson recoiled, but I reached for him. Sadly, I reached with both arms at once, completely losing my balance. I fell over him, collapsing to the floor.
“Get… get it out,” I spat.
“Ill you,” the other side of me growled. “Ill you, ill all, ‘ave all.”
“No!” I groaned.
I don’t know where I got that pencil from, but all of a sudden, I had it; wielding it like a knife.
Two people tried to pull me off doctor Stanson. I heard a scream. Someone got that pencil burrowed into their thigh.
I hugged myself, crossing my arms. I tried to wrestle myself.
My head twitched back and forth, trying to say two things at once, in two voices. I had this intense ache in the back of my neck, as nerve endings started to fray. Something pushed against my spine, and I could feel my skin stretching.
I ended up lying there, screaming, my eyes flickering back and forth. And for a moment I had this sense of clarity. Like I had stepped into the mind of another. It was only for a heartbeat, but it lasted for hours.
I had this thought of an old man, sitting by a table.
He was bitter about having to dress up for his daughter’s wedding. He watched through a window as an old horse pulled a cart down a cobblestone road. The old man did not approve of his daughter’s union. Whenever there was a source of discontent in his life, he gave it a name, and this particular name recurred many times. Perhaps he grew less imaginative with age, he pondered.
“Jezgoth, the Have-None,” the old man wrote. “Jezgoth, untouched by Sol’s embrace, unacquainted with the merciful solace of restful slumber. No witty phrases birthed from his quill, nor was he ever graced by a virgin smile. He is he, the one bereft of essence, who oft mirrors my void when I dissolve into naught, becoming the embodiment of my silent tempest.”
A knock at the door causes the old man to sigh. He crumbles the page in his palm, leaving it abandoned in a corner of the room with dried flower petals and years of dusty neglect. He grabs his walking cane and surrenders to inconvenience.
In that moment, I completely lost control. Left side, right side, all of it.
I saw it play out in front of me, like watching a movie through a straw.
One of the assistants got her nose broken as her glasses shattered. A clean hit to the face.
I got a hold of doctor Stanson and tried to strangle him with a mic cord, all the while screaming those few crude words my mouth could bring itself to form.
Kill. Want. Have.
Thinking those simple words makes my arm ache. I must careful.
Must careful.
Someone called 911. Someone told them to hang up. It took three people to keep me pinned to the ground. I bit people, I scratched, I screamed. But also, I did nothing. Jezgoth had gotten so much space in me that there was barely anything of me left. I felt my lungs gasp for air, but I couldn’t move them. I could only hope that my host was gracious enough to breathe. They were. They breathed me nice.
Much of it is a blur. Jezgoth didn’t pay much attention. I kept zoning out, waking intermittently from blackouts. Doctor Stanson was often there, telling people to stay quiet. Threatening people. I remember hearing him scream that anyone saying anything about this would never write anything, to anyone, ever again.
But in the back of my head, I was exploring the psyche of my assailant. Memories, thoughts, smells, and sights. All remnants of whatever this old poet toted down at the turn of the century. The personification of this… bad… thing.
Yes. Bad thing.
And it was turning me into a battleground.
For days, it felt like walking through a dark forest. I’d open my eyes and see whatever Jezgoth wanted me to see. But in my mind’s eye, I wandered the empty halls filled with the essence of this would-be creature. Sunless skies, expressionless people. Identical square buildings circling a tower that pierces the Heavens. Endless dunes of gray sand and withering patches of grass.
And somewhere among the gloom, I saw Jezgoth. A joyless old man, sitting on his throne, lazily pointing a sword at me. At his discretion, he could pierce my heart.
But he saw no point in doing so. There was no joy in killing. No rage to quench, no love to pursue.
There were no songs to sing in the land of the Have-Nones.
Somewhere in the darkness, there was a voice.
“Dramaturgy,” it said. “Remember that word? Dramaturgy?”
Something clicked in me. My eyes opened. Both, at once.
“Yes,” I nodded. “Remember.”
I was in a dark room, somewhere off-campus. Doctor Stanson hadn’t slept for days. A room covered in notebooks, sketches, and crumbling prints of long-gone hand-written volumes. Half a dozen takeout boxes. A red tie casually thrown across the floor.
“Thank God,” he sighed. “Now listen to my words. Listen carefully. Not my voice, my words.”
He told me many smart words. Pretty words. Bad. Ugly.
He specifically told me words like “agency”, “willingness”, “effortless” and “determined”. Words with many syllables, who I was asked to consider the meaning of. Just like I’m doing now. Right now. Not just ‘good words’, or ‘smart words’, but words that reminded me that I have control of my own mental faculties. A capacity for me. Strong words that could push back and expunge the poison that drenched my soul.
We spent hours droning the same repertoire, many of which I’ve repeated here.
I stayed with doctor Stanson for months. On paper, I was his research assistant. In reality, he was trying to cover it all up. He realized he’d made a terrible mistake, and he buried everything about the Twice-Mind Fallacy. I didn’t care, I just wanted that thing out of my head.
One day, Stanson just… didn’t come back to the office. There was no explanation, and no one went looking for him. At every turn, I was stonewalled. Tight-lipped academics wearing secretive pins, taking payments for “brand lectures” that they never went to. I’m not going into it here, but pay attention to the Hatchet Investment Group.
I left campus with a sizeable donation from an anonymous donor, and a reminder that some of the paperwork I’d signed when I joined the study was still relevant. I never got my degree in clinical psychology, but I don’t think I want it anymore. I want to do something with my body. At least when I get full control back.
As you have certainly noticed by now, I still have trouble staying, well, me. There’s not much left of Jezgoth. I think it is all in my left hand. I can feel it. Like a worm trying to snake its way up my veins. I’ve pushed it down over and over, but the poison must go.
I wanted to write one last time. To fully, effortlessly write.
Because later tonight, I’m cutting this fucking arm off, ending this nightmare once and for all.