Part One
The spider in my room won’t stop talking to me. I don’t even know when it started. Once it did though, it became more and more frequent. At first I thought, maybe I was going crazy. However I had always been a bit on the mentally unwell side, to put it lightly. I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression in six grade. The psychiatrist said it was like I was put together wrong. Not just my insides, but like something deep to the core of my very atoms was wrong. Was gross. Was nasty. Then when I met Dr. Peterson is when he told me I have a thing against people. He wasn’t wrong of course, but he could never figure out why, and I could never tell him. When you tell doctors the truth, they try to hurt you. They try to send you away to the bad place. I will NOT go to the bad place. So, I lied. Said I didn’t know what he meant, and that I like to keep to myself. Of course, he was correct though. I did have a disdain for the humanly figure.
When I was diagnosed however, I wasn’t surprised though, even then. Sickness, disease, and torture seemed to follow members of my family wherever they went. Take my grandmother for example. She had led a very good life. A modest, God fearing life. Ya know where that got her? Laying six feet deep, after a years long struggle from oral cancer. The woman never chewed tobacco in her life, never so much as laid a finger on any drug, and never did anything bad to anyone in her entire life. Yet, she still died. Now I’m alone. I’m alone, and that spider knew it. It knew when I was watching it. It knew when I was thinking about it even. It knew. It always knew. Maybe to understand better, I need to bring you in on a few things. Bring you in on the things that it knew, and knew it needed to know.
Most people think of me as an outcast. I never cared. I always thought that the best thing I could be, is alone. I was always sick everyone said. No one knew quite how sick I was, or what type of illness I bear. People told me I had my weaknesses, like my immune system. My immune system has always been somewhat confused, it seems to think that I am the foreign body. That mere consumption provide enough reason, to rid the body of itself. This caused me much pain, mentally and physically. However, no one told me I also had my strengths. I had to find that out for myself. See when no one bothered me, my brain could be set free. I could see anything I wished. Feel anything I wanted to. It all started when I was very young. I used to sit in my room for hours and talk to my friends, some of them more real than others. I had a friend named Koby. He was my most real friend.
I met Koby at elementary school, a private school where everyone except me was laced with hundred dollar bills. Koby’s family was also wealthy, but he was different from other people too. He didn’t understand when people made fun of him, why people made fun of him. He was naïve. Me on the other hand, I watched everyone. Judged everyone, just like they judged me. I got a cheaper entry in to my school due to my grandmother working at the school office. After summer ended people would come into class and the teacher would inevitably ask “What did you do this summer class?”. Everyone else either went to Greece, Italy, Rome, Japan, or some other foreign country. They were different than me, and they made sure I knew it. Not Koby though. Koby never asked me about my money, and we liked some of the same things. People would tease us and call us gay, because we liked “girly shows on the Disney channel”. We both came from a perspective of liking what we like unapologetically, at first.
We did indeed have a close and personal friendship, the kind young boys who care not about societal boundaries have. We would throw each other over one another’s heads in his pool mimicking wrestling moves. Imitating Randy Orten, and Brock Lesnar as if we were lumbering monsters of flesh and bones. Sometimes we would get hurt, bang our head in to the wrong object, or hit something too hard; only to console each other as to not cry and get in trouble. We also would make short films that ranged from comedy to action, and we replicated the bad language we saw online. We loved choreographing fake sword fights, and I always loved living as a swordsman in my head. Imagining chopping apart opponents, limb by limb as I dismantle their world and build my own. I also always wanted to act. I thought I was quite good at keeping on masks. Never relenting on an unending character, the likes of which only I know are fake. Koby and I didn’t see eye to eye on a lot though. He was a huge fan of childish games, while I liked things to be a bit more advanced and difficult. He thought random curse words were funny, while I felt my taste a little more sophisticated. Did I feel superior to him? In some ways yes. It didn’t matter though, what mattered is they didn’t like him almost as much as they hated me. That helped us bond.
Then one day something changed. Koby changed, he became one of them. Koby began to play into their jokes. Tried to be what they wanted him to be, a clown. The bullying got worse, and worse. It started with calling us gay, use the f slur towards us, and other homophobic slurs. It then turned in to physical violence. People slapping us, using us as punching bags. I was a big kid. I think they enjoyed the idea of having power over someone larger than them.
One day during basketball, we were playing knock out. During Koby’s turn, one of the kids James went up to him and punched him directly in the eye. He did this due to being “knocked out” moments prior in the game by Koby. Having had enough, I immediately threw my basketball at the kids head, and moved to begin smashing his skull with my bare knuckles. Gnarling, and utilizing years of frustration I lunged at James. Rather than joining me in fighting him, Koby stopped me. He stood between me and James. He apologized to James profusely begging for his forgiveness, and scolded me. Told me how evil I was for simply fighting back. I had never felt more embarassed. More betrayed. The person I called a friend, would stop me from protecting him, and make me look like a weak fool in front of everyone. He cared more about his image to them, the people who didn’t like him to begin with than the will and anger his own “friend”. I would never stoop so low as to let the people who berated me, who hurt me choose who I become or what actions I take. That’s when I realized my “real” friend, wasn’t so real at all. I gladly accepted that I would never protect another being again.
After he stopped me, he became close with the people we once loathed. He would go on to spend time with them, join their clubs, go to their birthday’s. He was no longer the Koby I was once tolerated, and was now something very different. I hated him, at first. That was until he became comfortable enough with them, so comfortable he told them my deepest darkest secrets. The boys that had been scolding us, making us feel like nothing for years, he told them of my abuse. He told them of my desires, and of my fears. He told them who I enjoyed spending time with, what kinds of media I enjoyed, and what goals I had. He told them. That is what matters, and that is unforgivable. When I told him that what I thought about him, when I let him know how small of an ant he truly was to me, that’s when the voices around me became more than real. In a way they were the truth. They never lied to me. They always told me what I needed to hear, not what I wanted to hear. They never judged me when I was wrong. So, when I was by myself… I was never truly alone. Some of them have names, others are a faint whisper. An echo of the wills of the past. A presence, that is not quite understood.
See I grew up in a trailer park. That is why the rich kids would never like me. I wore the same tattered uniform to school every day. Never having enough change to purchase a hot lunch, always begging the school for free food just to eat for that day. I never really thought much of my family’s money, or lack thereof. I somewhat liked living at the trailer park. I had acquaintances of all backgrounds, ethnicities, nationalities, languages you name it. However, people knew of me, but no one knew me. I would put on a front, and call myself by different names just to toy with people. Sometimes I would do different accents, to see how long it would take for someone to realize how fake it was. I always liked playing tricks on people, it’s one thing that often alienated me more than anything else. I didn’t care. I saw it as more of an art than anything. Plus never letting anyone in on the joke, made it all the more special. Only I could control what others knew of me. I was the bottle neck for that pipeline of information.
One trick I used to play on my neighbor Darren was exceedingly hilarious, but he didn’t like it much at all. He had a cat, it was a black and white cat named Moo that loved all the kids in the neighborhood. Except me. It would always scratch at me when it saw me, hiss like I was some monster. One thing that no one liked however, is that this cat meowed as loud as a Bostonian woman in the middle of an orgasm. Every single night, throughout the neighborhood it would whale on. It kept me up at night as a child, and made my dog anxious too. I always prayed that cat would get hit by a car, or smashed by a falling anvil. One day my wish must have come true. One day, the cat stopped meowing. Some say the cat got skittish, ran off, and got lost. I think differently. I think someone killed that cat. Someone took matters into their own hands, and good for them. When there is an annoyance, I say end it. People always get so sentimental over things like death. I find death to be peaceful, inviting. Warm.
However, even with Moo gone Darren and I still didn’t get along. He hated my dog, and blamed me for his cat going missing. So, one night I found an old recording on my phone. It was the cat meowing in the backyard. So I took my speaker over to Darren’s house, and played it at just the right volume to make it sound like the cat was at his gate. He got up moments later, and ran downstairs, searching for his cat. The way his face shimmered with mere glimpses of hope, and happiness only to give way to utter defeat and despair really put a smile on my face. The deep smile he had, turning in to a frightful scowl made my night perfect. His misery for some reason provided me with a level of comfort, knowing I could control someone’s emotions with such ease. It felt right. It felt like a power, that I deserved. Darren later that week would tell all the neighbors, and the neighbors started keeping an eye out too. The cat was never found, so they say. I think differently.
These days I don’t play many tricks on people at all. These days I’ve lost my power. I stay inside, away from those who can harm me. Free from everything of the societal world. Free to roam the mind that I so desperately aimed to understand in it’s entirety. Voices, that need to be satiated with conversations only I can have with myself. This is the only way to truly escape. The only way to be truly, and utterly free.
Day 3
I sit here on my couch. Staring at a blank screen ahead of me. Thinking not of the future, but of the past. I look fondly on my childhood memories. Moments with my parents where we would go on glorious adventures, filled with frights and delights all the same. One I recall is going to Bodega Bay with my father. We were roaming through beach caves, as the tide began to rise. I was with another child I met on the playground, and at a moments notice we were nearly trapped in the cave unable to get out. Luckily the other child’s father was able to get in the cave, and get us out. I hate to think what might have happened, had that man not been there on that day.
I think fondly of my school memories. While I had some friends, I mostly stuck to my studies. I was able to move forward, and at least pass my classes with relative ease. I always procrastinated, which gave me a lot of anxiety. I continued to do so anyway. By the time I reached high school I was able to graduate at 16. This made me ecstatic, because I no longer had to attend the high school that bored me so deeply. I was then able to take online classes for school, limiting my contact with others. Most see this as negative, I loved it dearly. I always felt I excelled when I worked on my own, rather than in teams. They always slowed me down anyway.
Today I sit quietly, in silence. Except for the sound of a child. The neighbor downstairs keeps a little brat that begs for attention all day long. Sometimes that baby reminds me of my neighbors cat when I was a child. It’s a long story, maybe we’ll get to it some other time.
- Nicholas Anderson
When I moved out of the trailer park, and started going to high school is when everything really changed. We went from living in a place with a community, to living in an apartment where no one knew their neighbors. Not that I cared for the people in my community much anyway, but having something to interact with seemed helpful. That was now gone. My father traveled for work, and my mother was usually getting high somewhere. So I would often stay by myself, in my home, alone. Listening to nothing but music, and the voices I had come to love so much. The voices that I began to see as more real, than reality itself. Even when one of my parents were around, I still just wanted to be left to my own devices. I’ve never liked interacting with anyone much. I don’t think I ever will.
Considering this to be the case, I was also still what you might consider to be anti-social. I did not like people, and most people did not like me. Once I learned how much I loved spending time with myself, this seemingly just got worse. Once I entered high school I realized how different I still was. No one here was significantly richer than anyone else, but I still felt a barrier separating me from them. I did find a small group of misfits however, to waste my time with at lunch. Even then I often still sat silently, while everyone else clambered on. Even in this group, I still felt utterly alone. What I did enjoy however, was that my mere presence to them was somewhat of a trick. I did not care for these people. Yet they seemed to believe that simply because I was there, that I somehow cared about them. They also seemed to enjoy the embodiment of mystery I took on. I would rarely provide any information about myself, and when I did I would still commonly lie. Lie about who I had been with, what I had done, what I accomplished, what I had faith in. They believed it, for a time.
It all started to come apart, when Jada came around. Jada always seemed to take an interest in me. I didn’t really understand why. I never paid her any attention, and when I did it was always quick, simple, and to the point. Maybe my lack of interest in her, is what caused her interest in me. Either way, it wasn’t a good decision for her. I never have cared much for how my actions effected others. Nor have I ever really considered what would happen, if my lies were to be discovered. It just doesn’t matter to me, and typically I don’t stay around others long enough to be figured out anyway. Jada however, stuck to me like glue. Anywhere I would go she would follow, with sad puppy dog eyes. Begging for attention. To be honest on some level I thought it was quite adorable, but also relished in the idea that I might be able to exert some sort of romantic power over someone. She was going to provide that to me. So, I fed in to her ways. I told her what she wanted to hear. I told her that she made me feel ways no one else ever had, which was completely fabricated. Pulled from thin air. I did not love this girl. I loved what she could do for me. I loved how I could make myself feel with her, and now that I had a taste of it I loved that power. That was, until she started to push back.
For a while I thought I was untouchable, I thought no one could break the spell I had on Jada. Any time I would ask her to be somewhere, she would be in an instant. It did not matter the time or the place. I could tell her any lie, ask her to complete any task and she would believe it or complete it. I had her fully in the palm of my hand with a firm grasp, until others in our little group started to get in to her head. They started to realize that some of my stories, didn’t quite add up. They saw how Jada spent her time with me. How she was at my every beck and call. That she would give up anything for me, yet I would give up nothing for her. They were jealous. They wanted to have that control over somebody, but they never could. They were never smart enough, never talented enough to do so. They told her that I was no good for her, that I was using her.
Make no mistake, I was using her. Isn’t that what love is? One using another person, to find some bliss. Some happiness which they can’t find elsewhere? Why am I wrong for doing the same. She provided me pleasure, I provided her with some in return. Sounds like a fair transaction to me. Besides, who are they however to interfere with my life. With my people. With my toys. When she finally told me she never wanted to see me again, I knew she was lying. She wanted me more than ever. Wanted to fix me. Wanted to make me hers, but she would only ever be mine to toy with. I was unfixable, because I wasn’t broken. It was everyone else that needed fixing, I was simply playing the game. Not long after Jada said that to me, I was excised from our group. They thought of me as a dirty liar, who they couldn’t trust. It’s not my fault I played with those who are easily fooled, preyed on what made them weak. I was simply showing them what they were doing wrong. What they could do better. I knew from then on that the only person who understood me was the people I spoke to when I as alone. They knew me better than I knew myself. They knew what I wanted, what I could do. They had faith in me. That’s when I knew I needed to keep myself low. Put away. Kept neatly in a box, so that way I could ascertain my full potential. Once again I realized, only then could I be free. People, even as my toys were more detrimental to me than anything else. I loved being alone, but more importantly I thrived in it.
Once I started staying away, keeping to myself. I realized love was not what I had been told. Love was not for others, but for the feeling one can attain from the power it provides. With other humans that power is fleeting, but with one’s self it remains until your eminent death. With only myself in my home is when I found my first true love aside from loneliness. Cutting. Utilizing a blade to make the marks on my skin which I now define as art. A knife’s place is meant to be against the skin of a being. It fits so fluidly down the fold of one’s figure, like a figure skater dancing around an icy path with the blades on their feet. Leaving behind trails of love, despair, pain, and joy.
I swear it was an accident at first. I was in the kitchen one day, angry that I couldn’t understand myself. Why I felt the way I felt about life. Angry that I felt abandoned, without a mentor to assist me in both my strengths and my weaknesses. That’s when I instinctively took a knife angled it directly downward with both hands grasping it, and I slammed it straight down in to a cutting board. Little did I know that my hand would slide on to the knife as the impact was made with the board. My white tendons on the left side of my inner right palm, sliced open. Bleeding profusely. My anger swelled in that moment, and manifested in immense pain that synergized and gave me something I had never quite felt like that before. Euphoria. Pure, and utter bliss. In that moment I felt aroused, excited, ready for something to happen. Nothing did. As my feelings of euphoria began to fade away, I was left with the slide in my hand from the blade. Blood dripping all over the cutting board, and the counter beside it. Crimson red splattered behind the board, leaving a bloody mess to clean up. I quickly applied pressure, and got a bandaid from the bathroom sink. Applied it, and sopped up the red stained tile with paper towels. As I did so it occurred to me, that feeling can be replicated again. All I needed was a knife, and a will to achieve nirvana. With blood spilt, it would be far easier the next time.
Day 5
Today I find myself on the floor of the kitchen. Staring at the ceiling, thinking of past relationships. The wrongs, the rights. What I did, what I didn’t do. What could have been, and what never will be. These things I find fascinating as a self-exploration exercise. What could I have done wrong to the woman that I once said I loved, so much so that she deems it necessary not to speak to me again. Did I do anything wrong to begin with? Is it true that she will never speak to me again? I find it doubtful, although I do not put myself in high regard on this situation either. I called her my baby doll, because that is what she is for me. I just want her back. Sometimes. However, I want her back for me. She wants me back for her. Maybe we can meet in the middle.
I think of my parents and what they didn’t do for me as a child. They weren’t model citizens, but they also weren’t terrible parents. They just didn’t know how to raise a child, and honestly who the hell does? I fault them not for what they did, but for allowing themselves to have a child in the first place when they were not ready. Bringing a child in to a world you are not