Look at us. We are the sick people, those who walk down the street each day, instead of being locked in a sanatorium. We look at you with our deep eyes and talk about milk’s price and last food we ate, and you take us for one of you. You never suspect a thing; and if you ask for help, we are always there. When you cry your pain away we smile at you and say it will be alright. We put a hand on your shoulder and comfort you saying You can do it whenever you feel down. We want to see you happy because we live through you. We lack the triggers and glands that would produce Oxytocin. We cannot be happy on our own, but we try to learn from you. As if happiness can ever be learned…
We walk down the street and you admire us. We look strong and maybe we really are. You wish to be like us: independent and beautiful, powerful and imposing. You look at us with respect and dream about the day you will be just the same. You enjoy our company and you feel inspired; you praise us, but we don’t know how to accept compliments because we are not used to them. Yet you keep talking, mentioning everything you like about us, from outfit to elegant behavior, but all we can do is thank you, even though we know what you see is not real. When the day is over we crawl back to our place, where we sink in our reality.
Screams and howls echo over and over again in our neighborhood. The people like me are home. Home?
Maybe in this context home doesn’t have the meaning you know. We are the rebels, the ones who ran away from their so-called “homes”. We’ve always felt set aside, strangers of our own families. So we left.
We are the homeless ones. When the sun sets down all the outsiders leave the ward and head back to their places. We are those who stay. When the night is gradually reaching us we start trembling; the glasses of alcohol in our hands would fall on the white carpet. We look at the stain for a few seconds and let it join the other hundreds that make the new design of the old once white carpet. We stand up and try to reach for the balcony; some of us said fresh air helps, but when I go out all I can see are dozens of same houses with same balconies, were people like me are looking blankly at the reddish sky.
In fact, I don’t know why the sky is red, but that can as well be a side effect of my disease. I go back inside and try to watch TV; I have to distract myself. I turn it on just to watch them; the people who see the perfection in us and yet we envy them for their normal lives. They are everywhere, they are the best actors, anchors, and citizens. None of us has ever appeared there and yet they call us amazing.
I decide to go to sleep and wait for the next day. I tightly embrace myself and say goodnight while imagining I am hugged by the one I love. But my nights are not meant to end without a fight; that would be too easy. The moment I close my eyes my memories repeat over and over again with an amazing speed: the moment I failed myself for the first time, when I felt unwanted in my own home, and then, the one I am most afraid of: the moment I fell for him. His image will keep repeating until I’d recall it all: promises, kisses, embraces, and our places come to haunt me again. Everything exists in my brain and needs to be reminded each night. After the last moment with him, I can finally fall asleep, just to wake up with a huge collection of nightmares. In the morning it starts all over. I go to meet them and I spend my day listening how amazing I am, just to go back and split the wine on my carpet for a thousand times again.
And then why do they let the sick ones wander around, instead of locking them up in a mental clinic?
Oh, because we are their daily entertainers, while they pretend to be ours.