Normal

Normal

These four walls were a blessing and a curse. I’d long since gotten used to staring at its thick white covers, seeing faces in them that seemed to mock my situation, as if I were the most pitiful thing they‘d ever seen..

“What are you, crazy?” They would laugh, appearing in the walls, morphing into the faces of friends, family, sometimes even strangers I’d yet to meet. Sometimes they would change completely into different scenes, colors swirling into deserts or mosques or empty buildings, but that was a whole different story. The faces weren’t nearly as bad as those, but the things they would whisper and yell to me taunted me in my sleep. “Look at you! Trapped in a nut house! What’re you gonna do now, Mr. Know-it-all? Your friends aren’t here to protect you now! They all died!”

Every day was the same. I would wake up early in the morning before some of the doctors would come in and give me my medication. Exercising was hard to do these days; they’d drug you up so much you wouldn’t feel like moving, much less working out. But there I would be up at 4 or 5 in the morning, doing pushups on the floors or pulling myself up using the bars from the window up high on a wall. Had the staff known, they probably would’ve been irritated. They were always annoyed that I was strong enough off fend off some of them when they pushed me back to my room after a visitation, but a syringe was all that was needed to stop such a rampage.

That’s not to say I was very strong. Week by week- sometimes by days- I noticed my body becoming a little weaker. My hypothesis was the food. It was pretty disgusting, the temperatures off and the substance lacking in anything tasteful, probably devoid of any fat or protein. If it wasn’t the food, maybe it was just the atmosphere. People talking to themselves, talking to objects, rocking back and forth in their chairs with nothing to do. If their apparent mental illness hadn’t driven them mad, it had to have been the boredom.

Even I felt its strain. Besides exercising, there really was nothing to do. For hours on end, I would lay on that hard surface they called a bed and stare up at the ceiling, thinking and muddling over what the outside world was doing, taking their freedom for granted. Pondering was a horrible hobby to do to an extent. You’d begin to remember past things you’ve done, things you regret, things you wish you’d done. Hours and hours would be spent on thinking of problems just because there was nothing else to focus on.

I suppose there’s a light at the end of every tunnel, and mine was Anna. I don’t know if it was just fate or luck or retarded coincidence, but she worked at the facility I was prison to and had been assigned to my room. I felt sorry for her, having an ex-boyfriend come to your work and being forced to tend to them. I remember the first time she came in my room, though. I don’t know why she did it, but within minutes she’d given me a kiss and told me she still loved me. To be completely honest, I didn’t believe her. Four years do a lot to a person, and I doubted either of us knew each other as well as we used to. I was more (or maybe less) of a person than I used to be. That’s just how it was, and I didn’t think we could make up so much lost time.

Even if I’d rejected her advances and told her how I felt about it, that didn’t mean I didn’t think about her. If she wasn’t in my room with me for whatever reason, I would wonder what she was doing. How she’d spent her nights, who she was with, if she was happy. There really were times I thought I was still in love with her like I’d been back in high school. I would stay as quiet as I could, waiting to hear her feet walk past my door, memorizing the time between each step. When I was around her, I would just watch her expression change, how her eyes showed what she might be feeling, the way she’d scribble things on that clipboard while I spoke to her. Whether it was love or infatuation I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t think I had time to dwell on thoughts of affection and sexual urges. Nothing mattered to me more than getting out of here.

How’d I get in this crappy building in the first place? I barely remembered that night. It was dark, and I was driving back from the airport, heading home. It’d been the first time I’d driven myself anywhere in a while; usually I just took a taxi or got someone else to drive me around, but that night I’d had felt as if I could trust myself. I‘d been cruising around for a while, winding down a few back roads, heading on some main ones. Then there came the red and blue lights whizzing behind me as I failed to stop at a stop light. For some reason, that made me nervous, and when the sound came on, I’d flipped out. Literally. There had been a sharp turn, and in the whole thing, plus my accelerating speed, I'd forgotten about it and the truck I drove had slid right off the side, careening down a grassy knoll before ending with a few flips. Almost miraculously, I’d come out without any injuries, but apparently I‘d done something insane. They never told me much, but they said a cop had dragged me out, thinking I was drunk off my ass. His testimony at my court date, in which the judge had sentenced me to this damn mental hospital despite my plea, said I had cried and screamed and tried to fight him off. Strangely, I don’t remember anything like that, and they’d passed it off as a simple concussion for the reasons I didn’t, as if I was just suffering from amnesia. Of course they were going to trust a policeman over me.

Then they'd sent me to this mental hospital. That day made me feel so worthless. I’d sat on the bed of my room, my legs hanging over the edge, feet touching the floor, elbows on my knees, and my head cradled between my hands. And I sat there for hours, staring down at the tiles of the floor like it held all the secrets in the world. This would be a ritual I would repeat over and over again. Exercising or thinking, that’s all I ever did within those four empty walls.

Despite being with many other patients, I often felt lonely. Very few talked to each other, some would attempt to make conversation, but all in all, no one felt much like doing anything. The funny thing I noticed was when the day came that they would be let out, they were happier. They’d talk a little more, lighten up a bit, knowing they would be going home. However, they were far from what I remembered normal people to be. We were all desensitized to an extent, and I didn’t think any of us would really be “normal” again.

There were definitely many interesting people to meet here. I’d made a few friends out of them, albeit more like acquaintances, but still friends. I’d sit with them during our meal hours or whatever free time we had, and we’d just chill out and talk. Being the guys we were, since my ward was for all male patients, we’d chat about some of the nurses. My closest friend, a strange, younger guy named Brody, was always jealous of me.

“How come you got a woman as your psychologist?” he would ask, narrowing his eyes and tilting his head. “As if having people visit me in my room all the time making a racket wasn’t enough; I’m stuck with a balding man as a psychologist. At least you have something good to look at.”

Visitation was more of a surprise in seeing people than anything else. You’d think only family and friends would come, but strangely enough, that didn’t happen. Not with me, anyway. I couldn’t believe who my first visitor was.