novelette

Hello.

Intro

I don't know whether or not I'm schizophrenic because I also do Chem 1. Schizophrenia and addiction will follow me throughout my life, if I have both. I try to determine just exactly what the doctors meant to diagnose me with schizophrenia. The definition found on Google means I should have paranoia, hallucinations, and negativity. My cognitive ability may be disturbed. That means I would have delusions. It means I would reach incorrect conclusions. All of those problems are associated with drug use.

I wasn't doing Chem 1 when I was diagnosed with schizophrenia. I don't mean I wasn't high--I hadn't done it in months, and didn't do it for the first years of treatment at all. The doctors would probably be mistaken to say I have psychosis related to Chem 1 use. I'm still what is called a dual diagnosis: addiction and schizophrenia.

I normally don't do Chem 1, even though I'm currently addicted to it. I'm addicted to it since my use this weekend. I think the physiological parts of the addiction will stop soon, but the psychological addiction may last longer. I'm also addicted to alcohol, which I use more commonly.

It's hard to talk about Chem 1 without it feeling like a cool drug. Cognitively, I hate it, but whenever I bring it up, I can't help but make it seem cool.

Why am I a dual diagnosis?

My counselor and I think I should no longer tell anyone I'm schizophrenic. I'm not obligated to, but it's hard to keep it secret.

Part 1

Chapter 1

The whole world was in my hands. Without stopping I said the things they would fear most. The fantasy of the alien was hers and I shared it with my girlfriend Anne, my boss Daniel, and eventually, the entire world. None were ready for the truth except Macy, because she had discovered the truth and she was the real messenger, not I.

There wasn't anything about me that grouped me into a pack or helped me stand out as having leadership ability. Before school was over and I met Macy, my interests were useless. I could fold nice cigarettes into slinky fingers and smoke them by the lake. Another task I endeavored upon was intoxicating myself (illegally) in purposeful increments one beer at a time. The period of joy and happiness I had slipped into was that way because I was lazy and I didn't go to college. Precisely this description of a boy was what she had needed. My birthday was right-on, and after I guess four years of planning she introduced her sexual life to me.

But this was after I had broken my early curfew and driven to the lake and saw a man get arrested. I heard shouting, watched the man as the officer pulled him to the back of the police car and handcuffed him. By the time he was taken to the backseat, I felt the empty silence again. The lighted vehicle exited. My first thought was that the man had been vacuumed into space.

The next time I would remember the incident and think of it as an intense and relevant memory was a few months later. She was jumping into the backseat of a different cruiser, passing under my arms and out of the scene. That was her totally paranoid exit from the situation she had created at the casino.

I never felt safe. When I was eighteen and going to different lakes around the city for fun at night, I was located by her and taken into a scenario out of Star Trek, or maybe instead Blade Runner. To survive, anything I had discovered about myself that summer would need to be remembered. The test was if I had truly enjoyed myself at lakes and on bike rides to the library. I only had to know the meaning of pleasure and not really figure anything out intellectually. That wasn't known to me beforehand and it feels a little ironic that everything would have been over if it had been.

I was still in high school but had reached the point of apathy where smoking drugs before class seemed acceptable enough. School was almost over. I took special classes for students with a higher aptitude. I didn't enroll completely in advanced classes because I thought the workload would be too much. Instead, I took a basic credit Biology class in the morning which seemed like the main motivation for getting high before school. The class itself was extremely boring. The teacher's daughter was mentally handicapped after a traumatic brain injury sustained in gymnastics. He was a Christian and tried spiritedly to raise awareness for both creationism and traumatic brain injury (TBI) accidents. He tied it into biology. Our trek through this comedy drama of life could jump the shark at any moment, he said. Later he won twenty thousand dollars on a gay morning talk show. I could see his wife's discomfort when I saw her online. It must have been a terror for them to be on television with an openly gay host. In his lecture about personal health he actually drew a shark on the board, and explained what jumping the shark means.

It was ridiculous, yet I would remember the class with a strong attachment after I met her. Any sense of comedy or drama would be better than the nightmare of her acquaintanceship.

In the case of my own television appearance, that was explained by the way I was hooked into a brainwashing scandal. It amounted to me becoming a famous celebrity. In the commercial, I was like any actor you see in a Disney movie or on a stupidly popular miniseries. I guess I looked most like Matt Damon but didn't have his stomach.

The organization which targeted me was not owned or subsidiary to anything of her status. She was an agent of that group. She had specified who she wanted and when she wanted him. She wanted me. My Mom had gotten the idea to move to the city during her doctorate studies. She called her move “action research,” which is a form of social maneuvering to help change communities.

Mom met Macy and other addicts at the shelter where she volunteered. She told me Macy and I were a good match. Mom had told Macy everything about me. The information was processed quickly by Macy and related to me in the way that superficial facts can be used to arrest one's attention.