Static Island

Explanatory notes before you start reading:
- DID is Dissociative Identity Disorder.
- Kaa-chan and Tou-chan are Japanese terms for 'Mommy' and 'Daddy' respectively. Kaa-san and Tou-san mean 'Mother' and 'Father'.
- 'onegai yo' is Japanese for something like 'please' in this context.
- Wapanese is a name for white people who want to be Japanese (yes, they do exist!)

... now start.

Enough already. Enough of this bad feeling! I am completely depressed again. I can’t find anything to do. Nothing to enjoy. Found some religious site just a moment ago and started crying. Shows how desperate I am, if I’m grasping at straws in such a false manner. I’m a philosophy student, for God’s sake! I’m supposed to be an atheist! I can’t handle religious stuff any more. God is so distant and it’s impossible to talk to him, there’s no reply… I need someone to tell me that I shouldn’t worry, that everything will be alright (but then I’ve stopped believing that, I’ve concluded completely rationally that it’s impossible, everything will not be alright), what should I do now, I have lost the will to do everything…

Kaa-chan feels the same, she says that for the last few days, since she came back from some small trip, she’s been feeling bad. Like she doesn’t care about anything. Left or right, this or that bathroom tile… Dad has been trying so hard, working and all, and she has stopped caring, she is going through the same thing I am and that scares me even more… because I know how bad it is. I wonder if she’s starting to be depressed. I’m afraid of it. If she gets depressed she won’t be able to take care of us, will she? I’m so afraid. That Christian site said God would help me if I called him. Well, God, here, I’m calling you, take me out of this pit of despair, please! Show me that you’re there! I can’t believe in you if I’m this sure that I’m all alone, and that you don’t exist! I’m afraid of everything. I’m afraid of dying and living. It’s a stalemate. It’s a deadlock. Should I take pills again? It’s the beginning of autumn. No wonder they also call it the ‘fall’. My writing skills are deteriorating. I’m beginning to hate myself. This all should be near the end of my book but I am just getting worse and worse. Please don’t let me be this alone and scared! Please! I thought I’d progressed this year. I thought I’d be better. But everything seems so bleak. I am so sad and lonely.

Yes, it’s the same problem all over again. Why am I in this bad mood? Because I have no lover, and if I have no lover, I begin to think that there is no God and this life is just one blind and evil force, like I’m already in hell, and everything around me serves to spite me. Do you know how sick I feel right now? Do you know how much my stomach hurts, from all the frustration? I think I’m gonna puke. I haven’t puked in a while. This is terrible. My stomach, my stomach… though it could be just the pudding.

I feel like something was suddenly taken away from me. And I am stuck in this bleak house, no, bleak city, the weather outside is terrible, there is no hope, no hope at all, words have lost meaning, I feel like nothing will be made right any more. Why am I so depressed? What is this world about? I cannot comprehend anything any more. I don’t know what I should do or why I should do anything. I am completely worthless. There is no one to help and no one to help me. I am so very afraid and lonely and trapped in myself, and I cannot make myself move, I cannot force myself to do anything, there are invisible chains everywhere around me, there is really nothing to do, no way to enjoy life. I am just an observer and it makes me sick. The past haunts me – now, I am remembering better days, must be some kind of self-defense mechanism, I must be trying to remind myself that good things happened before and they can happen again.

I know why this is happening. I saw people from my old group today again, and they reminded me of how much I wanted them to like me. Later on I even saw Daisuke. All males – guys whom I wanted to be friends with, I wanted them to protect me, and then one of them hurt me, and when I went away and hid licking wounds, none of the other guys came after me to call me back, none of them came to help me. It was the same as if they never knew me. And that’s what’s making me so insecure. I feel like I’ll always be this small and insecure, so afraid and vulnerable, and no one will ever come to help me. I will have no peace. I feel so afraid. This is the curse acting up. Stronger than everything before. The fourth sorcery woman Kaa-chan took me to see felt just that, she was shocked at the force of it, couldn’t believe I was able to endure this much, and here – this is the curse’s strongest mode again! God, please protect me! Please let me see the light again! Please, stop the witch’s hate, I am small and unprotected and weak, I can’t take care of myself, please come and stand by my side! You said we could always ask you! You said we could always ask for help if we were this afraid! Well I am this afraid! I don’t know what to do to help myself! I have forgotten all the tips! I don’t want to fight this anymore, I can’t, it’s too much. I’ll be defeated. I haven’t felt this badly in months.

It must be not having friends (my fault, completely, no one being good enough for me and all) and thinking too much. Daisuke must be the same, only he’s popular, he’d be king of the school if this was a high school and he had better teeth. He’d be the most popular guy if he was a little taller, I think, and if he wanted to, cause he’s nice to everyone and good friends with no one. Probably just with his girlfriend. And there I came and pretended myself into his life, and made him like me and made him hurt me (so now it’s my fault?) and now I’m paying, for wanting to break up what must have been a good couple. That can’t be the only reason why I’m depressed. Remember, I was depressed before Daisuke. Wow, seems I have nothing to do other than remember the past and suffer over it. Why am I so depressed and so scared again? What is it that’s happened to me? How do I get over it? The point is to get out of my house, and do something, not just sit here alone and watch movies or read books and live in my cozy little world. That website was right. The people I see in the movies and the book characters are not real. Outside is where the real people are, if only I could stop pretending and find someone I could talk to. I just feel like I’m so much smarter and better than other people, so different – so much pride! I can’t handle so much pride! It makes me sick! Look at what I’m doing to myself. I’m wasting so much of my life sitting here and writing this piece of junk. I should be out playing. It’s this weather. I should go and do something, but what? I’ve already made my appointment with Bella tomorrow, to see if I can help her with some college stuff. Logics. I'm giving her instructions in Logics. As if I know anything about logics! Look at me! This only proves how little what you learn in college is connected to the reality of things. I hope I can help Bella, though I don’t really care if I will. It’s this chair. It must be this couch that is cursed, it has to be. I need a change of perspective at the least. Tomorrow is my first Japanese class. I hope that goes well. I pray that goes well. God, please help me get rid of my depression. I can’t handle it anymore. Please. I know you are great. I remember being happy. Please, let me be happy again. This is one of the worst days of my life. Please, help. Onegai yo. Look at what I’m doing. I’m turning into a Wapanese. Since we’re being honest and all.

Tou-chan has just come home. I don’t want to bother him with my bad mood. I wish I could do something to help. I wish I had more faith. Most of all I wish God, I wish that You were real. Then I would have some hope. Too much information for you, isn’t it?

Dad’s tired. Aren’t we all. Is my head going to hurt every day now? Bad days are coming. Autumn and winter depression. Great. Just great.

‘But think about the good things. Heat. Tea. You get to wear coats and warm clothes. Walking in the cold. The sky’ll be so much clearer. You’ll be able to see the stars better.’

The stars! What about the stars! Only so much about them! They are just as distant and silent as You.

‘They are watching over you.’

The hell they are. No one’s watching over me. I am all alone here. I can’t break any barriers. I can’t get in touch with the outside, and no one can get in touch with me, and I am so jealous of everyone. I wish I was stupid. Stupid people don’t know what they have.

Mama says, go eat. But I’m not hungry. ‘But you have to eat!’ I can’t eat if I’m not hungry. It’s always the same.

I remember one time, a little something that happened. Went outside on the terrace, on a tall tall building, and found a boy walking on the edge of it. Well, not really a boy, but I like to call men in their early twenties or late ‘teens boys. And so he walked along the edge just a slip away from becoming an asphalt-flavored pancake fifteen stories below, and grinned that crazy grin of his (something familiar, I know this boy from before, having been with him some years now). And then I yelled at him to get down before he kills himself, as if I didn’t know what he was doing on that edge. He came down and we went inside, it was summer, we were hot and drank something cold, but it’s not like that matters. Only small physical needs, that’s the last thing you should think of when you’re standing on a cozy terrace with a beautiful boy who almost ‘plunged himself to death’ as my English professor would say. Boy said: it’s a game, when I asked him. It was a fine, fun chess game between him and Fear, something like that, he said. Then he tried to explain to me his theory, as if it was not already mine, about how Fear tricks, influences the mind, and how it can be beaten very easily. He said, walking along that edge was the same to him as walking along a straight line on flat ground with no risk of breaking necks, oh, quite the same to him, completely! Because he managed to persuade his brain that he was fine. He had to look down, breaking that sacred movie rule which in reality is worth squat, there he was, right, there you are, where was I then with this story?

Oh, I forgot. The beautiful boy and me on the balcony. It’s hard to write. I mean, when you don’t really know what it is you want to say. Please, try not to take this as a sign of my incompetence. Maybe I am writing this badly on purpose, to distract you, to see if you will realize that the point of my crappy style is to show you how words and sentences have lost the will to proceed, yes, that could be it. Since I’m already sharing something with you. Maybe I’m distracted by Tou-san and Kaa-san’s voices from the kitchen, talking politics, and by the TV, and by a thousand other little distractions that disable me from walking on a straight line, that don’t necessarily have anything obvious to do with Fear. All deep lines and cuts are pushed in side, and they are the ones that are fifteen floors deep. Where were we on the boy thing again?

Oh yes, he’s telling his story. He balanced on the edge like a ballet dancer. He’s light, that’s all, weighs even less than I do, though he’s taller and wider than me, he just has barely any fat. All muscles, instead of that. Not the kind of boy you would fall in love with, but I still like him. And he is so foolishly brave, to risk his life so needlessly, just to get a kick from it or to prove a stupid theory. A costly experiment. Poor boy, no? I need to go to the bathroom. I wish my father would stop talking.

The storyline is about to be cut down now. There is no line, and this isn’t really a story. The balcony scene was never real at all, it was only in my head, but I’m having problems distinguishing reality from imagination and my inner world. The beautiful boy who has been with me these last three years was never real outside my head either. It’s amazing what you can make yourself believe in. An amazing form of self-abuse, in the end, as I am drifting further and further away from the world. On the balcony scene, to step over the edge for a little, I am everything there is, and everything is a part of me, because it is my creation, what comes when you don’t get out much, don’t ever do anything. My inner world where it’s always raining and there’s sappy piano music in the background, that I can’t get rid of. Sister comes home from mass. I am beyond help now. That boy is looking at me with sad eyes, standing in the rain on the edge (he won’t fall, don’t worry, and even if he did I’d probably fly over to save him or something equally childish). Who is he then, do you wonder? He’s another side of me. I have made myself go DID on purpose. It’s nothing horrible, no. All writers must have DID, how else would they be able to give birth to their characters, if they were not all facets of their personality? As for me, blame high school abuse. Blame Dave. Blame shyness, God, the rain, the beautiful boy, my parents, my former friends, destiny, the world, blame anything but blame me, because it’s not my fault that I’m miserable and that it’s raining, and that my voice is coarse and silent. It really isn’t.