Delusion

It gleams in my hand. It’s clean. We’re going to visit my grandmother today. My grandma is crazy. Everyone says so. I don’t know what makes her crazy. They don’t talk about it. They don’t talk about much. At least not when I’m around. They hurt when I’m around. I can see it in their eyes. They are scared. I can hear it in their voice. Scared it will happen again. The only words they speak to me are wrapped carefully in pretty packages. Nothing real. How was your day? Would you like something to eat? They don’t ever say the words that are dancing around in front of everyone. They think it helps. The dancing words might hurt me. The pretty packages are nice and don’t hurt. Except they do. Because I know those aren’t real words. The dancing words are questions. Why? Why did you do it? You get pretty packages for Christmas. They run out of batteries. They break. The warrantees run out and you are fucked. You can’t enjoy the pretty packages any more.


One time I was fishing with my dad. I don’t like fishing. I didn’t have a pole. We went fishing every year on my dad’s birthday. July 12th. I didn’t have a fishing pole. He gave me his fishing pole the first year we went fishing. I was eight. He didn’t buy me a fishing pole. He gave me his. He had it when he was a kid. He went fishing all the time when he was a kid. It was his favorite thing to do. When he got older he didn’t have time to fish anymore. He was successful. Merriam-Webster defines success as the attainment of wealth, favor or eminence. That’s wrong. Very wrong. Success is being alone. My dad worked for a big company. He worked his way up the ladder and became very successful. My mom left him. And then he left all of us. Now he is just a corpse in the ground he worked so hard to be above. He climbed that ladder so high. We could no longer see him. I miss him. Not the him that he was when he was in the clouds on that ladder of his. But the him that worked on a farm. The him that was too poor to afford a good suit. The him that would fish with me.

My doctor says this is why I did it. I don’t know why I did it. No one really knows. Not even my doctor. But reason gives people comfort. So I said yeah. She was happy. It makes people happy when they are right. I almost died and she knew why. It made her a bit more divine to know why. She was becoming that perfect self that she saw when she was a child. I had a vision of my perfect self when I was a child. I worked for a farm and made just enough money to support my family. I had a wife. She was a vet. She loved animals and made sure they lived long, healthy lives. She didn’t charge for her services. I had a kid. A boy. He looked like me. He was smart. But he was dumb enough so that he didn’t get sad when he looked around at the life around him. I knew that perfect life wouldn’t happen. At least not with all the other perfect lives around me. I knew this kid. A friend of mine. His perfect life was the same as everyone else. He had a beautiful wife who loved him. They both had well-paying jobs. They had two kids. A boy and a girl. They behaved and got good grades.

I ramble a lot. My doctor says it is probably because of the medication. She doesn’t know I don’t take the medication. We are going to visit my crazy grandmother. The walls are all white. Too white. Too clean. Everything is clean. Everything is perfect. This is the place my grandmother has to live. Now that she is old she gets to live in a place where people work all day making her life perfect. Everything is clean. Everything is safe. They give her medicine to make her feel better. They give her food. They give her routine. She has the perfect life that everyone wants. No wonder she’s crazy. Blood. My mom greets my grandmother. You remember Mike, right? She asks my grandmother. Mike is my step-dad. My mom got over my dad quick. I think she was over him before he was even dead. My grandmother remembered him. Unfortunately, from the look on her face. My grandmother liked my dad. Well, before he became successful. We visited my grandma a bit longer. We talked about things that no one cared about but we all laughed and smiled like we were supposed to. My grandma didn’t seem that crazy to me. I said goodbye and hugged her. She grabbed my arm. She turned it over and saw the scar. The blood was consuming the shine of the razor. The razor dropped into the already large pool of blood. She knew what I had done. I tired to pull my arm back. She wouldn’t let it go. She just kept staring at it. Then my mom told her to let go. And told her again. My grandmother wouldn’t let go. Then there was screaming and I had to close my eyes. I tried to cover my ears but I couldn’t get my arm free. And then everything stopped. It was just me and my grandma. She told me it was ok. She told me I could open my eyes. She told me I could control it now. Then everyone was back and they were all screaming again. Some people ran into the room with a needle. My grandma was destroying this perfect world they had created. It was no longer safe. The needle would return the world to its perfect state.

The ride home was quiet. No one knew what to say. No one said a word at dinner. I went to bed early. My mind was tired from racing around trying to figure out what my grandma was trying to tell me. What could I control? How could I control it? The only time I remember being in control was the reason I am in the mess I’m in.


My dad died. I felt like I did too. Like the rest of the world did. Blue was gray. Always gray skies. The pretty girls I once liked were now gray-eyed. Everything I ate tasted gray. Nothing had its true color anymore. Except blood. Blood was still red. I scraped my knee and I bled. And it was red. For the first time in a year I saw color. I was so happy to finally see color. My knee didn’t even hurt. Pain was overwhelmed with happiness. I went home. Home to Mike and Mom. I knew what I needed to do. I needed more color. Mom and Mike went shopping. That was my chance. I grabbed a razor blade and went into the bathroom. The razor blade gleamed in my hand. It was clean. So clean. Without a thought I cut my wrist. Blood. It started flowing out of my wrist. I cut again. Once. Twice. I cut the other wrist. I tired to cut again but I was too shaky. I couldn’t hold on to the blade. It was so wet and slippery now. The blood consumed the shine of the razor. The razor dropped into the already large pool of blood. As the blood touched the world it brought the color back. The gray was fading. Then the door burst open. It was Mike. He forgot his keys. He picked me up off the floor. He thought he saved my life. He was only prolonging my suffering.

I woke up sweating. It had been a while since I recalled that day in such detail. It was sparked by what my grandma told me. I could control it. What was it? I needed to know.

The alarm clock said 2:36 in red block font. Mom and Mike must be asleep by now. I walked through the kitchen grabbing Mike’s keys off the counter. I drove to the hospital where my grandmother was. I needed to talk to her. Luckily her room was on the first floor. The window smashed easily. The noise startled Grandma. I told her it was ok. It was just me. I climbed in. She knew why I was there.
Everything you see, everything you feel, all of that stuff, is all processed by your mind. The way it deals with this information is all controlled by you. You can control what you think about how things appear, how they feel. Eventually you create a unique personality designed for creating your own perfect world. All of your actions are based on the view of this perfect world your mind creates. One thing that many people view as the perfect life is what they already know. Life itself. They can’t fathom what death is like. So when their bodies die they continue in this life that their mind creates. They ignore the fact that they died. Their mind creates this perfect world. Or at least it tries. But people have fears. They have doubts. They have hatred. When their mind tries to create this perfect world these forces also control what the world is. They go on still fearing poverty. Still fearing rejection. Still fearing death. This was what my grandma told me. To really live in this perfect world you would need to eradicate all of your fears, all of your doubts. All of your hatred. You would need to only feel what you truly wanted and ignore any doubt.

I cut myself. And Mike didn’t forget his keys. He never burst through the door. He never took me to the hospital. He didn’t see the blood until it was too late. Until my body had lost it’s color. Until my body was gray. Even the blood was losing it’s color. In that world, the world where Mom and Mike live, I am dead. They went to my funeral. They mourned my loss. In my world I am walking on a familiar path through some trees. I’m walking until I reach my destination. The shore of a lake. Where a man will be sitting down fishing. I will walk up to him and say, “Mind if I sit down and fish with you?” And the man will turn around and look at me. The man, my dad, will smile and say, “No. I don’t mind. In fact, I saved you a spot.” “Ok,” I say to him, “but I don’t have a pole.” “You can borrow mine” he says as a smile creeps further across his face. We will both laugh and then I’ll sit down and start to fish. I don’t even like fishing. It’s boring. But it was my dad’s favorite thing to do. He loved teaching me how to fish.