On the Inside Looking In

On the Inside Looking In
          P. Bradford Simmons

          I don't know whether I'm going crazy, I am crazy, I've been crazy, or if I'm perfectly normal. Do other people fight with their own voice in their head? Is that the conscience? Is that not really my voice? Who am I talking to?

                    What is Sanity, really? And what the fuck is that knocking? My whole life doctor after doctor has told me that something is amiss. That some wires just aren't connecting. That I lack that part of the soul that has any feeling. I feel! Don't I? Or did I just know that phrase needed an exclamation point to convey emotion?

         The sad thing is I have no idea. Not a fucking clue! Ah... Now there's an emotion I can relate to. Anger, rage, hatred... Why is it all I can relate to, I can understand? Why is every other fleeting feeling just a mask, a mask of normalcy, of sanity? Why does no one see it? Am I really that good? Can they just not relate? Or do they still cling to the desperate hope that everyone feels the same?

                              Am I broken? Is this how it's meant to be? Why are there these times of deep introspective brooding and other times of what could almost pass as joyful elation? Why the fluctuation? Why is there no baseline? I am a genuinely happy person. But I don't know if the voice in my head is... Or if he's really even me.

          How can one find out? Where is that test that tells them who they are hearing, who they are fighting with, listening to? Maybe it's all a figment of my imagination. Why are there no other types of figments?

At least for now the darkness inside is contained. Will he ever let it out again?