To: .
From:
Subject: Re: You All Right?
Hi Adam,
Yeah, I'm doing alright. Thanks for checking. I was pretty rattled for the first little bit after the break-in, but I'm doing alright now. It was just jewellery, after all. Of course, the fact that the big Arkham escape happened the next day didn't help things any, but this is Gotham, so I guess I should get used to this kind of thing! :P
Have you talked to Mom lately? Tell her I'm doing okay. I think Dad has been going into her e-mail and deleting my messages - probably doesn't want me corrupting her with my 'godless liberal psychiatry' or something like that. I just don't want her to think I got hurt during the escape. And tell her I love her, and that I'd really like to see her sometime, regardless of all this stuff with Dad.
I guess I should tell you, though… they say bad things come in threes. Well, my committee rejected the first draft of my thesis. That means I won't be graduating in spring like I planned. They said I need to 'make more use of established methodologies in my analysis of the subject.' Meaning basically that I need to try to fit the subject into one of their theories. But he doesn't fit into any of their theories! They want me to tell them that the subject is sick, that he's lacking something upstairs that would make him a normal person, whatever that means. They think he's not in control of his actions. But he's in full possession of his mental faculties! Do they want me to just make something up to vindicate their theories?
I was thinking about what you said about the subject (sorry I keep calling him that - it's just habit. They drilled it into our brains that if you call them by their aliases, you validate their delusions). About how he is an evil person, like some kind of antichrist. And that makes more sense than what my profs think, but I don't think it's totally right either. He knows the difference between right and wrong. But it's like… it's like he's beyond that. That he sees our whole ideas of good and evil for what they are - just arbitrary rules that we desperately cling to in order to make sense of our world. It's like he knows something that we don't. So I wouldn't say he's evil, per se - he's capable of kindness, too, which is something most people don't know. And I think he genuinely likes me. He tells me things he doesn't tell anyone else. Don't get me wrong - he's a killer, and probably one of the most dangerous men in the world. But he's not just what the headlines say he is.
Speaking of the subject, he's back in Arkham again, along with most of the other inmates who escaped last week. All badly beaten, especially the subject. The work of the so-called Batman, of course. What a textbook example of psychosis he is. Fighting his own insecurity and emasculation by being some kind of sado-masochistic scapegoat. He probably experienced some kind of trauma when he was younger, and copes with it by clinging to a rigid, inflexible moral ideology, and enforcing it with his fists. Just like Dad. I wonder if Batman was in Vietnam, too? By the way, I hear Batman's been seen with an accomplice, a young boy, probably no more than fifteen. I can only imagine what the poor kid's life is like. People like this 'Batman' should not be allowed near children under any circumstances.
To be honest, Adam, I'm starting to question a lot of things. The subject saw the cross necklace I wear and asked me about it. He asked if I believe in God. I didn't answer the question, of course, but if I did, I don't know what I would have said. I was thinking about when you told me that God had a plan for me, that I could see it if I looked for it. And I keep thinking about the escape last week. That creep Dent shot Sean, one of the security guards. A lot of those guards are just as screwed up as the inmates, but Sean was the sweetest guy you'll ever meet. He just got married last year and has a little kid. Dent flipped his coin, and it came up wrong side up, and he shot Sean in the head. I know they tell us that it's Dent who kills those people, and chance has nothing to do with it, but if there is a God, why didn't He make that coin come up heads? And what's He trying to tell me by having a B&E at my apartment, a big breakout at work, and my thesis being rejected all in the same week? Sometimes I wonder if we're all like Dad, trying to force some kind of order on the world where there isn't any. Like a kid trying to make sense of the letters in his alphabet soup.
Is it a sin for me to think like that? I feel so guilty. Just growing up the way we did, I guess. In your opinion as a priest, what should I do? Maybe I'll say twenty Hail Marys. Would that help save my soul? How many Hail Marys would the subject have to say? ;)
Anyway, I don't want to sound like a nutcase or anything. I'm just upset, I guess - I really need a vacation, but now I guess I'm going to have to keep working at Arkham all summer. Well, if I can survive growing up in a house with Dad, in his little bastion of purity against the satanic forces of the world, I can survive anything. Let me know if you're in Gotham - I could stand to see a friendly face. Arkham… well, it probably goes without saying, but there's crazy in the walls in that place. And yes, that's my professional opinion as a doctoral student in psychiatry. I don't think being there does anybody any good, the inmates or the staff.
Write back soon, big brother!
Love you lots,
Harleen
PS: I hate to end by bringing up something as dark as this, and I know we don't usually talk about it, but I was on the bus yesterday, and you'll never guess what the woman next to me was reading. It was that same Harlequin Romance novel Dad caught me with in sixth grade! I thought it was funny. Not that what Dad did to me was funny at all, but the fact that it was a Harlequin Romance that set him off… I mean, compared to what you see in Gotham every day. That it was something so insignificant that made him… well, you know. But I had to laugh out loud. You have to be able to laugh at things like that.