Lukas is losing his mind.
It isn't something he admits to anyone. He hardly admits it to himself. I know if he had his way I wouldn't know either, but you can't spend that much time with someone and not notice something like that. And besides, someone needs understand him.
It's mostly the hallucinations.
They aren't like normal ones, that happen along with real life. Instead, Lukas's consciousness freezes in time. And in a single moment, hours pass in his mind, in which anything can happen. He tells me they're indistinguishable from real life.
The clocks stop, he says. But I hardly pay attention to the clocks.
It's terrifying, when he comes back from one of the visions, and suddenly he recollects things I've done that I have no way of explaining. One night we were lying together, and it was nice and quiet, the way he likes it. And then without warning he screamed, and shoved me off of him, and yelled at me to stay away. To keep my hands off of him.
It took me two hours to convince him to unlock the bathroom door.
Other times it's not so bad. Sometimes I catch him smiling, or glancing over at me and smirking.
What? I ask.
Just something you said while I was gone, he says back.
That's how we refer to it. There's nothing wrong with him; he just goes away for a little while sometimes.
But his madness…it's cruel. Whatever time it gives him in his mind, it takes away from reality later. This leaves him with blank spots, hours and even days of time that he has no recollection of.
That's the worst of it, I think. We can handle a little distortion between reality and fantasy. But when the puzzle pieces of his consciousness just get lost, it's hard to bear. Like when I come up behind him and wrap my arms around him, and nibble on his ear, and he turns around and for once let's me kiss him, and he kisses me, and he doesn't fight me, and I just want to pick him up and twirl him around and do everything with him…and then his lips freeze. And he pulls away with a look of confusion and slight guilt. He doesn't remember anything that just happened.
At times like those I have to leave for a little bit.
But for the most part, I've tried not to be selfish. I mean, it must be harder for him than it is for me, right? After all, Lukas considers himself strong. Inviolable. Impenetrable. It's horrible for him to think that what's slowly breaking him isn't some external conflict but really his own mind, giving up on him. He feels so betrayed.
But sometimes, I wonder if I'm worse off. He doesn't remember all the reasons I have to cry at night.
It's getting worse too. The hallucinations are getting longer, and more realistic, he says. And the lapses in memory…There are whole days now he doesn't recall in the slightest. It's getting harder and harder to convince him that yes, I am real, and yes, he does love me back.
The best thing to keep my sanity would be to leave. But I love him too much. So all I can do is stay with him and try in vain to protect him from himself.
There'll come a day when he doesn't remember me at all.
I don't know what I'll do then.