The cuts will heal. The scars will fade.
With the money left over from my sister's operation, I could have major plastic surgery and fix everything. On the outside.
But I'm not the outside.
I'm not blonde and brown-eyed. That's not who I am.
I'm Jounochi.
I'm scarred. On the inside. I've managed to pull myself out of the water, but I'm still numb from the experience. All the money in the world couldn't pay for enough psychotherapy to help me fix everything. But Kaiba will try. For both of us.
He was my retreat before and now I can say he's my salvation. He's what makes it bearable.
I scared all my other friends. Yugi and Ryou can't deal with me. Anzu never liked me to begin with. And Honda, try as he might, just won't get it. So that leaves me with Kaiba. It's hard to say he's my friend. But I suppose he is. He won't ever call himself that, but that's okay. He's my sugar daddy.
Yeah, that feels good. Joking, laughing, I haven't done that in forever. Even he does sometimes. Though, I don't always get the jokes. We do group therapy together. Well, we do everything together. There isn't much we feel safe doing alone. Just knowing the other is nearby is good enough.
Mokuba is starting to get it. He's been understanding the entire time and probably thought that Kaiba needed therapy for a LONG time. So if you have the therapist's point-of-view, it's our bad childhood, unstable family relations, and difficulty in relating to others that alienated ourselves. But we both made a conscious choice at one point to pull out of reality completely.
Being crazy isn't cut and dry. It isn't one thing and not another. It's when life leaves you behind. Either you choose to or you don't. Either you try to run after it, or you like staying behind. Which was I? Both. I ran after life, trying to keep up with it for as long as I could but eventually stopped once Kaiba offered the other alternative. Loosing myself in him. Letting life leave me behind.
It seems people chase reality their entire life. Is that saner than what I had done? I suppose. So why doesn't it feel that way? Or is it I don't feel comfortable? As unpleasant as being crazy would seem, it's *easy* to sit back and stay under water.
But here I am. A sixteen-year-old trying to answer questions that centuries of people before me never could.
It's just easier to say I was born this way.
My brain was wired differently. And the magic pills will make me normal again.
I stopped taking prescriptions. The doctors are trying to fix the brain wiring when that's not the problem. They're using brain-altering pills to fix a mind problem. Being insane is something wrong in the way we *see* life. It's not that we don't see what's there. We see a bed, yes. But what the bed is associated with is when you start treading on that sane/insane path.
Seeing sleep, tired, sex. That's normal. That's what you're supposed to see.
Seeing safe haven, crying, nightmares. That's insane. That's what I have to fight not to see.
Seeing a tree and thinking it can hurt you. Seeing a cute puppy and being jealous. That's insane.
Did I choose to see these things? No. Then I didn't choose to be insane.
But chose to stop fighting. That's when you've lost it.
For some people, they always have to fight it. Kaiba and I are both examples. We have to fight to see sleep, not a haven.
So I'm not as sane as Honda. But I'm not completely lost like I was.
We still loose ourselves in each other. But not to the same extent. We'll lie together, holding each other, but we won't be under each other's water. Our minds still spin like normal people's. We still think thoughts, we still feel. We just happen to find each other comforting.
I guess what I did--destroying my mask--let Kaiba see how lost we both were. How we were only keeping up appearances and once that mask is blown away, we're left only with the fact we're not normal.
I'm not sad.
Not anymore.
With the money left over from my sister's operation, I could have major plastic surgery and fix everything. On the outside.
But I'm not the outside.
I'm not blonde and brown-eyed. That's not who I am.
I'm Jounochi.
I'm scarred. On the inside. I've managed to pull myself out of the water, but I'm still numb from the experience. All the money in the world couldn't pay for enough psychotherapy to help me fix everything. But Kaiba will try. For both of us.
He was my retreat before and now I can say he's my salvation. He's what makes it bearable.
I scared all my other friends. Yugi and Ryou can't deal with me. Anzu never liked me to begin with. And Honda, try as he might, just won't get it. So that leaves me with Kaiba. It's hard to say he's my friend. But I suppose he is. He won't ever call himself that, but that's okay. He's my sugar daddy.
Yeah, that feels good. Joking, laughing, I haven't done that in forever. Even he does sometimes. Though, I don't always get the jokes. We do group therapy together. Well, we do everything together. There isn't much we feel safe doing alone. Just knowing the other is nearby is good enough.
Mokuba is starting to get it. He's been understanding the entire time and probably thought that Kaiba needed therapy for a LONG time. So if you have the therapist's point-of-view, it's our bad childhood, unstable family relations, and difficulty in relating to others that alienated ourselves. But we both made a conscious choice at one point to pull out of reality completely.
Being crazy isn't cut and dry. It isn't one thing and not another. It's when life leaves you behind. Either you choose to or you don't. Either you try to run after it, or you like staying behind. Which was I? Both. I ran after life, trying to keep up with it for as long as I could but eventually stopped once Kaiba offered the other alternative. Loosing myself in him. Letting life leave me behind.
It seems people chase reality their entire life. Is that saner than what I had done? I suppose. So why doesn't it feel that way? Or is it I don't feel comfortable? As unpleasant as being crazy would seem, it's *easy* to sit back and stay under water.
But here I am. A sixteen-year-old trying to answer questions that centuries of people before me never could.
It's just easier to say I was born this way.
My brain was wired differently. And the magic pills will make me normal again.
I stopped taking prescriptions. The doctors are trying to fix the brain wiring when that's not the problem. They're using brain-altering pills to fix a mind problem. Being insane is something wrong in the way we *see* life. It's not that we don't see what's there. We see a bed, yes. But what the bed is associated with is when you start treading on that sane/insane path.
Seeing sleep, tired, sex. That's normal. That's what you're supposed to see.
Seeing safe haven, crying, nightmares. That's insane. That's what I have to fight not to see.
Seeing a tree and thinking it can hurt you. Seeing a cute puppy and being jealous. That's insane.
Did I choose to see these things? No. Then I didn't choose to be insane.
But chose to stop fighting. That's when you've lost it.
For some people, they always have to fight it. Kaiba and I are both examples. We have to fight to see sleep, not a haven.
So I'm not as sane as Honda. But I'm not completely lost like I was.
We still loose ourselves in each other. But not to the same extent. We'll lie together, holding each other, but we won't be under each other's water. Our minds still spin like normal people's. We still think thoughts, we still feel. We just happen to find each other comforting.
I guess what I did--destroying my mask--let Kaiba see how lost we both were. How we were only keeping up appearances and once that mask is blown away, we're left only with the fact we're not normal.
I'm not sad.
Not anymore.