There’s Something in my Closet

    There’s something in my closet, and I know because I feel it’s eyes on me.  It’s been this way for weeks.  I have never felt such piercing fear as I have with these hours laying in bed, eyes focused on one spot to avoid seeing anything move.  I curl the blankets up as far as I can around the back of my neck and chin, but it doesn’t help.  The eyes still violate my space.  I’m paralyzed, unable to reach for the pill bottle just a foot and a half away that will bring me relief and a heavy sleep.  But a foot and a half away is open space, and I fear for what might reach out and touch me.

    “There’s nothing really there,” my doctor intones, attempting to bring me from my paralyzing fear and back into the real world.  “Nothing can hurt you.”

    “It’s just a wayward spirit,” my mother offers enthusiastically, knowing in her heart that this should bring me peace.  “Just tell it to go away.”

    But you don’t understand.  I have.  Every night for weeks I have pleaded quietly for this being or creature or thing to leave; this is my space.  But I don’t want to anger it.  What if it’s not a hallucination anymore?  What if the things that invade my brain are real, and the whole world is falling to shit around me?  The voices are only quiet in that time when I am paralyzed with fear in my room; the lights are off; there’s nothing there; there’s nothing there.  I think that they’re afraid of it too.  It’s such a heavy presents.  It weighs down the room; everything’s in s l o w m o t i o n…  I just want to sleep.

    What if this translates into my day to day life, when the sun is high in the sky (but let’s face it, when is it not gray here or evening like)?  What if the shadows that curl and writhe in my peripheral vision come out and make me freeze in my path?  They are everywhere.  I have no peace.  This is no longer my space, my sanctuary.  It’s their domain now.  They control what I think, say, and do.  The dark creatures that dart just out of the very corner of my eye...what if they venture into the middle?  What if these haunting images grow in courage and force and dance before my very eyes in the light of day?  What if I DO look up and a face grins at me just inches away?

    Tears sting in the corners of my eyes; this can’t be happening.  My mind is all I have.  Alone protects me.  What if I lose the two things that bring me peace?  My mind palace is my sanctuary, only to be accessed in the peace of when I am alone.  I can’t let this take my peace away from me.  I can’t.  My IQ was 142 the last time I checked in the ninth grade; what if I lose my intellect?  The random facts that are carefully and subconsciously stored away on the shelves in the library of my mind are sacred.  They comfort me.  My volumes of information in my head are my friends.  What if they leave me like so many have?  I’ve been shunned, but please, please don’t take my mind.

    My mind palace is elaborate.  The countertops of the lab-like room are of an opalescent white, wiped clean of any imperfections on their surfaces.  Test tubes and vials and beakers are all filled with coiled up, colorful little facts:  a jaguar can drag three times its body weight into a tree, a kangaroo cannot jump backwards, and the reason you get goosebumps is because the tiny muscles that are attached to each hair follicle (known as the arrector pili) raise to trap air close to the body to stay warm.  At the far end of the room are shelves filled to bursting with tomes that have bits of paper sticking out the sides.  These are my friends.  Eagerly stuffed away and ready at any moment to share with me what I already know.  There are bits of poems (TIGER, tiger, burning bright/ In the forests of the night), bits of plays (Hell is empty and all the devils are here), and bits of information from pill bottles long emptied (TAKE ONE TABLET BY MOUTH THREE TIMES DAILY AS NEEDED).  The walls narrow here to create a wide archway into the shelved part of my room.  The walls in there have some posters with other facts like the motivational posters in schools:  LINDOR chocolate company was created in 1845, and it took Da Vinci 12 years to paint the Mona Lisa’s mouth.  On the left-hand side of the room is a man pointedly throwing a squash ball against a row of pristine gray cabinets; he reminds me of things I’ve forgotten in the middle of a task.  He has a deadpan, matter-of-fact voice and is always pensively in thought, bouncing the squash ball over and over.  If you were to go out of this room in my mind palace, through the double doors and down the hospital-like stairs, you’ll find my other companion.  He wears a sharp suit with his hair neatly combed to the side.  His head oscillates side to side like a reptile; he walks me through situations.  Every time I stop and my anxiety takes over in groups he places a reassuring hand on my shoulder.

“Here’s what you do,” he’ll say, and I relax and follow my internal monologue.

“You have people in your head?”

“You hear voices?”

“That’s normal for you?”

Major Depressive Disorder.

Minor Anxiety Disorder.

Insomnia.

Night terrors.

Restless Leg Syndrome.

Anemic.

Low blood-pressure.

Poor circulation.

“But you probably don’t have schizophrenia; you’re not paranoid enough for that.”

What a reassuring quote from my doctor.  

There are days and weeks and months out of the year where I lose interest in everything.  I don’t write.  I don’t paint.  I don’t draw.  I don’t talk.  I don’t eat.  I don’t sleep.  I just sit, and I cry.  Now after years of this being a frequent occurrence I built a little place in my head that I could escape to.  I have amassed my favorite music (Le quattro stagione, Op. 8, Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, RV “Summer”:  III.  Presto by Antonio Vivaldi), my favorite poetry (Can ever dissever my soul from the soul/ Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE), and some of my favorite facts (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle HATED his creation of Sherlock Holmes), and I have curled into myself.

It has been speculated that in patients with schizophrenia, the ventricles of the brain (the cavities of the brain that circulate cerebrospinal fluid) are enlarged and cause the surrounding areas of the brain to be smaller.  Over time it has been observed that ventricles enlarge further and, as a consequence, shrink the surrounding areas of the brain.  Could this possible affliction be taking away my mind?  I recoil to think that my beautiful piece of gray matter-formed architecture could be slowly destroyed and replaced with more of my frightful delusions.  No more could I draw inside myself for comfort or distractions.  And what would come of my helpful friends?  Would they disappear along with the withering of my tomes of accumulated information?  I weep to think of the desecration of my palace.

But the voices would laugh and drown out the world around me.  However I can’t understand what they’re saying, no matter how hard I focus.  It’s like a group of people far too close to the microphone and whispering profusely.  A cacophony of ugly nothing and everything just behind me.  It’s so indistinct it could almost be mistaken for white noise.  I frequently listen to actual white noise to simply drown it out and make writing possible.  

What will happen if I lose interest again?  What if I lose interest in the upkeep of my mind palace?  The fraying of my ink stained pages, and the broken pieces of my filled glassware.  I can hear the squash ball now; it’s like a heartbeat.  Bum-bum, bum-bum, bum-bum.  Will it fade if I let it?  Bum-bu m, b u m- b u m,  b  u  m  -  b  u  m…  I can’t lose the comfort that I have built for myself.  I can’t let it all fall apart.  But what if I don’t have a choice in the end?  What if the mind I have created slowly falls apart?  Usually when speaking of an enemy you can always promise to take them down with you, but if that were my case I wouldn’t have a problem.

    The something in my closet isn’t anything nice.  I think it’ll stay there until...always.  If I had the choice, I’d evict it.  If I had the choice, I would beat it to a bloody pulp and finally be able to see what haunts my twilight hours.  But I don’t have the choice, and for now I’ll lie here frozen with terror.  For now I’ll watch the seconds and minutes and hours of wasted sleep tick by.  And maybe one day I’ll remember what a full night’s sleep feels like again.