CHAPTER 17: A MELODRAMATIC DISTORTION OF REALITY IN HANOVER, PA


A quick geography lesson- you should have one since you’re coming back to the real world with me. It seems appropriate, but more importantly it’s polite. Now you’ve heard some of the town names but I doubt you know where they are at (unless you actually live here). Let me give you some major landmarks and I’ll work my way down… and I’m not giving you any miles of distance or anything like that. I can’t do spatial distances in my head.

Okay- almost halfway between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh is Harrisburg (it’s actually closer to Philly). Halfway between Harrisburg and Baltimore is York. York is where I am right now- York Hospital, Wellspan Health Services. If you drive about forty-five minutes west of York on PA Route 30 you go through a series of small towns until you reach one called New Oxford. It seems like each one of these towns has a traffic circle. Well, Cricket and I actually live in an apartment on New Oxford’s traffic circle. (For another landmark, if you drive west on for another fifteen or twenty minutes you will hit “Historic” Gettysburg.) If you travel along Route 30 from York to Gettysburg long enough, the endless string of greenery and antique stores is bound to give you vertigo. A few minutes south of the small little village of New Oxford is a large town called Hanover. (For size references, Hanover is almost a city, slightly smaller than York, which is smaller than Harrisburg, which is smaller than Philly…) This is where most of the madness takes place.

Hanover.

Well, and New Oxford too, but it’s the Hanover area.

So there is the quick geography lesson.

And yes, I AM coming back to reality. The dreams are dreams, and reality is reality. There is no in between. That’s what sane people believe, right?

I mean, we’re all trying to be a collective group of sane people, right? Going after the American Dream? We all want to fall in love with princes and get diamond rings and have babies and own an old Victorian home on ten acres by the river, right? We want 2.5 children, an SUV, a sedan, antiques and potpourri, a dog, a cat, a treated lawn and pruned shrubs… and a collection of Julia Roberts movies on DVD to cuddle up to while getting fat on comfort food on Saturday nights , right? Isn’t that what sane people want? Isn’t that the American Dream?

Dreams are dreams. Reality is reality. There is no in between.

So, I guess it’s time for me to rejoin society and march like a hypnotized soldier into the bowels of that righteous and fulfilling American Dream.

“You don’t sound like you mean that.”

I can’t even look at her… Mary, that is. I don’t know what I’m feeling. This feeling just came flooding through my body. I’m everywhere. I’m worrying about bills and Crystal and Cricket and my job and getting out of here and my mother and Cricket’s sister Eve... was there something wrong with her the last time I saw her? I’m thinking about the accident… I want to listen to my CDs and mix tapes. I haven’t seen The Simpsons in forever. I’m tired of this hospital food. I want something fried… something that’ll go straight to my hips faster than a date raping frat boy. I didn’t get to go swimming this summer. I feel fat. Did I miss a cycle while I was in here? I’m thirsty. Mary’s blouse is probably unbuttoned one button too many. I haven’t seen her cat today.

I feel like I’m being swept away in a river of my own thoughts.

Mary says I have ADD along with everything else. I really can’t differentiate it from mania. A few weeks ago I wasn’t even sure that I had manic episodes.

Manic episodes.

I just thought that I was recovering from depression. But I was just out of control… with my thoughts wailing against my skull… and not knowing whether to take a piss or go to bed or do the inventory. I survived at work by barely skulking by during depression and then making up for it by overworking in manic fits. I was evaluated quarterly and yearly so things would come out even.

I’d have anxiety attacks too. I’d feel like going to work was unendurable torture. My enemy was the clock. The night before work, I’d keep checking it to see how much time I had before I had to go to bed. Only three hours left… only two hours left… well, I could stay up another hour if I lose some sleep. I can handle six hours… five… three… might as well stay up the whole night or I’ll never be able to get up in the morning. Then work would be hell. I’d be so tired the clock would seem to be running in reverse at times. Then when I got off work I couldn’t get to sleep because I was so charged up from caffeine and the rush of being free. I’d go a few days without sleeping. You can go a few days if you have enough caffeine and anxiety to fuel you. The first night, I could have just gone to bed early and work would have been easier to get through… but I just couldn’t. Having my own time was so important, and yet I couldn’t enjoy it. That damn clock.

I think about all the times I heard people say they had manic depression. They did NOT have manic depression. In most cases, it was an excuse to be an asshole. Selfishness is not a byproduct of mania. Your melodramatic distortion of reality is not a mood disorder. You’re just a bitch, that’s all.

“A little aggressive, aren’t we? Is there some history here… someone specific you’re mad at?”

It’s Hanover. It’s Pennsylvania. It’s America.

“Why do you have such resentment for the pretenders?”

We want to be sick. We want to be helped. We want all responsibility taken from us. We want an eternal excuse. We want to be perpetual victims.

And they’re called posers, actually.

“You know, some people do suffer from symptoms such as an inflated sense of self coupled with paranoia, and that might cause some of the behavior that you are attributing to fakers.”

Now you’re making excuses for them. And you’ll make excuses for me… and you know what? It’ll make me feel better at first… maybe for a long time… maybe even for the rest of my life… but I’ll be a victim my whole life. I’d rather be miserable but living life my way, than have superficial happiness by living like a slave to this society that forces you to hate yourself. I will not be a victim. I will not muddle through life protected by excuses.

Maybe I actually am a kick-ass beautiful nihilistic psycho-bitch.

“So why do I hear doubt and anxiety in your voice?”

Anxiety.

The answer is simple. It’s just not that easy. I just can’t snap my fingers and suddenly do it. I’ve been conditioned to hate myself like everyone else.

“What is causing your anxiety now?”

Nothing. Everything.

“Pick something and talk about it. Do it right now… stream of consciousness.”

I don’t have a stream of consciousness. It’s a stream of psychoses.

“Anger, fear, anxiety… what’s the first thing that comes to your mind.”

Brian.

“A loaded topic, indeed… Get angry and talk about it. Get it out.”

Well that’s easy to do. All I have to do is think about him. But he will have no influence on me any longer.

“What does he do to try to control you?”

Other than the obvious stalking stuff…

I can’t go anywhere without worrying that he’ll show up there. I can’t have any regular hangouts because, once he figures out where I like to go, he starts showing up there all the time.

People don’t always understand the situation. They think it’s a simple ex-lovers spat. They don’t release how dangerous I feel the situation is.

I see people I know talking to him. Mutual friends have felt put on the spot… especially by Brian. He will force people to choose sides. I don’t. I refuse to. But I have to admit, if I see someone talk to him regularly, I will not trust that person. Who knows if that person will run back and report things to him? I don’t care if it’s intentional or unintentional. I don’t care if they’re saying good things are bad things. I don’t want Brian to know ANYTHING about me. I don’t want him to know I exist. I don’t want him to know when I’m happy. I don’t want him to know when I’m sad. No strengths. No weaknesses.

But that’s not the way it goes. Instead, life becomes dodgy. I’ll want to go out with a group of people, usually to a bar, and halfway through the night he’ll show up. It didn’t matter that I tried to pick a place that I knew he hated to go. It didn’t matter that I tried to keep my coming out moderately quiet.

It doesn’t matter that this has been going on for years.

He’ll come in and I’ll try to ignore him. It will work for a few minutes; I might even forget about him for an hour or two. But soon enough, I’ll see him talking people and looking in my direction, and whoever he’s talking to will flip their heads my way. And I know what he’s calling me- everything comes from a variation of “fat” and “whore”. Those are the two forms of comfort he tries to disrupt- comfort inside my own skin and comfort to use that skin… which also happens to be the two subjects that are the foundation of modern American misogyny.

A woman can’t be intelligent and witty yet sexual and powerful at the same time... not in this country.

Fingers point at me, eyes squint at me, ponytails bounce away from me, and soon enough I can’t take it any longer; I have to leave. What usually hurts me more than anything else is the fact that people who I would like to think of as my friends don’t stick up for me. They don’t leave with me. In fact, they go over and talk to him because they consider him a friend. They don’t want to pick sides. I don’t want to make them. They don’t like what he says about me, but hey, that’s just how he is, you know? You just have to get to know him. You don’t understand him. Once you get to know him, you realize that he just has a temper.

Just a temper…

And Hanover is a town of gossipers and backstabbers… or maybe it’s because Hanover is planted in the good old U.S. of A., and it’s an American thing. Maybe it’s all just human nature. If we can’t stab each other with real knives, we’ll do it with gossip. So these same people come back to me and tell me how awful he is, and god knows what they’re saying about me to him. Suddenly, one asshole has infected dozens… no, they were that way to begin with… he’s just forced me to see them for what they are.

People here have an over-dramatic distortion of reality.

You just have to get to know him… people just don’t understand him… the real him… those are the enabling cries for the asshole. The “real” him, you say? I don’t understand? No, it’s you that doesn’t understand. I’ve seen the real him, and you think that the wall that he has around him is his true self, but there’s nothing behind that wall but a terrified child. That’s the real him. If people would just stop saying things like that, then every asshole would be friendless, and maybe they’d be forced to change. But that’s not the way it works. Enablers- Hanover is a town of enablers.

I’d rather have no friends than have him as one of my friends.

“Sounds like you know the answers. You just have to get your emotions and thoughts to follow.”

Story of my life.