When we got home, Mara convinced me to go inside and rest, but I wanted to stay outside to find the feral calico cat so that I could feed her. She had to have digested the cordon bleu by now. Willie told me it was time for me to pay attention to myself. He knew that I was on emotional overload and that my mind was overheating like a '55 Ford Fairlane in the Mojave Desert.
Willie begged me to take some time off. I resisted and told him I was fine. But he kept pleading with me, there in the driveway. Mara was leaning against the garage doors in tears.
"Oh God, Adam. Please! Please listen to your son. We love you. Please."
To please my family, I went on an immediate sabbatical to assess the effects of Duke's death on my self-worth. I realized that it would be a much-needed, self-prescribed respite for introspection. A staycation. A stay-in-bed-cation.
I canceled the next three weeks of my life. Everything was now blank unless it featured intermittent, erratic, random words, visuals and comments. Memories and arbitrary associations happened, but they were nothing linear, rational or cohesive. The cyclone of confusion had morphed into a tornado of torment seeking self-actualization and self-discovery. It inhabited the very marrow of my being; except this time, I didn't lie in bed looking up into it through its narrow end.
My eyes were open, but I was blind.
All around me was an intense, dazzling light, despite the bedroom curtains being pulled shut to create an environment that was purposely kept dark and "psy-lent."
I slept for the next four days. I needed to sleep. I was not mad. I needed to disprove Kant. "A madman is a waking dreamer." How about a dreamer is a sleeping madman? Huh, Immanuel? How about that, Manny? Did you like that? Huh, Manny, huh?
"To sleep, perchance to dream."
I needed to sleep.
No drugs.
Drugs disguise.
They hide the true self.
They mask reality.
Keep it real.
Reality is for people who can't handle drugs.
I can do this all on my own.
Why can't anything last forever?
Go to sleep, Adam, go to sleep.
Lullaby and good-night.
Stasis, please.
Śūnyatā: emptiness.
Śūnyatā in Chrystalis.
Sleep.
Sleep.
Sleep.
YOU ARE READING
BY REASON OF INSANITY by Edward L. Woodyard
General FictionThis seriocomic psychological examination into the mental health of "The Shrink to the Stars," centers on a Beverly Hills forensic psychiatrist who is either driving himself crazy, being driven crazy or both - by either someone, something or both. A...
