The Different "Englishes" I Use (written in September 2011)

“So where’d you go?”
“Ridgeview.”
“Really? Same here.”
“Oh my God, I hated them.”
“I know! Did they take your shoelaces?”
“Nah, I was outpatient.”
“Lucky.”
      
There’s something about the bluntness, something about the brutal honesty these sentence fragments and examples of butchered English have. It’s not what you’d expect to hear in your everyday conversation.  
 
“I hated the damn strip searches.”
“Oh yeah. And they spent way too much time taking the metal parts off our pencils.”
“Ha. I was such an idiot the first day and ate using a knife at lunch.”
“Yeah, and they’re like, ‘you might stab someone with it.’”
“I told them I could also stab with a fork.”
“Ooh, I bet that didn’t go over well.”
“Yeah I got put on watch.”
“Shit man, that sucks.”
      
Yup, definitely not what you might hear people talking about as they walk down the hall; I doubt you would want to either. But that’s my reality; I say these things when I walk down the hall with those special people, rather than with everybody.
 
“Hi, my name is ____ (insert name) and I am here for ______________ (explain why you’re here) and my goal for today is ____________________ (insert complete bull shit).”
      
I have manic depression; I've had it for as long as I can remember -- though I only received attention for it two years ago. At that time, I’d been institutionalized because I was cutting and burning myself. I am on two different medicines (my psychiatrist finally took me off my third); 60mg of a generic form of Prozac and 100mg of a mood stabilizer whose name i can’t even pronounce. That equates to a cup of pills in the morning (administered by my mother, of course, so i don’t try to overdose and kill myself on happy pills) and an extreme withdrawal (the rapid-fire transition from euphoric to inconsolable to obsessively manic, vise versa) whenever she forgets to give them to me. It’s not something I usually talk about to anyone --except that special bunch of compadres.  
 
“So how are you holding up?”
“You know how it is.”
“I’m here for you man.”
“Do you wanna talk about it?”
“I need a hug.”
“This really means a lot, thank you.”
“I feel you.”
 
“I can choose to accelerate my disease to an alcoholic death or incurable insanity, or I can choose to live within my thoroughly human condition.” --Mercedes McCambridge
      
I really don’t like the word insane, especially when applied to me (though admittedly, I’m usually the one using it against myself); I can’t stand the negative edge it has. When people say “insane,” they think about psychopaths and serial killers, not a person, whose brain can’t produce as much serotonin as most other brains. They don’t consider that the “messed up” guy in the corner may be someone whose personality disorder keeps him from dealing with stress effectively (forcing him to resort to other destructive methods of coping).  
 
"The truth is I've never fooled anyone. I've let people fool themselves. They didn't bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me.”  --Marilyn Monroe
 
But this is who we are, a motley crew united by “insanity.” the cutters, the burners, the drug users, the obsessive compulsive, the ADD, the depressed, the bipolar, the borderline; we are people living with disadvantages. It’s the rest of society sees us differently.
 
“So f**king prejudiced.”
“I love how they assume that cutting and ‘emo’ are synonymous.”  
“Even though one’s a gerund and the other an adjective.”
“Ha! So unimaginative, is that all they think we’re capable of?”
“Well that and the occasional suicide attempt.”
“There’re a lot of other things I can do to myself.”
“Just don’t, okay?”
“As long you don’t either.”
“…fine.”
 
      I think it’s this mutual struggle, against society and even ourselves, that brings us together. We’re family – closer even – soul brothers and sisters. When I’m with them, I feel safe and understood, like what I have to say isn’t just crazy people gibberish, but that I can talk about anything and everything without reserve.  
 
“We take care of our own.”
“God knows nobody else will.”
“Especially not the therapists.”
“Oh god, don’t get me started about them.”
“One thing I wish I knew from day one was to actually interact. I know you’re probably nervous and all, ‘I gotta keep my cool and all,’ but you don’t need it here. We all make fools of ourselves and we’re okay with it.” – a loose interpretation of what every person in my therapy group (including me) has said to a newcomer at one time or another.
 
The first words I usually hear from someone when I show them my scars are, “Why would you want to do that to yourself?” What am I supposed to tell them: that I’m a masochist and, furthermore, I find a raw beauty of expression in the action? Hell, no, they’d send me back to the loony bin from whence I came and double my medicine intake (Okay, maybe not; not yet anyway, too high of an increase would threaten to throw me even more off balance)! And I’m not the only one who experiences this; that same reaction – the same prejudice, the same judgment, the same fear – is shown to every person like me. That’s probably why I only confide in those other “loonies” who know exactly why “I would want to do that to myself.”
 
“So my mom told me she wanted to ‘talk’ more and understand where I’m coming from.”
“Sure, but that would require her to ‘sink’ to your level.”
“Idiots.”
“Meh, don’t blame them; they’re just idiots; they can’t help it.”
“Haha, I know right?”
"Sometimes I think that the greatest sign that there is intelligent life somewhere in the universe is that it hasn't tried to contact us yet." – Bill Watterson, "Calvin and Hobbes"
 
The fact of the matter is, I’ve yet to meet a “normal” person who can understand why I do the things I do, or think the way I do. No doubt that’s a good thing, but the mindset’s necessary to speak “crazy.” That’s why I can’t talk to normal people with the same confidence and openness I use with my fellow “cuckoos;” they just wouldn’t get it. The comprehension isn’t something that can just be learned; it has to be given through experience, an experience I would never wish on anybody.
 
“GO TO RIDGEVIEW!!” – the Ridgeview monopoly “GO TO JAIL” space
“It’s the place where God and Satan send you when neither want you for all eternity.”
“Nah, even they wouldn’t want us here.”
“Then why are we here?”
“Didn’t you hear them? (mockingly) We’re here to learn effective ways of coping with our problems and because we can no longer function normally.”
“Oh fuck.”
“They tried to make me go to rehab but I said NO! NO! NO! but they made me go anyway.” – Me quoting Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab”
“God, you can’t use any humor there.”
“Yeah, ain’t that a bitch?”
 
“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, `Lenore!'
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!'
Merely this and nothing more.” – Edgar Allen Poe, “The Raven”