I'M NOT ADRIFT | Eminem

The Human Condition

"Schizophrenic..?"
Unsure and puzzled, Marshall tilts his head to the right slowly.
My eyes drift down to the wooden crevices of the table, the lines and contoured carrying my gaze along it's form.
I wished he'd know all of what it entailed.
I wished I didn't have to explain this to him.
I really want to look up into eyes that comprehend... ones who know.
"I don't really know much about that... but you don't seem crazy to me... just real aloof"

Oh...
So he has some form of image of what it is in his mind.
I just hoped that it wouldn't be... like that...
I don't really know how to respond to that.
There are a multitude of ways I want to react.
Part of me wants to shout at him.
Part of me wants to just get up and walk away.
I want to set flames to any show set that displayed a 'crazy' character.
I want to take a sharpie to every dictionary, removing crazy and any synonym of it.
I want to go to bed.
I want to drown in enough Seroquel to put me out of my misery.

"Nisha...?"
Noticing my silence, his hand finally comes to touch my arm.
I look at him, jaw locked shut as I refrain.

"We aren't crazy... our brains just work different..." I whisper out the faltering statement.
My voice isn't strong.
I sound as if I'll collapse.
I feel as if I will.

I hear the screaming.
I hear the packing of flesh against hot concrete.
I hear the splinter and crack of bone - the wet bashing of torn flesh.
My face registers no emotion.
My eyes droop and I think of shouting.

"No- No I didn't mean it like that... I just ain't know much about it other than the stereotypes..."
Maybe he senses my blank face as a bad thing.
Maybe he understands something is wrong.
Maybe he sees the panic set in the stone.
To him, this moment is deafeningly quiet.
To me, it's all so impossibly loud.

"SHUT UP!" I stare at the ceiling and hope that something out there - inside me - will hear and truly listen.
I'm tired.
I'm so very tired.

"I'm sorry... I- I was just trying to..." Voice meek and spilling over with contrition, Marshall's head lowers, as if he were trying to disappear into himself.
I feel bad.

"I wasn't talking to you"
I laugh dryly.
Out of a sour distaste.
Out of bitterness.
For myself.

I bring my pointer finger to my temple, referring to the voices in my head.
I hope he understands what I mean.
He seems relieved.
I take it, even if it doesn't read as comprehension.

I smile, eyebrows knitting into sadness or some form of comedic misery.
This is funny to me.
I have to laugh.
I have to be humorous.
Better that then go mad.

"Explain it to me, Nisha... talk to me, I want to know..."
Human connection in the form of hands grasping at each other, I feel fulfilled in a disordered way.
His hands hold my wrist, bringing it over to his side of the table.

An empty smile on my face, my eyes read nothing but drained exhaust.
I purse my lips, turning to look out the window into the tapered darkness, overcome by bright city lights, moving cars and large flashy advertisements.
I feel utterly dull.

"It feels like... like you're disconnected from the whole world. Like... Like if there is a God... he's playing the cruelest joke on you... No one sees what you see... No one hears what you hear... And No one thinks what you think... You're completely alone and your own mind is driving you mad"
My heart feels desolate.
Emotions deserted and abandoned the night I turned sixteen.
On some highway.
Somewhere between home and the hospital.
There's no love here.
Everything is bare, uninhabited.
Everything feels meaningless, aimless, insubstantial.
The happiness I feel is warped mania that doesn't hold true on any metric of reality.
Pure delusion.

"I feel unequivocally vacant... rejected from the understanding of the ordinary. Blank. Void. Bare..."
Normal people don't talk like this, at least not in this current society... that makes me feel even more isolated... but I can't help it.
It's the only way I can begin to describe how I feel.
Ordinary descriptions don't seem fit.

His eyes widen slowly.
I stare at him with a removed look on my face.
As if I can't be bothered to care about anything in this moment.
His face looks precious to me.
As if one of an innocent child upon hearing a painful truth.
His baby blue eyes pour over with as much affinity as distress.
I feel like reaching out and holding his face.
My body feels catatonic.
I don't move.

"You're gonna make me fall even more in love with you if you keep talking like that..."
His lips divulge in a quiet, hushed confession.
Fall even more in love.
Even more.
Indicating there is already love of some sort.
I don't know how to think.
Whether to blush or scoff at the idea of him already loving me on some level.
'It's been a week!'
Well, no.
We've known each other for a couple years now, but up until a week ago, conversations between us were generic and simplistic.
Maybe he was interested in me longer than I thought..?
I don't know.

"I..."

"Don't know how to respond, yeah, I know"
He chuckles, letting go of my wrist and standing up.
I worry of time being up.
Words lost in the fabric of too many empty seconds and minutes.

"What do you want?" He asks this as if I've ever had any grasp of what I've desired.
There were some concrete things I've wanted.
Physical pain.
That blow to the stomach, or the eye.
The ability to feel normalcy.

I cannot describe all of what I desire in a sentence, two, three, four of them.
It's a wanting for something I don't know about.

"I want to experience the human condition"
I don't really know what that is to a regular person.
But I want to feel it.
Touch it.
See it.
I don't consider Marshall regular, but I think he can help me encounter something usual.
Standard.
Coherent.
Conventional.

He slips out of the booth and steps over to my side slowly.
I study his expression, peering up at him from my seat.
He grins, face one of unfaltering confidence.
Leaning in, bringing a hand to my shoulder, his face comes level with mine.
"Oh, ...I'll show you the human condition"
His face read excitement.
He leaned in and encapsulated within seconds that felt like hours, he pressed his avid lips on mine.
Starved.
Thirsty.
Eager.
The way he kissed was as if he craved every part of me.
As if this were the only way he could describe it.
I could taste lust.
It tastes like burnt Vanilla and the lighting of a salted caramel candle.
Cinnamon gum.
It tastes like the blood of a bitten lip.
Ripe cherries and Jasmine incense.
I taste his lust.
I don't know if I've experienced the feeling yet.
So I assume what I can only be hallucinating must be a product of what I think he feels.
It tastes good, so I won't complain.
His tongue desperately ran against mine as if he couldn't get enough.
I'd never felt what it was like to have a kiss without the fear.
Without the feeling it was taken against my will.
It feels untainted.
It feels moral.

Eventually, though not as I desire, his lips leave mine.
I mourn the loss for mere seconds before gazing into the frosted over ocean that was his eyes.
I glanced at his freckle sprinkled cheeks as if they were meant to never be seen.
Forbidden from the eyes.
I wanted to kiss all of them.
I wanted to take my time.

"You taste like everything that is beautiful in this world" I let the words slip out, despite wanting to keep them to myself.
I keep eye contact as I watch his face catch on fire.
His eyes widen.
He looks thrown off balance.
Flustered.
Dazed.

"God Nisha, you're killing me..." he almost moans this.
Oh God is his voice so attractive.
His hand slips around my wrist, he brings his lips to my ear.
I shiver.
I use all my strength to keep from breaking out in twitches.
Fuck is repressing tics painful.

Whispering, his next words make me want to collapse, "I ain't waiting, we're getting the fuck out of here"