Blame ( Mental Health Awareness Week)

Blame

Author's Note; I was diagnosed as a psychopath age thirteen and this is coming from my experience. This is to raise awareness for those suffering with psychopathy and to help people better understand the condition and not treat us like it's our fault we laugh when we see murders on the news. 

Everybody blamed him. Unjustifiably of course. They acted like it was his fault. That he was a bad person. That he was out to hurt them, to cause them pain. That wasn't the truth at all. He couldn't control it. He couldn't just switch himself off and become a regular person. As much as he'd like to, for his own sake. So he wouldn't be alienated anymore by his so-called family. He had never really understood the concept of 'family'. He had never understood feelings. That sentence summed him up in a nutshell.

For as long as he could remember, Rick Sanchez had been smart. A child genius, clever, gifted. All these words were used to describe him from the age of five onwards. He was celebrated by his parents, his teachers, his classmates as the poster boy for the perfect child. But there was something that the child who understood everything could never understand. Feelings. That word haunted him, plagued him in the night. He couldn't feel. He said he loved his parents but he didn't. He said he had fun, enjoyed hanging out with his friends and playing with his toys but he didn't. He would watch, observe other children as they went about their innocent lives. The would cry when they fell, laugh when they were praised, frown when they were scolded. Rick Sanchez had never cried. Never laughed. Never frowned. It tore him up inside, and he always thought there was something wrong with him. Why couldn't he feel things like the other kids could?

The first time his parents became wise to his peculiarities was when he was ten. They had found him standing over the family dog, a knife in his hand, and he was just smiling. Not laughing or crying or growling, but just smiling peacefully, happily. Upon closer inspection his parents realized that the dog was dead, but it had been sewn onto a rat Rick had found by the dustbins and killed prior to that as well. When his father asked what happened, his crazed mother screaming at him to tell them, he just said "The dog was stupid, I used it for science and made it smart,"

Well, they drove him straight to the psychologists office first thing in the morning.

"And how did you feel Rick, when you stabbed the dog, stitched the rat onto him?" the psychologist would ask again and again, hoping against all hope that Rick would answer differently than he had five minutes before.

"I felt something," Rick would reply in all seriousness.

"What did you feel?"

"I felt. I felt for the first time,"

"Did it feel good or bad?"

"What do those feel like?"

He was diagnosed as a psychopath. After that things got different. His parents would cry all the time, and Rick didn't know why but he wanted to know. His father would shout at him for no reason, calling him names like 'monster' and 'animal' and 'creature', saying that he was less than human. He didn't know why. He wanted so much to feel, to be like everyone else. He tried so hard  to but he couldn't. He didn't know what everybody wanted from him, he didn't know how to give it to them. What he did know; what he was smart enough to work out, was that they were all stupid. Stupid to blame him for something he couldn't control, stupid to act like he was a different person than he had been the week before just because some doctor told them he could never and would never feel like they did.

That lead Rick to form another conclusion, one that would dictate every choice he made for the rest of his life; not only were they all stupid, but they were all meaningless.

Rick had seen life slip away from a body, heartbeat and brain function being ripped out, even by his own hand. And that was it. That was just it. Nothing happened, He hadn't felt any different afterwards and as far as he could tell the corpse didn't feel anything either. So he realized. There was no purpose, there was no morals, no right and no wrong. Humans were nothing; they were dirt he could stomp on and hear their dying screams and he wouldn't bat an eye. He couldn't help but think this way. It was just him. Out of his hands. And so Rick became cynical.

He focused on science because science never judged him. It was literal, and required the scientist to be insensitive and indifferent. It required nothing more from Rick than to be himself. It was the perfect career path for him. The only thing besides murder that made him feel...anything.

And now he sits with his family on the sofa watching interdimensional cable, bored out of his fucking mind. Rick can't remember a time when he wasn't bored. Even during his experiments he is bored. He watches his grandson, keeps watching him. He stares intensely but is sure nobody notices, least f all Morty. And he pleads. He wishes, he prays, he cries out inwardly, so desperate to feel something for the boy. Care. Compassion. Responsibility. Love. Anything! But he can't. He feels nothing for Morty and he never will. Distraught, Rick wants to end it all.

His daughter blames him for leaving, his son-in-law blames him for crushing his already deflated ego. His granddaughter blames him for favouring Morty over her, his grandson blames him for his very existence. He looks into Morty's scornful eyes and wants to care. He wants to care that he ruined his daughter's life and is ruining his grandson's but he can't.

Life has never been beautiful for Rick Sanchez. He has never marvelled at the innocence of a child or felt empowered by a glowing sunset. Life is nothing for Rick. It gives him nothing but he can only take everything because he doesn't know how to act any other way. He is a psychopath and he will forever be blamed by people who don't even know what they're blaming for, and who have not one iota of understanding for what he goes through every day, every second he is awake.