Catch Me (Synacky)

Chapter Twenty: Zacky

Here is a fact about me: I did not learn to speak until I was five years old.

Life was a jumble of mass confusion, I was not accustomed to things like light and sound and scents. Too much sensory information all the time had really taken its toll on me. According to my parents, I did not even respond to my name until I was three. I understood thoughts, I had things I wanted to express, but I had difficulties making my mouth form words.

My first word was “ball.” I had a fascination with them. I would line up balls and roll them and bounce them and try to stack them (which was very foolish of me, finding the center of gravity on a sphere is nearly impossible).

But before that, I did learn sign language. I learned to sign so I could ask for things or say when I was hungry or tired. It was much easier than forming consonants and vowels together. My parents had to learn sign language to keep up with me.

Sometimes, when I go through a period of regression, I do not speak and will not talk to people unless they can understand me when I sign. I have not used sign language in one year, 4 months, and 6 days.

That was my last period of regression. I lost much of my progress, hiding from people at school, catatonia kicking in. Sometimes, I would stare at the threshold of a doorway for half an hour before I could cross over it, or would hold my hand on a jar lid for ten minutes before I could turn it. Dad was not allowed in my room, because nothing could be out of place. It was difficult.

Ever since Dad died, I could feel the regression slowly taking place. For example, today at lunch, I had to stare at my spoon for a while before I picked it up. My mind is working hard, processing. But the synapses are not firing correctly, and the signals I’m getting are not interpreted correctly.

When Brian kissed me, I hit him.

He had looked at me and I had apologized, and I tried to imagine remorse and how that must feel. It was wrong to hit, my mind was just a muddled mess and I didn’t know what to do.

Sometimes, I suffer from catalepsy when I am experiencing regression.

It is often random and without warning, but it usually occurs when I am deep in thought. My body stops moving and it will stay in the same position, usually for an hour or two. I feel hardly anything, and people can move my position and I will not respond, holding the new position.

Once this happened at my old school and the children made fun of me, making me pose in different ways.

It is like REM sleep, in the way that I can still control my eye movements.

I did not want to sleep with Brian anymore. I stayed in my own bed, staring at the ceiling, every so often checking my watch or fiddling with my pet. I recited prime numbers, which would eventually lull me to sleep.

I stopped speaking on February 4th. Brian asked me, “Did you sleep well last night?”

I wanted to say, “No. I don’t sleep very well anymore.”

But I couldn’t form the words. It is quite upsetting, and I doubt anyone can fully understand it without experiencing it for themselves. I opened my mouth, focused, tried to force them out, enunciating the sounds of the words in my mind, but I couldn’t get them to form.

So, I just stood there, fists clenched, mouth open.

“Zee… you okay?” Brian slipped his arms around me. “You’ve been sorta… distant for the past few days and I just don’t know what’s wrong. Did I upset you?”

No, of course he didn’t upset me. All this internal turmoil with coming to the institution and Dad have been taking their toll on me.

There is a sign for “speech impaired.” I used it when people who met me during a period of regression asked if I was deaf. I am not good at reading lips, so I would not make a very good deaf person. But I signed, “I’m mute.” And Brian didn’t know what I was doing, as I had suspected.

He sighed and we went to breakfast.

It continued at group therapy that evening, I could not speak, could not form words, and I couldn’t answer any questions about how I thought I was progressing here at the institution.

It was obvious that I wasn’t progressing, however. Other than Brian, there was nothing for me here.

But I couldn’t speak (it’s a condition called apraxia of speech) and each moment I grew more and more frustrated, only making my regression worse.

The last time this happened, Dad knew how to sign so he understood me when I spoke and my regression lasted just a couple weeks before I was able to form words and keep the catatonia at bay. He caught it early, I was put on SSRI’s, and it didn’t last.

But here, no one knew how to sign, SSRI’s were on my medication list, but they didn’t know that was what I needed.

Brian opened his arms for a hug, and I just stared at him. When Johnny wanted to color with me, I colored outside the lines. I clung to my pet, not even setting it down when I ate, hardly bearing to leave it in the room when I went to shower.

I refused to eat anything except Cheerios. Everything else made me sick to my stomach and made my head hurt. Therefore, I was fed through an IV, which I had become more or less accustomed to.

When I had a meeting with Dr. Brooks, I showed him my tabs. He asked why I wasn’t speaking, and when I signed in reply, he said, “Yes, I understand. We’ll have to work on getting your voice back, won't we?”

It was like Django himself had played Minor Swing for me.

I was able to tell him that I wasn’t doing well. That I was going through regression and I didn’t know how to stop it. Ever since I was brought to the institution (I didn’t know how to sign “institution” so I signed “hospital” instead) and Dad died, I’ve felt it getting worse.

Dr. Brooks said he would bring more fun things to do. “You’ve been through a whole lot, Zacky. We’ll work on your regression, get it all sorted out.”

Then we looked at pictures of faces, and tried to identify which emotions were being displayed. Some were easy, others were very difficult. There was one picture of a girl who was smiling, but her eyebrows were drawn together. I turned it face down because it confused me.

With most people, I could not read the expressions on their faces, and I stayed away from them. With Brian, it was different. I usually couldn’t tell whether he was happy or sad or upset, but it didn’t matter because I knew he was going to hug me or kiss me and he would never do anything to hurt me, even if it was obvious that he was angry.

This made me have bad feelings inside, because I had hit him for no reason. I tried to imagine how he felt, but that was something I was never able to accomplish.

That evening, Brian tried to figure out my Rubix Cube and I watched my liquid hourglass. I thought about Brian. He was so… extraordinary. He was like a butterfly in the nest of maggots that we lived in. He was like the knight in the fairytales I despised so much. A perfect being that, by the laws of nature, shouldn’t exist. Yet here he was, and I was absolutely in love with him.

That thought shocked me and I had to backtrack. In love?

According to the dictionary, to “love” meant to feel a deep romantic or sexual attraction to someone. I usually did not use that word. Mum and Dad would tell me that they loved me, and I knew I loved them as well, but that was because they were my parents and they provided food and clothing and guitar strings whenever I needed them. Brian didn’t provide any of those things. Why, then, was I so very fond of him?

I wasn’t sure. But, with those thoughts in mind, I went over to him, threw my arms around him, and kissed him.