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"You're mad." One of Sophie's aunts, Monique, visited briefly yesterday with two bodyguards (Sophie said they were unnecessary for safety but necessary for her narcissistic tendencies). She gave me a look I'm familiar with and was usually accompanied by them thinking I'm weird regardless if they say it out loud.
Seconds before that Monique exclaimed, "Jesus! It's raining cats and dogs out there!" I peeked outside the window of Sophie's bedroom and voiced that there was not a single animal falling from the sky. It would've been chaotic with all the screeching and barking.
Monique turned to Sophie in what I could assume as exaggerated and unnecessary horror. "Sophie, your friend is mad."
The bedridden blonde only laughed.
I could not feel any anger at that moment. I remember feeling neutral, other than wanting her to leave so I could sit back in peace with the book I was reading before she came. "No, I'm not."
"I mean, you're mad...like crazy, you know?"
"Why do you say so?"
"Because!"
That does not explain why she thought of me as mad. Is "because" a substitute for the lack of explanation or is it the difficulty of articulating the surge of overwhelming explanations? But I have observed that the definition of mad is ambiguous and inconsistent. Madness varies in particular settings, sometimes it's arbitrary. As a woman, wearing pants during the 18th century would've caused an outrage and funny looks unlike if you did in the 20th century. What is perfectly sane in one era can turn out to be insane in another.
Where sanity end and insanity begin is a shifting boundary that is perhaps based on the always changing social norms.
To appear sane, therefore, is to be in the right environment, right time, right context, wearing the right clothes, and saying the right things. What those right things are is up to you to figure out.
"Sabby." Sophie's hoarse voice brought me back to the present. Sophie's bedroom, mahogany chair, beeping medical machines, and a certain distinct odor.
Glancing down, my hands were occupied holding the blonde's cold ones. "Please miss me when I'm gone." Sophie had been bedridden two days ago. She couldn't walk without the assistance of the nurse, barely had the appetite, keeps on interchanging words, and forgetting about the conversation in the middle of it.
There were times when she's alert, making me forget about her condition for a couple of hours. I liked those times, especially when she remembers my name.
She wanted me to miss her. I understood missing someone was wishing they're with me at a certain point of time, and so I thought. "I will for a while."
Sophie tilted her head slightly with her eyebrows furrowed. "After a while?"
"I'll probably forget about you in a couple of years if I'm still alive by then. It's how it usually works." A frown appeared on her face and I recognized it as sadness most likely. The tips of her lips were too stretched down to be an expression of anger. "Why does it matter anyway? Once you're dead you won't know whether I'm missing you or not."
