Thursday, June 01, 2006

Revisit

My problems with weddings persist. On Saturday, my brother got married; I was his best man. We weren't five minutes into the ceremony before I saw the Many Armed Knight outside a church window. His robes crept into the sanctuary through the seams of the glass windows, the eyes of the Pastor, and out of my tuxedo's cuffs. I'm sure I flexed my left hand as I often do during a hallucination. My choir drowned out the ceremony, but oddly enough not the singers in the church, and sang only a single high note. I couldn't hear the preacher clearly, and much of the audience was covered in the long, black robes of the Many Armed Knight. Needless to say, it would be a disaster of a wedding if I showed obvious signs of distress, so I bottled everything up, and tried to keep up my end of my brother's matrimonies. The rings were tied together, and I had a hard time picking apart the knots; I kept missing the strings that I tried to grab. The ringbearer was a little kid, so I couldn't let him see my eyes: I didn't want to frighten him. The last thing an eight year old needs to see is the eyes of a madman; they rarely understand mine.

I'm too strange for most of you to understand. You might protest, citing my ability to write of my experiences, but how many of you that read, listen, and how many of you that listen, read? There are two types of people in my life: those who read me, and feel sympathy for reasons they don't understand completely, and those that have only listened to me, who avoid me for very good reasons. Mixing the two never works out quite right. If you don't believe me, just think of the last time you heard my voice. If your answer is never, you probably think I'm ok. If you've heard me within the past month, odds are that you probably avoid me on purpose. Don't think that I don't notice. There are a few exceptions, but most of them spend vastly more time reading me than talking with me.

It seems I revisit the same hallucinations every time I'm in or near a wedding. I burn over it; I'm not sure if it's the happiness evident in the bride and groom's eyes, the desperation of my own situation, or my psychosis tearing open a period of profound silence. Regardless of causation, I don't think I'm cut out for normal social interaction, especially weddings.

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