Riley was born into a good family. Later on, in his young adulthood, he would try to poke holes into how he was raised. Still, nobody gave his sentiments the validation because everyone knew he had a great childhood and adolescence. Even he had to admit in his own heart - as he grew in age - that he did in fact have it really, really good. That he grew up in about as well adjusted and safe an environment as one can wish for. Riley had been told since he was young that he would do something great. He was encouraged to do whatever he wanted. He was free to choose whichever career path or life goal he wished to pursue. He was reassured that whenever he found out what that thing was, he would be great at it. He would be great at it and he would be fully supported in every which way one can imagine. Nevertheless, Riley grew up and never did anything that Riley found to be great. All through high school or college, he felt he was above average to average. For instance, he had a variety of artistic interests but never could apply himself fully to any specific one. Riley would never admit to this, but he found it odd that he wasn’t famous by the time he was 21. He was handsome, he was in plays, open mics, short student films, art galleries, talent shows, YouTube videos, etc. Still, he did nothing that was attention-grabbing or noteworthy in the eyes of Riley. Riley began to feel the pressure of time. Relationships and routines were beginning to cement themselves. Riley started seeing everything in his life come into focus and it didn’t match his desires. It didn’t match the big promise he had envisioned receiving. Remember the whole poking holes in the childhood part earlier? He started doing some of that to validate his own emotions. So what did Riley do next? He made big, huge, giant changes. He dropped the job. He dropped the friends. He dropped the girl. He dropped the zip code. Hell, he even dropped the haircut. He said he was sick of everyone acting so normal and not being themselves. He said he was going to apply himself to the arts - for real this time. So Riley applied himself to inconsistently creating art that looked like art. He made comments to the world about how he was exploring this new space or thinking about taking up this new methodology. Riley liked the feeling of looking as if he was exploring all the crevices of the artistic world. He liked the idea that people must’ve had of him in their heads. The deep and expansive artist. It made him feel deep and expansive when it was all happening. People supported him, were there for him, gave him the same care they always did. He felt this big red balloon inside of him finally grow. It felt so right. Some time went by and the balloon remained well-fed. It wasn’t until deep into the winter that Riley noticed that something or someone was letting the air out of his big balloon at night. It was as if only at night was he punctured by the realization that he really had nothing to say. At least nothing that spoke to the human emotions which are the cornerstones of artistic expression. The balloon would deflate badly at night. Still, he kept at it and the air kept getting pumped in during the day and taken out at night by this dodgy nightcrawler. One day, he said that he felt as if his biggest, most important piece of art would be created soon. He said that he had empowering promises to keep. He said that he was going through a transformative spiritual change. He said that he was growing into something bigger than anyone could ever imagine. He said that he was going to blow everyone away with how special, and unique whatever the thing he was creating was. The balloon grew for 3 whole days and three whole nights. Finally, Riley thought it was time. It was time to bring his highly anticipated piece to life for the world to see. He still hadn’t created it but he had to go big or go home. It had to happen now. He had to just go for it. He said it like that when it happened. He said he was living his truth and that he was happy and that everyone should be happy for him. That the details and the timeline and the actions didn’t matter because, at the end of it all, the people in his life would have to love him for it. So he went for it. He went for it big. He drank it all in for about 3 seconds then...pop. Someone popped his stupid fucking balloon. Broad daylight.
1. Bummer. Guy not as hot even after picking up hot guy hobbies
2. Bro who is too cool for everyone also too cool to clean his butt
3. Oops. Social justice warrior calls out man for white privilege - man actually working-class Colombian on the run from war crimes
4. Brave. Trust fund baby vows to only publicly date other trust fund babies
5. Man ready to admit that ex has become a better person, changes his mind after thinking about how good she fucks
*TW: Suicide, self-harm.*
The walls were too thin at that office. I had complained about it to Dr. Z but she said she couldn’t prevent the patients from expressing themselves. She calmed me by saying that there was no way I was overheard during our sessions. That our conversations were held at a much more tame tone than the patient who came in before me. If that patient, let’s call her “Sophia”, were to enunciate just a little better, I would have known some of the most important details of her private psychological life. From the two sessions that I had half-overheard, I found out that she was disappointed about something. She would go from talking in this static monotone voice to growing into a blazing symphony of angst. I clearly overheard Sophia calling herself someone's “daddy." That she hated feeling like a daddy. She said she felt like a ghost, too. And lastly, something was said about Alexiythmia and how it was getting better or maybe worse. I don't really know, it wasn't all that clear. She would drag her feet out of the psychologist’s office and into the lobby and kind of wave me in as if to say, "your time to go in there, loser." She looked like a cornered animal. I felt as if she would die soon.
The next time I visited the office, I figured I should wear headphones so as to not purposefully eavesdrop on Sophia’s therapy session. Usually, I’m incredibly nosey and would revel in these sorts of situations. In this case, however, I had this feverish feeling that I should steer clear. A few minutes went by and she finally came out of the office. Something about not hearing her shift through all her tones of worry made me feel better. The feeling faded. Sophia came out of the office and looked past me. Her eyes glistened. All-encompassing black pupils. She got her phone out and proceeded to surf it slowly with her finger. I continued to gather my stuff to go and replace her spot in the office. Something told me that she was about to make one of the worst calls of her life. Turns out it wasn’t a call, it was a FaceTime. I heard the little boops that sound like they’re underwater. She shuffled into the elevator and let out a little "hello" before disappearing behind stainless steel doors. Once I got into the office and started divulging my own shit I quickly forgot about Sophia. I was selfish and eager to talk about myself (as we usually are) but life had warned me that I had been around something macabre, something wicked, something heavy.
Two days went by. I was enjoying a burrito bowl on the college campuses’ quad when I heard a sexy voice say, “hey, you’re the guy at Dr. Z’s office who comes in after me.” I turned around and there she was sipping a beer and holding a vape pen. She had one of those THC carts that were clearly not from a California or Colorado dispensary but still got people high. There was some story about some backyard chemists in Iowa who killed or almost killed a bunch of young country kids going around at that time. Anyways, she looked better than I remember but she was clearly on some sort of hedonistic streak. I mean, the beer, come on. That also deserves commenting as some sort of sign of pleasure-seeking or oppositional signaling. I just smiled and nodded my head a little because I thought the exchange would end there. She started approaching me and I felt my stomach drop. I was about to shit myself. I remembered how I felt hearing and seeing her at Dr. Z's office. She just came right up to me all casual. Sat across from me on these metal tables with little square holes in the seats.
I tried pushing my little fingers through the holes as I anxiously waited for her to say something else. I felt like they were going through a meat grinder. She just looked at me from behind a puff cloud of marijuana smoke and said, “hi.” I said, “hey, what’s up, how are you?” Not even letting her answer I asked, “can we do this? Like, talk outside of Dr. Z’s office?” She was half-stunned by how idiotic of a question it was, but was able to gather herself and say, “uh, yeah, it’s fine. Plus, you must hear about all the shit that happens in my life. Those walls are thin.”
I hated that. There was a moment of silence where I thought she might drop her beer with how loosely she held it. She was calm but I felt this acute presence of chaos. I didn’t know what to respond so I said, “oh, no, you’re good. It’s probably not all that interesting, either.” So dumb but I said it with enough comedic emphasis that she coughed up a chuckle. “You calling me boring?” Exhale. I felt a little better by how she said it. She said it like she knew she was attractive, although I could barely look at her face directly. Her sense of style somehow reaffirmed the belief that she was attractive, albeit, unconventionally. She was wearing these weird all-white Japanese shoes, purple leggings with Jonah Hill and Randy Couture's faces on them, and a baggy white t-shirt with a wife-beater underneath. For a second I thought about us fucking. Interestingly enough, I ended up replying, “oh, no, trust me, something tells me you’ve got plenty to talk about.” I said it in an ironic, almost cold tone that reminded her that I too was one of Dr. Z’s patients. I wanted to establish myself in this conversation as someone not to be messed with. You know, it's the whole fable about the frog and the scorpion. I wanted to make sure everything was out in the open.
She pulled out a peach Snapple from her backpack and shook her head at my comment. “Ahhh, you’re just coming to grips with it. Finally realizing that the people that pushed you into that office were right about something within you. Maybe not completely right, but right enough that you see it now. You see it and it’s what makes you drive there and push yourself into that couch.” I didn’t know what to say. I mean she was right but who talks like that? You never put it into those terms for yourself, so it caught me off guard. But still, as I said earlier, I was half expecting it. She noticed and said, “did I freak you out?” She laughed a little but the way she said it comforted me a bit more. It was like her way of telling me that she does that to people often. I naively responded, “what do you think it was about you that made them recommend you for 1 on 1 therapy with an actual psychologist?” I immediately regretted asking. I asked to feign and reassure emotional closeness. I wasn't feeling all that well during those times. She could feel that.
She understood the context of the question. She said that it was - most likely - her having said that she didn’t feel like she existed in her own body anymore - especially around other humans. She felt like this sack of flesh and bones that would react and act from an emotional place that was not her own. She explained that her tone and perhaps the experiences she recollected for the student therapist might have made the young therapist think that she had lost her sense of identity. That she was someone at risk to do insensitive acts of injustice to others due to extreme existential detachment. She also added that she confessed feeling like an explorer or character in other people’s lives. I told her that I could see how that would unnerve the student psychologist who first analyzes you to see if you need 1 on 1 therapy. That I can imagine how that sort of thought process could develop into something potentially dangerous for society.
She puffed on her vape pen and looked me up and down. I thought she would ask me about what I said, but she didn’t. “I’m doing better now in terms of grounding myself in the present.” She took a pause. “I don’t really deal with any of the things that first brought me to Dr. Z. Sometimes I wonder why I still go. I hope it’s not one of those things where the institution itself has just convinced me I need it." She took another puff. "I think I would feel a little silly if I stopped going at this point. I mean, it helps, I have the money, it's something really good.” I nodded my head in understanding. I got that. “I’m dealing with different stuff now.” “What do you mean by that?”, I asked. We shared this moment where I confessed with my eyes that I had felt the pain in her voice through those thin walls. My soul had trembled to the rhythm of her cries while waiting out in that lobby. “You’ll come to find out...maybe. You’ll come to find out that sometimes piecing yourself back together means building up the new monsters in your life.” She interrupted the feelings of anxiety building back up inside of me by asking, “Do you know 'Alisha Stargaze'?” I didn’t.
She asked if I liked to go to different gyms. What my major was. If I liked certain types of entertainment. What high school I went to. She asked them in this quickfire manner that woke me up. I responded to the questions quickly. It made me feel like I was being vetted for something important. Maybe to keep my life. I felt the anxiety spillover. I wanted to get up. She finished her line of questioning, lowered her gaze, and said, “I don’t trust you, but you should know that the worst thing you could do for yourself is to reflect the many seminal truths within other people.” She finished the rest of her beer but never lost eye contact with me. “They’ll hate you for it. They’ll hate that you don’t buy into their platitudes. You know the ones. ‘Everyone's a little hypocritical', or ‘not everything is so black and white’, or ‘we’re all just human’. They want you to accept their flaws and skip over everything else. They might accept your love but they don’t want it to be attached to any sort of sentiments of self-actualization.” I could feel that she was inching towards talking about some of her and Dr. Z’s topics of discussion.
Suddenly, she got up and said that she needed to go. I could tell that she was ready to flee. Like she had to go do something which she had been putting off since birth. I felt light-headed by how quickly the conversation had developed. I think both of us would've admitted at that very second how odd we felt. I especially had been drawn to her personality strongly. I felt intense feelings of dread while being around her. For this conversation to have happened the way it did left me emotionally wobbled. Perhaps both of us being patients of Dr. Z did draw it out of us in some way, who knows. I'm still piecing it all together now. I thought I’d see her the next time I was at Dr. Z's office but nope. I asked Dr. Z about it the second time I went without seeing Sophia. I asked, “where's that girl that comes in before me been?” Dr. Z looked rattled. She asked if I knew her, I told her no that we had only talked once about five or six days ago. She told me that I should talk to campus police. That it was best to get any type of information on Sophia recollected. Dr. Z made a call and 25 minutes later a detective from the metro department was in our little office. Dr. Z left us alone while I told him about my little meeting with Sophia. I asked him if she was in danger. He told me that they had found her dead in the woods with a self-inflicted shotgun wound through the mouth. They found her about 4 days ago but she had carried through with the act the same day she and I had talked. I did the math and realized nobody knew she was gone for almost two to three days.
He went on to talk about how Sophia’s friend Alisha Stargazing had been unsuccessfully gaslighting Sophia. Sophia knew that Alisha and her stepmother were having an affair. Sophia felt responsible and - to make matters worse - was beginning to like her own mother again. She seemed to love life and appeared untroubled. She was a drop shipper from Wyoming who inherited a lot of money and thought she could make great films. The detective said that Sophia had left meticulous notes about all of it in her journal. According to the detective, Sophia got to see a pretty close look at what was going on before she decided to take her own life. She made comments about feeling sick seeing both Alisha and her stepmother try to adopt new branches of philosophy or spirituality or art. Both searching for tenets or axioms that resonated with their actions. She joked but was genuinely worried that - soon enough - they would discover moral nihilism and just decide to kill her or smear her already non-existent reputation. Sophia's jokes started becoming "realizations" that perhaps it was best if she just “left.” That maybe with her gone they and the rest of the world would realize that the spell was lifted. That they could be free and open and live lives that weren’t weighed down by the memories of Sophia. She saw herself as this sort of seed that had delivered all of these circumstances. She felt "tainted." She said that the comedic tragedy could end now - so she ended it
I asked the detective if she was angry at them and if that's why she did it. He said the opposite. That she described them in almost childlike terms. She lent understanding towards their actions by writing that, “they just don’t know any better.” She never felt surprise or indignation. She felt that their behaviors were representative of something greater. Something that had weighed down all of humanity. Still, that didn’t alleviate her mixture of boredom and pain for it all. She felt as if there was no longer room for her in this world of instinct. The detective said that she was able to withstand the pain they tried hurling at her, but that she couldn’t withstand the pain they were creating for themselves, the new people in their lives, and those that haven't been born. He said it as if he was proud of her - or maybe I'm just projecting. The detective ended his synopsis of Sophia's journal and asked me with over-worked eyes if I knew anybody outside of her mother that he could talk to. That Dr. Z calling and pointing to me as a friend was the closest he had gotten to talking with anyone that he thought might help. I asked if he talked to Alisha or the stepmother, he said that this case wasn't getting worked like that. I still don't understand what that means. He asked if that was all I had on her. That was all I had so he gathered his papers. He left me alone.
I was awestruck. I felt supernaturally clairvoyant. I mean, I knew that she was going to die. I knew that she had a dark aura that reeked of impending doom. I was so confused and I still am today writing about it. I remember discussing the matter more briefly with Dr. Z. I reminded her how hard it was for me to hear these types of stories. She knew what I was talking about. It’s what brought me into the office to begin with. Dr. Z looked at me with sincere, sparkling eyes and said, “Sophia was a unique girl who was born into a hard world. She was born with a hard brain to live with. She had a knack for deconstructing and observing life that was always going to mark her life. She had this rare mixture of natural empathy and understanding that destined her to never see old age.” Dr. Z shrugged a little and quickly asked me how I was feeling. She realized that she had been unprofessional by sharing all of that. I was fine changing the subject. I had this new back pain going on and I felt it get worse the more we talked about Sophia. So we changed the subject. We talked about something else. So we talked about back pain.
He said his parents were worth 500 million dollars
I just looked into his old dog’s big eyes
He sweetly called her a lazy, stupid bitch
I hated that but the chili smelled lovely
I told him how I was feeling better about not wanting to be human
He turned on this 1980s smut film that was funny
He showed me the blueprints for a Rolls Royce jet engine
I thought about how I’m always feeling like I’m in some type of trouble
He put a pinch of happiness in my drink
I was looking at the black, red, and white cubist art in the apartment
He offered me some jobs at ESPN and Disney that I half-wanted
I saw myself laughing at the idea of my past desires
He wanted me to feel the colors for himself
I started shapeshifting into primalism
I was able to run away from the desert eagle
He shot some lewd comments at me that almost knocked me over
I landed back on my apartment’s sexy carpet scheduling 12 calls
He texted me 2 weeks later asking who would win the NFC championship
So I slashed the wheels of his Bentley Coupe and fed him scopolamine
For 2 years
He started lying around all day long. Stretched way out on the couch. All the way into the early evening hours. I saw it happen incrementally once we came back from the holidays. The world was starting to open up and that made him close down. Playing games deep into the night. Ordering greasy food from a 4th bank account. Although, don’t even get me started on how hard it was to get a Venmo from the guy. “Oh, yeah, dude, uh, give me a second to link up my card again, I guess that it somehow disconnected.” *Wait 30 minutes* “You figure it out?” “Uh, yeah, bro, uh, it like locked me out but I’ll just hit you tomorrow.” Pfff. He would waste away hours on Youtube videos. Reactions to hearing Playboi Carti, MIT professors teaching you how to calculate enthalpy, Joe Rogan roundhouse kicks. Hours and hours and hours. We just heard the noises from the other room.
Money was always on his mind. Stocks this, hedge funds that, my dad invested here, I almost went to school there. I don’t think I ever saw him make more than $100 a day. Still, money on the dome. All day, every day. When I met him he talked about all of that stuff. Now he was talking about it with a certain tone. He was growing irritable. His eyes rolled a little as he droned on about his topics. Snooze, snooze, lose, lose. For some reason I felt that little rhyme/chant/proverb bouncing around the apartment a lot during those days. His mind was a collection of statistics, all revolving around who is the best, or which one piece of art won a certain award. It was impressive at first. Now it was unnerving, irritating, almost worrying. Oh, Tom Cruise is for sure the actor who has made the most money? That’s awesome and I’m confident that you’re right, but why are you saying it like that?
He started to sink so, so hard into that tan couch while the Californian sun bleached him with sadness unbeknownst. He talked about girls and their bodies but his libido was nil. He talked about how powerful and athletic he felt, but his cheekbones were hidden by now. I remember the day I first sensed a bit of embarrassment from him. It was around 7:45AM, I came out of my room and found him maybe a foot away from the 50” TV. He had pulled up the whole couch. He quickly turned off “George Lopez” and switched to “Opening Bell” like he was following the performance of his latest stock purchase. He hadn’t slept. The Xbox was still on which means he was flicking from playing games to TV to porn to games to TV to porn. Cycles. Revolutions (he loved that movie, too, no surprise there). While I smoked a little, I could tell that he felt embarrassed. This was at the beginning of his new routine to sleep all day and be awake all night. Before, yes, he would stay up late, but he would at least work for two hours or get drunk in the evenings.
Now, his world was that couch, that TV, and those late-night DoorDashes. He felt ashamed and he scuttled off into the shower and proceeded to take a shower that was an hour and a half. An hour and a half. I repeat, an hour and a half. Probably more. That was the last little pirouette to his routine. The almost two-hour steam from 8AM to 10AM only to crawl back into bed and sleep until 7PM. This routine went on for two almost three weeks until we addressed it. We asked him if everything was ok. We had discussed prior to the mini intervention the reality that he would never admit to being unwell. His ego would never allow it. We were right.
He said everything was cool. That he functioned like that. That he had worked at Goldman Sachs as an intern and had slept during the day there because they knew he would get his work done. He mentioned that he had applied to a Disney job and that he was positive he would get it. That he always got those sorts of jobs. We knew he was denying his own emotions but, as I’ve come to learn, there’s not much else you can do sometimes for a person besides just letting them know that you are looking out for their best interests. It’s the whole thing about taking a horse to the water. We wanted him to know that we acknowledged his behavior. I thought it would be a good idea since maybe it was a cry for help.
Anyways, nothing changed. Mold started growing in the bathroom because of his shower sessions. His skin started to get greyish under his eyes. It looked like he had been punched and the bruises were just beginning to heal. There was that thin ring of yellow that surrounded them. He put in hair products, put on these white t-shirts with holes and condiment stains on them, only to go right back to bed. We found liquor bottles inside some of the bags of fast food. He started rapping lyrics randomly and muttering insults at us. I would ask him to repeat what he said but he would say something different. Then, one day, we came back from our evening walk and he told us that he had to go back home for a funeral. We didn’t think much of it.
He packed his bags and went home. Two days went by and I figured I’d call his dad to see if he would fix my computer when I was back in town. I had never spoken to his dad. All I knew was that he came from a lot of wealth and knew everything about computer hardware and software. I call the father and I open up by stating how sorry I was about their loss. He replies saying, “what funeral are you talking about?” “The one that made Bobby have to go back home.” “Oh, uh, no, Bobby must’ve lied to you. He’s back here because the film he’s shooting is taking a break from recording. I don’t know why he told you that. Also, he said he hasn’t lived with you in over two months. That one of you got in a terrible car wreck so he decided to leave the house. That…” *Click*