In.Sanity (Wahnsinn)

[Noetic]

Another essay from college, less relevant to autism just... interesting. One of the few first-person ones I wrote from a female perspective (the only one I did explicitly so, I wrote another without ever mentioning the gender of the narrator)

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Some things just happen, I guess. Perhaps nobody even notices they happen, they just appear one day out of the blue, as if they had always existed, and yet we know that isn't so.

There are whole days that shouldn't even exist, and yesterday was another one of those. The problem isn't so much that such days exist, just that there seem to be far too many of them these days! Yesterday has been the worst so far, so bad in fact that I didn't even realise just how wrong it was until now. And that's the problem, isn't it?

Right, so let me tell you about yesterday. There I am, getting up still half asleep, which isn't all that unusual for me. I get up and I walk to the kitchen, because without my Nescafe I doubt I would ever be able to get through the day.

That is, I try to get to the kitchen, because I can't for the life of me find it anywhere! Seriously, I'm running around the flat like a complete moron, unable to find my own bloody kitchen!

Just short of slipping into complete insanity, a weird-sounding bloke's voice pipes up from somewhere, telling me to go back to bed. I must admit, I was getting a tad confused at this point, seeing as though I am pretty sure I've never heard that voice before. But bed sounds good, so since I can't find the kitchen anyay, I retrace my steps to the bedroom.

That's when it hit me, when I saw this strange blond guy sitting there in bed, giving me a slimy smile – This isn't my flat! I was surprisingly nonplussed by the fact that I hadn't even noticed such a rather important detail until this point, but was in fact exceedingly relieved.

I mean, it is a bit rubbish not to be able to tell your own flat from a complete strangers', but I would have been infinitely more frustrated had my kitchen really just disappeared from the face of the earth! I'm sure it's a very rare thing for a kitch to just steal away in the middle of the night, but I've had stranger things happen to me, so I was relieved none the less.

Okay, so back to the blond on the bed – looking at him, I remember thinking to myself that he wasn't all that bad, quite dishy, actually. I just wished I knew who he was!

For lack of any other options, I sit down on the bed next to him and begin to admire the incredibly faschinating flowered wallpaper beside us. I am rather busy wondering if I haved ever seen a more intriguing wallpaper in my life, when the blond puts an arm around me and whispers: “Sally, darling, what's so exciting over there?”

“Wallpaper.” I mumble. “Fascinating wallpaper.”

At that, he proceeds to laugh himself half into a stupor. Once he recovers, the sweet whispers continue: “Honey, I never knew you were such a little joker! You picked this wallpaper yourself!”

He begins to massage my shoulders, and I get up, asking for the kitchen. One giggle-induced earthquake later, he exclaims: “You are a hoot! Sally, the kitchen is next to the living room, you designed the flat that way!”

Ah, did I now? I walk out of the room in a daze, over to the place that had looked most like a living room during my earlier exploration. And he was right! Right there next to the sofa, a large sliding door leads into a massive, bright kitchen.

“Wow!” - it's all I can think of, but it is a heartfelt “Wow” none the less. OK, so I still had no clue where I was, or what could have possessed me to design a flat in the first place, let alone such a luxurious one! Granted, my name wasn't Sally either, but somehow that didn't seem to matter. Sarah, Sally, where's the difference, right?

I brew myself a large coffe and sip it while having a look around the living room, sitting in front of a TV that must be at least three meters in diameter. At least. I sit there watching the news in Japanese, wondering why I can't understand a word.

At some point that blond guy comes into the living room, plonking himself down next to me. “Sally, I really think you should cut down on your drinking. It's not doing you any good...”

I have no idea what he was on about – going by the smell of alcohol on his breath, the two or three beers I had on our girls' night out couldn't be 'too much' in his eyes. The blond (according to the diplomas on the walls, his name appears to be Thomas) kisses my forehead and gets up again. “I will have to think twice next time you insist on coming to a business meal with me, that's for sure.”

He was dressed by that point, and was standing at the door with a leather briefcase under his arm. “Right, see you tonight then, honey.”

I nod and he leaves. As soon as he closes the door, I throw my empty cup in a corner of the room, stumble back to the bedroom and get dressed. At least my clothes looke familiar!

I check my watch – it's almost nine, and I am meant to be at Uni at eleven! Before I leave, I have a snoop around the flat again, chucking a few things into a green Marks & Spencer bag I find in the kitchen.

A couple of videos, T-Shirts, five cans of potato salad – the usual. On a table in the living room I find a few crumpled bills and a pile of change, which I grabbed as well.

“Thou shalt not steal” and all that, I know, yadda, yadda, yadda. But hey, the guy is obviously filthy rich, plus he obviously has no clue who I am so he is hardly likely to come asking for it back, right?

On my way out I inspect the door to the flat - “T & S Davies-Smith” it says there next to the button for the door bell.

In the lift I find an old lady who is wearing so many necklaces that she can barely stand upright. She grins a toothless grin at me. “Good morning Mrs Davies, how lovely to see you out and about this early in the morning!”

I give her my best toothpaste advert grin, which she somehow appears to take offense to, but I don't particularly care. She tries to make conversation again: “Your wedding ring is just to die for!”

My toothpaste advert smile abruptly shatters and I get out of the lift without another word. Outside, I rip the ring off my finger and stuble aimlessly through a posh area I am utterly unfamilar with, until I finally find a subway station. When I get off the subway near my place, I suddenly remember that I don't actually have a video recorder, so I sell the tapes and the ring at the nearest pawn shop for a small fortune.

At last in my own four walls, I slump down in front of the TV and work my way through two of the cans of potato salad, rather upset that I don't have any Japanese channels in my cable package. Disappointed, I put on a talkshow about overweight pets and doze away half listening to it, covered in potato salad.

The next thing I know, it's three o'clock and the phone rings. It's Nadine, one of the girls from last night. “Hey Sarah, I can't believe you skived off yet another lecture!” Lovely greeting, that...

As I don't particularly feel like trying to explain the events of that morning to her, I make up some soppy story about an old boyfriend I met on the way back from the pub last night, and good old Nadine seems happy with that.

We met for a meal at a nearby restaurant that night, but to Nadine's surprise I stuck to mineral water – something told me that a drop of alcohol might just be enough to make me wake up as Sally again tomorrow! Kind of stupid, really, because stuff like that just happens, so why not enpoy myself a little, right?

OK so I've never heard of this happening to anyone else, but surely it does happen to everyone once in a while, right? Or doesn't it?

I must admit I do have the occasional doubt about my own sanity, but as long as I'm having a good time I'm not really that fussed. I might even pay Thomas a visit one of these days – he was pretty dishy, after all, although I am not sure how I'd explain the lack of a wedding ring to him. Mind you, he'd probably just buy me another one...

Some might say that visiting a shrink might be a wiser decision, but I'm not all that keen on being locked away. Maybe the idea will become more appealing at some point, but right now I'm fine the way I am – be that Sarah or Sally!

(c) 1996 by Noetic

[SomethingElse]

I quite liked this.

[Noetic]

I quite liked this.

I translated this a lot more freely than the other story so I think it's more readable in a way. My 'best' essay was one about a 50-odd year old man who had a heart attack which changed his life (it goes a bit bizarre after that, he meets a farmer who broke her legs while cleaning up cow dung, marries her and then they move to the Bahamas an take all the cows along). But it's too long to translate this weekend. Well, my teacher wrote "Wow!" as the only remark so I assume it was good.

I think I will also translate my "autobiography" because I am stunned at how I managed to get away with that - I basically spent two pages saying "I don't know what to say, apart from mind your own business". And then I put something in from A Fish Called Wanda about how you should only believe that someone is speaking the truth when they still claim it to be the truth if you hang them upside down from a window.