The Nysse by Chris Saferos - HTML preview

THE AFTERMATH

So, I got into my parent’s car and we went towards home. In the car, there was an atmosphere of awe and we talked with caution, so as not to ruin the perfection of the day. Μy parents mentioned that they had found syringes in my room, but they did it casually because I explained to them that I had stopped. My mother asked me what food I missed most and so we stopped and I ate a burger. The experience seemed incredible. As soon as we got home, they showed me my room and after I settled down, my friends called. We gathered at about eight o’clock at my house and we had a mini party. Iphigenia called, too, and we spoke for some time. The day ended when we went to the neighborhood square where I used to go when I was little and we drank beers. The next day it was my birthday and I treated my friends at a place that Iphigenia had told me about. At this point, I will interrupt my narration wanting to say that although I feel bad that I haven’t used the real names of the people that have “participated” in my book, I prefer that it stays that way. I feel that it is better.

To continue my narration, the “psycho” was still destroying my life, but I lived so intensely and fully that there was some sort of a balance. My passion for Anna continued and we still wanted to get married. For her sake, I rejected a lot of girls. Even girls I had been in love with in the past. I was determined to meet her and make her my wife. So I started a series of unsuccessful attempts to meet her. At  A…… 17, there was only an abandoned house while her last name was in none of the telephone books. I was disappointed…

At some point, I was upset and was thinking about whether there was a way to know when I would meet Anna. Something like a countdown until we met, although it was a fact that I didn’t know when it was going to happen. That spurred my interest mathematically and I occupied myself  theoretically with how we can count backwards to a fact that we don’t know when it would happen. I thought it would be a timer which would count forward and backwards simultaneously. I didn’t like that idea. So, I contrived a new set of numbers, that would have the properties of a countdown to a fact that we don’t know when it is going to happen. An imagery number like the complex numbers that counts that thing exactly. I named the unit of those numbers 1 with a dot on the top right. I thought there would be 2-“top dot” due to the continuity that is created if the fact is accomplished in the future. So, I thought of two scales that describe those imaginary numbers. One scale was the sum of 0-“top dot”, 1- “top dot”, 2-“top dot” and so it goes. The second scale was a series of zeros, that expressed the time, the countdown would stop. The time, that is, that the fact would happen. Since we don’t know when the fact was going to happen, it is possible that it can happen any moment, so the zeros are ordered in the series of time, the one after the other. The fact that it was possible to happen, connected the imaginary scale, with the scale of the consecutive ordered zeros, on time. I also occupied myself with luck and I came to the conclusion that it is relativistic and also with a theory for prime numbers, where their sum can be expressed with the indivisible unit and can be expressed like something integral, despite the fact that it is a sum… It was November 2011 and it was time for a change. A conversation with my best friend, Garsos would change the course of things.

So one of those days, we went out with Garsos for a beer and we struck up a conversation for the inner stuff. He explained to me that he, like I, had had adventures with imaginary friends. At the beginning, I found it strange that he named his inner friends “imaginary” as I believed that Communication was real, but then he spoke about voices. Garsos’ description of  the voices was identical with what I had also experienced inside me. In msn. He told me it was all in my head and that it was a relatively common illness. At this point, I will quote a part of Garsos’ experience with his “imaginary” friends, written by him.

“After four years in college, things started getting tough for me…my mind was elsewhere. Instead of keeping notes, I was sketching various things in my notebooks, thinking of various titles  for our songs and for the time when classes finished so that I could join my friends. Although I seemed calm, I was overwhelmed with the anxiety of possibly failing in college. The only thing that calmed me was the library.  It was quiet and had couches for a good snooze and pretty girls around, some of whom I met and fell for to say the least. The anxiety I felt made me increasingly introverted, difficult and distant. In a short time, I would drop out of school. I had already failed courses which required oral presentations, something that I have yet to surpass…So burdened with my failure, I confined myself to my house where I lived with my parents for about a year. I played pro (a pc soccer game) day and night. I rarely went out. I drew and recorded music on my pc. As time passed, I caught myself talking to people inside my head, something that, later on, would become a lot more intense, real and unbearable. Wanting to get away from it all, I went to work in my aunt’s café. There I had my first obsession with transmitting thoughts through electromagnetism. I tried to stay away from wires and electrical appliances, so that people couldn’t read my thoughts. However, my imagination went wild and conversation cliques were created in my head. One of them was a Greek punk rock band that was looking for a guitarist and I was one of their possibilities. After they approved of me, we arranged a welcoming meeting at Syntagma square. The only problem was that I drank the beers alone because nobody showed up. On returning home, I started to believe that in the apartment building across the street, some guys had received my frequency and were bullying me without reason…So I went and rang their bell…An elderly women came to the door and told me she lived there alone…and it would be better if they didn’t bother her at night. Unsolved police cases and satellite spying became obsessions that I had to solve. I felt really confused as I couldn’t untangle my thoughts.  Despite being tired from all that, I continued creating conversations in my mind, as a need for communication. I was always  thinking of people that I admired and wanted to be like and to reach...Now that the brutality of post-adolescence has passed, I try to remember my mistakes and to explain my thoughts logically.”

That  was Garsos’ story.

After the conversation we had, I gradually realized that at least part of Communication was a creation of my imagination. I was also led to this conclusion, by Alice D’s coming, at some point, in my head. She came to me and explained that all that world I had created with the Messiahs, the devils, the conspiracies and the Annas was not real. It was a creation of my mind.

-So, you aren’t real either, I said to her.

-No, I’m real. I exist in here for some reason that I can’t explain it and I can communicate with you in this way. Through my thoughts.

-You mean all that epic stuff we experienced wasn’t real?

-Yes, and the reason I’m here is that I saw it all happening in your head and I was impressed by the way your brain works.

-Go away, you’re not real, you’re a voice!

-Very well…if you ever want to talk to me, you know how.

-Go away, I said crying.

All my internal world had  fallen apart. Without realizing it, I had created a world of illusions inside my head which was far from reality.

The next four years, I spoke on and off  to voices while at the same time I was troubled by all the difficult experiences I had had in prison as well as all those I had had in my head before. At some point, I opened a shop to occupy myself. We appealed in court and the sentence was reduced… The problem with schizophrenia is that although what you experience is not real, you experience it like reality. Like you really lived it. So, I was talking to various girls inside my head like Juno, who is an upcoming Hollywood star, Ioanna, who actually has another name, but I had fallen in love with her in a Deftones gig, Nora and Danae, who I knew weren’t real people, but who were unbelievably helpful…At some point though, I realized that it was all a creation in my head. Now, I am struggling to find my torn apart self.

When you have schizophrenia, the best and the worst scenarios you have in your head come to life. You’re always living in extreme conditions, whether you like it or not. I hope you never live it. See you around…

Thanks list:Dad, Mom, Brother, Friends, the girls who took place in the book and my two friends in prison Giorgos and Yannis.

ALL REAL CHARACTERS IN THE BOOK ARE FICTIONAL!

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