I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
~ Edgar Allen Poe
The mind is a strange thing. It sometimes puts up the seductress act, and stealthily takes you up the cliff. Once up there, she tells you, that you are an absurd fool to have believed her. ‘You are tempted way too easily!’ She comes appallingly closer; you feel dreadfully cold; she winks at you, and pokes at your chest with a finger. You feel weightless all of a sudden, and realize that you are falling down, down, down…
When my best friend confesses to me that he has been diagnosed as having 'a few probs with his mind', I look at him straight in the eye, and sigh. ‘So do I,’ I nod, ‘sanity is a relative thing.’ I tell him not to believe a word of what the shrinks say. Medication however does not sooth him down; he increasingly becomes uneasy with himself. There is nothing much I can do, except stay close to him. I tell him I see crazy people all around me all the time. I look up crappy jokes from the internet for routine evening recitals. Whisper to him that I keep talking to 'my sound within', and that I have nicknamed my Samsung mouse Chibaaca. Chatter non-stop about things that I don’t have a clue about. Hold him tight and whisper that ‘I am right here.’ Prance around and kick up a fuss for no absolute reason at all. Display my ‘Insanity Test results’ wherein I have scored a whopping 14%. He remains apathetic. It’s as if I have ceased to exist.
The worst of my days have had his voice from the other end of the phone, asking me to hang on right there; not to give up on myself. The best of my days have had his arm around me; the taps on my shoulder are all too familiar. I never fear for a moment, of losing him. The rebound is inevitable. I wait. For I know, he is as sane as me. Perhaps… saner.
