Just Like James Dean

My name is Castiel Novak and Im seventeen years old.
My name is Castiel Novak, and I live In California.
My name is Castiel Novak, and I have a home.
My name is Castiel Novak and I suffer from dissociative amnesia.

A mantra he had repeated to himself in hushed tones with his early development behavioral psychologist since as far as he could remember  for whenever he woke up clueless from a fit, or in a worst case scenario, a hospital.

The mantra had nagged its way into his head through the early morning therapy sessions and bothered him through more nights he could remember.

To begin with, even at the age of five Castiel never liked the semantics of what this saying implied, since this was his only way of making a first impression. To say that Castiel suffered from dissociative amnesia meant that he was a victim to his own subconscious - letting it control every word, every action. When in all honestly he'd rather die then let anything as trivial as forgetting who he is for a couple moments in time ruin who he was as a person.

But peaking at the age of ten, Castiel never really knew what his self meant anymore. Soon the his identity became a dot of ink traveling through a sea like glass of water. Soon amnesia was not a side effect but a crucial ingredient to Castiel. Just like his brain and lungs were, they made about the same contribution to his personality as any other hereditary or environmental factor ever would.

You see, its that we as humans tend to think of mental illness as this strange ultimatum. You either die sick or try your damned hardest to assimilate to a normal youve never felt in the first place. When really, you never thought you were sick in the first place since you never knew what healthy felt like. But for Castiel, at least in his opinion, the  situation just seemed drastically overrated on various degrees of unnecessary.

He knew very well what sanity felt like, and knew the difference between that and loosing his high. But still, it never seemed to help with his perception of what was reality to the doctors and fiction in Castiels head.

Therapists and just doctors alike loved to repeat again and again like broken records of how Castiel had been a "unique case", a miraculous recovery that had to be treated delicately.

One could use many words to describe Castiel; an angsty teenager with barely any friends that smoked all day and listened to an unlimited amount of The Smiths. And delicate was not one of them.

Maybe thats why why he lays on carpeted floor, having a staring matches with the ceiling - examining each lump and crack that the posters wouldn't cover. He  liked to imagine what it would look like if the ceiling werent there - maybe it caved in in a freak accident, maybe a tornado. If he could at any moment's time, lay on the floor and graze the stars with his fingertips. It felt like a waste of time - sitting here, in a four-wall bedroom listening to Radiohead merely thinking, when he could be reaching through the sky.

Yet without fault, guilt and everything, he did this everyday after taking his meds. They made him anxious and sleepy all at the same time. The combination of chemicals rushing through his veins always left him there in the same place; laying down, roaming through memories that are far overtold.

His hands were folded on my stomach as he closed his eyes, concentrating on the mellow music. The strums of the guitar and the slow melodious beat were sometimes the only thing that could slow down the pace of the spinning until it was a light haze.

At first his father acted concerned of this daily ritual, like he could ever be while hes leaving  on his famous month long "business trips". Laying on the floor at the exact same time playing the exact same song every single day as if it were the answer to all of his prayers. After days - or rather hours -  of useless and unenthusiastic coaxing, he finally gave up and let Castiel to what he does best: absolutely nothing.