1969. It was the year of Manson's helter-skelter, the year we put a man on the moon, and the year two strangers watched the world end in a mushroom cloud of nuclear war.
1966. This was a much better year. Well, for everyone except twenty-two-year-ol...
Maybe it's because most people think of sunny California and can't imagine a palm tree with a dusting of fresh powder, but it does happen.
It's the same with isolated high-altitude psychosis. Now, this is just a fancy word for when someone climbs three thousand meters above sea level and meets a man named John.
John is a swell guy. He has a bad haircut, shows you pictures of his family, offers words of encouragement, and then he vanishes without a trace. Because John was never actually there to begin with. Most people mistakenly misdiagnose this "mountain madness" as mere altitude sickness or write it off as a myth altogether, but it does happen.
Sure, they're both rare and in high elevations, but the point is there are always ways to explain why things happen; even if people think they're impossible.
Like how in 1949 San Pedro had six inches of snow that lasted for 3 days, how some people hear voices while scaling Everest, and how I saw a man in my dreams who happened to be real.
I know I seem crazy, and that's because I am.
Crazy and currently being strapped to a bed with medical restraints by nurses who look at my chart with soft eyes. I don't know if they realize the restraints are unnecessary or if it's only protocol, but then again what even is protocol in this situation. As the cushioned leather pinches my skin, I wonder what kind of damage they really think I could do. Because as much as I'd love to fight my way through a six-bodied nursing staff, some security guards, and run screaming through the hospital in a paper gown, realistically I can barely lift a finger.
In fact, my body's been nothing more than a breathing medical dummy for the past three days. The only things I can really control now are my senses and my mind, and by the end of the day I won't even have those. After today, I'll officially lose everything that makes me, well me.
As they finish securing me to the hospital bed I get a glimpse of the clipboard and my final diagnosis. It's written out in blotchy thick letters and I find some comfort in knowing that they finally settled on schizophrenia as the resting cause for my restless insanity. At least with the misdiagnosis I'll keep him safe. Like a natural instinct or a defense mechanism, images of him invade my mind. For an instance I see his crooked nose, the funny way his ears stick out from his side cap, and the frown lines that form when he's cooking.
