America the Poor: A Wanderers Tale, Vol Two

Chapter 25: A House of cards, and a well deserved beating

Since my choices never really existed in the first place, I had to keep taking my prescribed medications. Never a happy or willing event, but the alternative was something far worse. Their purpose was to alter my brain chemistry, but it was my body that suffered the real consequences. My limbs and coordination paid the price, and my brain had no pain, just fog and a lack of clarity. I used my will to force my way through the fog when needed, but it was so easy just to sit back, and let the fog come rolling in. It became comfortable, and there lies the insidiousness of what they were doing to me.

Yes, resistance was possible, but why even bother, when I could lay back in a mental bean bag chair and just let it all pass? Why go through the effort of ever resisting at all? Compliance was the very definition of comfort and laziness.

Is that a fault of our kind, part of the human condition, or my own weakness? I didn't wonder back then, but I consider it now. Is laziness part of what we are as a species?

Apathy makes things so much simpler. "Go along to get along" is the old saying, and how right it is. Comfort goes with the flow, it takes effort to fight and resist the direction of the river. So easy to sit back, and let it all roll over us, and just go along.

So I started following the flow of the river I was drowning in, and tried to forget the old me, the one who would fight, struggle, and feel pain because of my own resistance. I tried, more and more, to become the vegetable that they were trying to create. That was what they wanted, so that's what I was going to do, just lay back and pass the time like a good peaceful young boy that they were attempting to create.

However, peace wasn't in my past, and neither was it in my future, regardless of my own efforts, or lack of.

I started joining the small groups that usually sat around playing cards. At any time of day or evening (before mandatory bedtime obviously) a game was going on in the dayroom at one of the plastic round tables, there were a few of those. Sometimes, multiple games would be happening. Generally one had only to either join when they began, or wait for a loser to leave (quite often).

Up to this point in my life, I wasn't familiar with card games either, not even the simplest ones. I never had a need for them before, although I did become quite the expert later in life. For then, I was learning the best I could. I started with a kids game, which used its own deck.

This game was called UNO, and was the very first card game I ever played there. It was a strange yet colorful game. I explained in earlier chapters our own version and take on the rules of the game. Every game, we made our own, and it kept things quite interesting, at least as much as we could make it that way.. When you lose, you lose big.

Imagine sitting there, and placing draw 4's around the board, as well as your opponents, and draw 2's counted as well, and being the recipient of drawing 48 cards as the highly unlucky one, with no recourse.

This happened quite often. We were living in the extremes of insanity, and so all the games we partook in were equally played in the same light, to their insane fringes. Games of Uno usually ended spectacularly, and to great laughs, because we had nothing else to do, or to even live for. Mediocrity was our realm now, since nothing else was available. Our pleasures and distractions were simple, as they had to be. Our environment was controlled, and the rules we had to follow were many.

I learned all the card games, as the weeks went on. My shakes continued, but within a few weeks, they lessened. Apparently, they had halved my allotted doses, to see what would happen. I was no better than a sad trapped guinea pig, subject to their whims and experiments. Maybe even less, since guinea pigs have actual value as beloved pets, I had none.

Time passed, I learned many other card based games, besides Uno obviously. Starting with Hearts, Spades, Scat, Rummy, etc. I ran the gamut of choices, and I learned and did my best. Cards became my entire existence for a period of time. A sad existence, doing hardcore shakes during dressing and undressing for the day, pitiful meals, and cards for the rest of the time.