“I have something for you to remember me by,” said Tim.
He held a little foam Hippo – the lone play animal supplied by the loonybin to patients in need.
It was brand new – just as every Hippo looked – and I wondered why he’d chosen something seemingly impersonal in comparison to his other, odd gifts.
However, what he did next made his hippo – my hippo – absolutely ideal. To people like Tim and I, that is.
For, to my astonishment, he casually took the toy in his hands, twisted, and ripped it cleanly in two.
He ripped off its head, which he gave to me, whilst he kept the body.
I will never get rid of that mutilated, foam hippo head. For he understood what no one else had ever come near.
In this way – perhaps – Tim and I became synonyms. Synonyms for what ignorant perceptions would later christen ******, or merely, crazy (the latter - coined by those who remain too depressingly colloquial to invent unfounded diagnoses).
These epithets, catalyzed post personifying such societal taboos as Tim or I committed, follow me still, and have yet to disperse.
A criticaster disaster, personified.
Yes; in this way – Tim and I became synonymously insane.
•
Chapman University destroyed my life.
(Edited out(?): My failed death-wish, and subsequent involuntary hospitalization, would render malicious and ignorant individuals to alienate and shun my entire existence. My former allies, friends, and peers - those who had "loved" and "supported" me - would soon slander and sabotage me simply to maintain their own fabricated facades.
Associating with someone who failed at suicide is a social deathwish, apparently; yet, if I'd succeeded, they'd lament and mourn their "loss.")
(All poems original Copyright of Eva Denali Will © 2015, 2016)