Squint finally moved back to the small town where he had grown up.  He always knew that someday he would go back to that place.  But he never expected to become so utterly confused by it.

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Chapter 36 – Coming Home

I met my mom and another one of her old friends at the airport.  I was in a bad mood from the flight, but I felt better as soon as I saw them.  My moms friend drove us to the new apartment my mom had rented.  It was in the same neighborhood by the river that I lived in when I was about 3 or 4 years old.  And now we lived across the street from one of my moms other old friends, who had also ran the preschool that I went to back then when I was very little.

We had a big huge window overlooking the river.  And a nice quiet back porch area that my mom made into a garden.  There were blackberry bushes (my favorite), and when we were bored sometimes my mom and I would go for walks by the river beach just like when I was little.  I kept commenting about how it was hard to believe we were really there.  It felt so perfect that it was like a dream.  I was very happy to be back.

But then something started bothering me.  I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was, but it was a strong influence, and soon I began to feel like I was going crazy.  After a while I started hearing voices in my head that were so real, I thought at first that they were coming from the people around me.

For a while my own ideas seemed to be out to get me, and somehow I stopped trusting my thoughts.  I kept trying to use logic to escape the voices in my head, but that didn’t work, and my therapist kept saying that I sounded way too rational to be as crazy as I said I was.  But eventually, even my rationality began to break down.  A funny thing happens when people stop believing their own thoughts, they start acting kind of dumb.  And I was acting like the king of idiots.

In my crazy stupor one time I threw a wild fit about nothing in particular when nobody else was around.  I was yelling and screaming at the air.  Throwing things at the walls, it was really bad.  I just wanted the voices to leave me alone, but the were relentless with the head games they kept playing on me.  After my fit I left the house and just started walking, I didn’t bother to put on any shoes.  I found a van that was stopped on the highway near my house and I knocked on the window to confront them, I thought they might have been the ones beaming the voices into my head with some kind of technology.  But the driver said they had simply fallen asleep and then they drove away.  Walking even farther with nowhere to go, the police eventually stopped me and said that they were concerned about me because my neighbors had called.  We talked for a while and then he admitted that I was the most rational sounding crazy person he had ever met.  He asked if I would mind if he kept an eye on me, and I said that would be alright.  Then he shook my hand and drove away.  After that I realized that I didn’t have anywhere to go, so I turned around and went back home.

My mom was there now, she had gotten back from work to find broken chairs, an overturned kitchen table, and a huge mess.  The police were already there when she arrived.  Later she told me that at first she thought that someone had broken in.  She was very upset with me.  It wasn’t hard for her to convince me to let her drive me to the hospital.

In the emergency room the doctors took blood samples and observed me for a few hours.  Then one of the doctors came in with my mom and said the blood results were back.  My mom sat down as the doctor read a short list of drugs that had showed up in my system.  My mom and I looked at each other, confused.  I had spent all my time with her lately.  When could I have even found the time to get high on drugs?  I sure didn’t know, I didn’t even recognize half the drug names that they were saying.  I asked the doctor what the drugs were supposed to do?  He looked at me suspiciously and asked if I was messing with him.  I said that I had no idea what they were for.

I guess he didn’t believe me because he never did tell me what those drugs were supposed to do.  I wasn’t sure what to think about that.  But I definitely wasn’t a pill popper like he made it sound.  Eventually they let me go home from the hospital.  I tried to figure out how the drugs had gotten into my system, but I just couldn’t understand it.  I wasn’t thinking clearly to begin with though.  Everything in my mind was just kind of a blurry mess.  Sometimes the voices would tell me things like that I was the king of the Illuminati, and other times they would ask me strange and difficult questions about science and ethics.  The voices in my head seemed particularly interested in Zero Point Energy for some reason.  But it always seemed like their main goal was just to drive me absolutely crazy.  The fact that it was an election year didn't help either.  I think I must have voted for cheese or something like that because ever since then the county has been refusing to accept my ballot.

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