Challenge #01487-D026: On the Other Side of the Fence
“I have at least 14 bad angles” - Carrie Fisher – @recklessprudence
Carl made a career out of being abnormal. As one of the rare few who could not be cured, he told the jokes than nobody else dared make. Like, “Hey did you hear about the dyslexic biker? He joined Hell’s Angles.” or, “Public transportation is a real pain. You just try catching the sub every day.”
And it worked. People laughed. He earned a living. He kept a home and had what passed for a life. But because his condition was so very rare… certain things just did not exist. Fonts, for instance, that ‘weighed’ the letters into their places and made it easier for him to read anything at all. Those were relics of a bygone era and far more expensive than they had to be.
Amazing how the system could force a person to pay more for something that allegedly nobody wanted. Now there was a joke. Supply and demand. They had the supply, so they could demand what they liked for it. Fonts, reader software, audio books… anything that could make his life a little more tolerable… it cost upwards of five figures. Because his condition was so rare.
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Challenge #01470-D009: Survivor’s Tale
I am mentally ill. I can say that. I am not ashamed of that. I survived that, I’m still surviving it, but bring it on. Better me than you. I don’t want to be a victim.
— Carrie Fisher – @recklessprudence
On the cusp of sleep, I hear voices. Stranger’s voices, almost always. Sometimes, they’re spouting nonsense. I know they’re the firings of my unconscious brain gearing up for a dream. Other times… well…
They’re the voices of people I know, but they’re always things they never said. Always horrible things that they would never say. But when I hear it, it’s so real.
“She’s asleep. Time to kill her,” is always a favourite. I joke to my therapist that my subconscious hates me. Either that, or it was trained from the days when my parents… ha. But then, everyone blames their parents. And everyone thinks their childhood is normal until they go to someone else’s house.
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Challenge #01469-D008: Judge Alike
“I heard someone say once that many of us only seem able to find heaven by backing away from hell. And while the place that I’ve arrived at in my life may not precisely be everyone’s idea of heavenly, I could swear sometimes—if I am quiet enough—I can hear the angels sing.” —Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking (2008) – @recklessprudence
Hell, like Heaven, is relative. One being’s paradise is another’s torture. And for Til, life was that torture. Another day to live was another day fighting her own demons. Resisting the voice in her head that told her to do harm. Struggling to breathe. Struggling to move. Struggling, in general, to live another day as close to the accepted normal as possible.
Struggling, especially, not to kill the acceptably normal people for the things she heard them say. Every. Single. Day.
Of all of them, the politicians on the news were the worst. Their sound bites became the memes in the mouths of the everyday people. People like Til were lazy, unhealthy, diseased. People like Til should be locked up at their own expense for the good of everyone else. People like Til only deserved a life as unpaid test subjects for the good of science, and the rest of the real people.