The doctors give me numbers and statistics all the time, but I can never help feeling that no one else has to live like I do. It’s the feeling of self-betrayal that I can’t get over, the feeling that my view of the world is always tinted by something that I can’t get rid of, something that I can’t get rid of because it’s as much a part of how I perceive the world as my eyes or my hands.

When my mom told me that Phoebe ended up in the hospital after having some sort of an episode, I assumed she thought that I would take it better than she had or than anyone else had, just because I’ve been living with this shit all my life. Well, different shit, but still shit. How could I take it better, though? I know what she’ll have to live with. What she’s been living with, only it’s just now that the betrayal comes out.

And then the fact that it’s Phoebe, the girl who’s been in my life for as long as I’ve been alive, the daughter of my mom’s best friend, the one who probably knew about me before I even caught on. The one who sits on the phone and just talks in an effort to make me feel better. The one who buys me stuffed animal cats to match the ones in my paintings.

My mom thinks she’s my girlfriend, and I feel obligated to go along with it just because I can’t tell her that I can’t get close to anyone else. I don’t want to put anyone else through my life. A mother would never want to hear that about her son, that her child is only ever happy because of the chemical changes in his head, that he doesn’t feel okay loving people, because what if they loved him back? No doctor would prescribe meds for someone in love with me, but she would need them.

But Phoebe and I, we’re siblings and we’re best friends, we’ve always been. I feel bad, now. I never noticed anything was wrong. She always notices for me; maybe it’s just the nature of the two, that one is so easily recognizable and the other only shows up in dreams and flickers that you ignore as just part of life. Should I have known? Could I have?

I’m laying on my bed now, staring at the sky through the window. It’s sunny. It’s the kind of day that half the time, I’d have to be a part of. I’d be out painting, especially now, late in the afternoon, when the shadows fall perfectly to make even more shades than the sun provides. I love the transitions, the late afternoons and early mornings – they remind me that there isn’t just a vacuum between light and dark, day and night. It’s easy for me to forget that.

Right now, though, I don’t have the energy, the desire to go be a part of the day. I paint those landscapes and I try to imagine myself in transition, in between two extremes, but right now it’s too far into night for me.