I used to talk to myself.

I used to talk to myself. I used to be able to maintain entire conversations with myself, which only proves how self centered I can be, most of the time it is the only thing that interests me, which is pretty apparent since now I am writing about me. Anyway, I believe that talking to myself was my only specific crazy person symptom. It was just lately that I began listening to someone else. This turned out to be much more fascinating than anything that I could tell myself. It is also extremely difficult to sit through. Now I realize that being insane was just the easy way out of my own average life. I have always been proud of my emotional problems, always thought they made me special, different. The truth is that I have never found something about me that sets me apart, except being sick. And I am. For so long I hid behind it, used it as an excuse to get out of any uncomfortable situation. But now I am completely exhausted. I spent all my creative energy in being ill, either concealing it, or proving it. So today, before I sat for hours with my closest friend, my favorite person in the entire chaos that my life has become, who I'd not seen or talked to in years, I made a decision. I am going to step outside of my head. I will let him give me a complete picture of who I am, who we are together, and then throw away everything I have tried to portray of me before today.
I started out by simply stating the obvious. I told him that I used to be unhappy. And immediately my eyes were invaded by tears, but I hold them in, I never cry anymore. I have lost the ability to let my emotions show through anything other than words. I explained that I am tired of seeing myself through the eyes of psychiatric diagnosis or my own distorted image of who I am. I confessed, even though this was not the original plan, that I felt the need of finding myself through him. As soon as I uttered that final sentence, I expected a violent reaction fallowed by a lecture on being yourself without the help of others, and not caring about what others think of you. Instead he seemed unmoved by the admission. He simply looked into my eyes and said you’ve never been unhappy, you just refused to be happy. Which granted, as a teenager is a feature that has a certain charm, you were never boring, except you never seemed to grow out of it, even when all of us that know and love you did. I knew that it was time to stop trying to cut in the conversation and to truly begin to listen. I did not speak; I held his hand and tried to take in reality without running for cover inside myself.
Then, after the drugs, both the recreational and those that had been handed out by the shrink, you became an artificial happy person, you behaved as if you were following the script of the play you thought best represented what a normal healthy person was like. Yes, you tried. However you still knew that everyone could see what was haunting you. And it was not the illness, it was that you had not let go of it. You were at all times aware of your falseness, and you enjoyed getting caught.
I did, I felt pleasure in playing a part and being told just how faithfully it was being performed, and the adjustments that needed to be made. I felt the need to lie about the mundane, to prove to myself just how deceiving I could be, in case one day there was the need to be misleading about a relevant fact. But none of it was called for.
The irony in you is that you were brutally honest with everyone else about their lives. We all ran to you seeking counsel, knowing that you’d be there for us, wise beyond your years. But no one wanted to hear about your crap because there would never be any advice from any of us, and you knew it. You could help anyone and everyone, but no one was able, (or good enough, in your eyes) to help you. You made your problems in such a way that there was no helping you, and that was what kept you satisfied. He was done, and there was nothing else to say. I could not argue with the way he saw me, not because it was absolutely accurate but because it was just what he saw. I did not find who I am in his words, and this was not the beginning of the rest of my life. I probably won’t for a long time. We will probably not remain as best friends for the rest of our lives. He gave me the only thing that he could, the truth which was all that I had asked for. I never really wanted to change. I had not realized this until now. I found fulfillment in being unhappy, insane and hopeless. I used drugs and alcohol as a means to act normal, which I never would be sober.
I now understand that my unhappiness, illness, or whatever you want to call it is not the trade for which I hope to stand out for. I can’t define or explain what this means. Maybe I finally saw myself through someone else’s eyes, maybe I finally grew out of adolescence, or maybe I finally achieved sanity. I don’t really believe so; I think I just finally found love and hope much more endearing than mental illness.