All the places we wanted to go

All the places we wanted to go

(A small drab office, a huge leather chair stands out behind a laminated desk cluttered with papers and pens. A bad faux impressionist painting hangs crooked off the wall adjacent to the door. A large fake tree stands in the far corner, it’s waxy leaves touches the back of one of the two seats sitting off-centre to the stage. Both chairs are two feet away from the desk.

The doctor and the boy sit opposite each other.)

Doc: So tell me why we’re here today.
Boy: Well to be honest, I’ve got a referral here from my doctor and I’m worried I might be bipolar or maybe my meds have been making me bipolar, I don’t know. (Leans in to pass a folded sheet across the desk. Realizing the distance, he stands up and drops it on the desk and nervously rushes to sit back down.)
(Doc unfolds and looks over the piece of paper, nodding as darting eyes skim it over.)
Doc: Well, how can I help?
Boy: Well... (mimics Doc’s tone) I was hoping to finally getting an answer. Yeah that would be great. (Mutters something unheard)
Doc: (chuckles) well then, why do you think you’re manic depressive?
Boy: Um... I’ve just been having these wild mood swings. Not like angry explosive rage or anything like that but just extreme ups and downs.
Doc: Meaning?
Boy: Well, just happy and sad coming in quick succession. Hourly sometimes. And yes, I do realize that my medication does have manic episodes as a side-effect but I’ve been on it for over two years now and I was hoping... I don’t know.
Doc: Yes, this sounds worrisome.
Boy: To be honest, the more I think about it the more it seems to make sense. I mean, these up and down periods seem to explain a lot.
Doc: Well according to this referral there’s been cases of severe substance abuse, even addiction and also drinking. Which I’m guessing is still continuing?
Boy: Yeah a bit, but that’s before. I’m totally clean now and I’m not going to lie, I still drink. Not to the degree I was before. I don’t like the drinking but these episodes of soaring highs and crushing lows seem to have been occurring for as long as I can remember.
Doc: Really?
Boy: Yeah, I was even talking to my friend Francesca the other day. I’ve known her for years now, we’re really close and she told me she could’ve guessed it.
(Silence, Doc leans back on the massive chair.)
Boy: I know I’m not exactly in line to win Sanest Person of the Year or well ever but I feel that– it’s not a justification. Nothing can justify all that coke and e and whatnot- all those days when I’d damn near put anything but drain cleaner in my body, the only diagnosis so far as been social anxiety and depression... but I don’t know. The meds should’ve corrected that by now. I know the prior “substance abuse” surely doesn’t help but these self-destructive depths to deluded grandeur– it just all seems to add up is all I’m saying.
Doc: Well, tell me about these manic episodes.
Boy: I guess I never really noticed it before. I was just way too glad to get out that sunken hole. You know, the big sadness. But then I’d go off and do something crazy and next thing I know not only am I in trouble but I feel like I’ve fallen to a brand new low. The hole just keeps getting bigger.
Doc: All these do correlate with depressive episodes–
Boy: Yes but I... I hear voices. I guess I’ve always had but I just learnt to ignore them.
Doc: What do you mean you hear voices?
Boy: Uh... they...
Doc: Like what do they say?
Boy: Insults, always insults. I feel so paranoid like when I’m walking down a street and I see a group of people laughing– I automatically assume they’re talking about me. Sometimes I just catch these bits of conversations, wayward words and I string them into these–
Doc: Well–
Boy: No, you don’t understand they’re like these little hooks and they claw into me.
Doc: Do you see these hooks?
Boy: (exhales in frustration) No but well my friend Francesca has anxiety too. Maybe we’re just paranoid but she has anxiety too and she tells me it happens to her too. Not that she’s bipolar or anything else but I guess what I’m just trying to say is–
Doc: Tell me about this friend.
Boy: I’m sorry?
Doc: Well she sounds like an important figure in your life. For you to take her opinions so authoritatively.
Boy: Ha, you make it sound like she’s running my life. Well let me start off by saying no. She’s not the voice in my head telling me to burn, burn everything.
Doc: Well I never reall–
Boy: She’s my friend. One of the best. We met in highschool in this rehab like program.
Doc: Rehab?
Boy: Oh it’s a long story.
Doc: Well I’d like to hear more about this friend. It’s important to have a good support system.
Boy: She’s not a system and lately... but it doesn’t matter.

In highschool we had these “supposedly” secret surveys about teenage deviancy– my words of course. They asked all these crazy questions about whether we cut ourselves, burned things for fun, sniffed glue, or had frequent thoughts about murdering our parents and crazy stuff like that. Since we –Fran and I– thought it was anonymous we just checked off the craziest answers for kicks but it turned out that there was a bar code in the back and they recorded who got which papers. We weren’t the only ones who took it for a laugh but when they approached us about this rehab like counseling: we did the math and figured we’d miss class, so we took it.

I don’t know, I don’t think we even knew each other before then. Just our names from some mutual classes. I really have no clue how we really met, all I remember was some stupid test they made us do to teach us one of those heart warming after-school special lessons. They separated us into two groups, one willing to take the hard road and us, the ones who took the easy route. We just sat around eating soda crackers and water, while the other group had to find flags in the parking lot. It was the suburbs too so trust me, LOTS of cars. Anyways, they ended up getting juice, pop, cookies, and ice cream and all but I don’t know. I think I was climbing rope and making my own fun as always and we just started talking.

Highschool was enough of an obstacle course, not even including the social aspect but I guess we hung around more after that because we never really fit into one specific group. I was the weird kid always getting into trouble; too crazy for the geeks, too scrawny for the jocks. She was really into Heavy Metal with the spiky leather jacket and all but wasn’t a complete malcontent I guess but um yeah. We became quick friends.

Throughout it all, even after I got in trouble for having weapons at school and everyone thought I was Columbine material or when I got so messed up on drugs. She... She was there. It wasn’t like she didn’t mind, she did care. I guess she just believed in me, in that Oprah way or something. She just didn’t budge when I pushed and shoved cause I was stupid, young, and self-destructive. I mean it’s not like she was a pillar herself, highschool being situated during adolescence is like letting Michael Jackson become a Scout Leader. You know, a bad idea.

After highschool, which I somehow made it out alive, we both got into university but she decided to take a year off before. Something I wasn’t exactly supportive of at the time- mostly because the scene of my teenage delinquency acting as some kind of home, didn’t quite make sense to me. But after a horrible first year, I decided to take a year off. And during the summer, we reconnected before she would go off to her first year. We were actually closer than ever; comfortable silence, finishing each others sentences and everything. Maybe it was the way I finally came out and she was one of the people who really didn’t care and stayed around. I don’t know.

Doc: So then what’s wrong now?
Boy: Nothing’s wrong now. She’s in Peterborough because she goes to Trent.
Doc: She’s doing some summer courses there?
Boy: No but she’s working. She really likes it there, she has her own place, and to be honest she almost gets this glint in her eye when she says she’s bored of the city and wants to stay there.
Doc: Glint?
Boy: I guess we don’t talk as much as before but that’s the way it goes sometimes. I just, I just–
Doc: What?
Boy: I don’t know. We grew up... (eyes askew searching to match the words with the nostalgic rush) we shared this mutual hatred over the suburbs. We would always run off to the subway and away to the city. The city just... the subway, the towering buildings, that record store at Bathurst and Bloor. I mean, I always knew I was going to live in a city and with this city being such a familiar surrounding I guess... the plans, that image of the future... she was always in it.
Doc: Well friends grow apart after highschool, you know you’re entering adult life and there’s so much ahead for you. In time you’ll–
Boy: She wasn’t just a highschool friend. I told you, we actually got closer, closest after highschool ended. And it’s not that she talks about Peterborough like she’s joined a cult and is about to drink the Kool Aid. She just gets this glint in her eye like she just found the long-lost piece of the puzzle and suddenly everything fits with the picture complete. Like marriage and kids and the fucking dog, all in this historic looking house in Peterborough. (His voice rises then falls at the end.)

And we’re not that far apart. She’s still nine numbers away, just as I’m nine numbers away too. We can still call each other and we can still talk about anything and everything. So it’s not just that, it’s just... (Voice trails off as eyes water. With a hand feeling the stubble on his chin, the boy is suddenly at a lost for words.)

Doc: What?
Boy: In a lot of ways I’m proud of her. (Leans in, fickle hands can’t sit still.) She’s found her place. She went out in the world and found a piece of it to call her own (spoken loud in false grandeur.) She found out where she fits in and she found a place in the world that fits in with her. (Words come out meekly like tears rolling down a face.)
Doc: And do you resent her for that?
Boy: Fuck no, how can you say that? I’m proud of her, I love her. I guess I thought I’d always be there with her when that happened. Even if it still hasn’t happened to me. I love her, she’s one of my best friends. She’ll always be a part of my life even if in the past tense.
Doc: So what’s wrong with that?
Boy: I don’t know, last summer before she returned to school for her second year. Things, well things were kind of different.
Doc: How so?
Boy: Well, she seemed kind of pissy. Not like women hormone stuff but just always pissy with me.
Doc: And why do you think that was?
Boy: Well the drinking didn’t help. She seemed more annoyed than usual. We’d still talk and do stuff but she was just different.
Doc: Different how?
Boy: Well we’d still do stuff together but she just seemed... on edge I guess? I mean before we’d always do this meaningless banter routine or go on and on about bad jokes like “what do you want to do?” “Well I was planning on hijacking a plane and slamming it into the World Trade Center but gosh someone already did that.” or “If I sniffed an entire pound of cocaine and not die, would I be a pound heavier?” You know stuff like that but during that summer… I don’t know. She just seemed either bored or completely disinterested.
Doc: Why do you think that is?
Boy: I don’t know, it’s because she found her place in the world.
Doc: Well what does that mean?
Boy: She learnt how to be comfortable in her own skin and me walking around downtown with a large glass bottle in hand, contents hidden by a tightly wrapped paper bag didn’t fit into that. I guess she figured it out. That thing we’re supposed to figure out “as we enter adulthood” (said with eyes wide) or whatever. All those slurred words and wispy fluttering conversations no longer interested her I guess. I know I’m not the easiest guy to get along with, I mean even with the mood swings but I always thought she’d get it. Get me.

Things finally came to a head one night, it wasn’t dramatic or anything like that. It was more of a whimper which magnified into this massive tide… I always mixed my metaphors and she never really minded. And here I was swallowing every chance to really talk about it. We were at some bar in the Village and she told me, she couldn’t get drunk with me cause she was worried something bad might happened. Like she’d wake up in a crack den or something. Like I would let that happen, I know things can get wild with me but I would never let her get involved in that kind of shit and... And instead she made me feel like this- this whole self-destructive indulgence, this nothing sacred sarcasm had gotten old and dangerous to her, in the blink of an eye.

I felt like that old janitor creepily asking teen girls where the cool parties were. Like that golden moment between us passed by and now... now I’m beneath her. Not in that mean and vindictive way. But like the older brother who still lives in the basement of their parents house. An embarrassment, a fossil of some other time. Parachute pants. I don’t know.
Doc: If Fran were here right now, what would you want to say to her?
Boy: I think it’s obvious. I’d love to call her up and just tell her, straight out: I’m ok. I’m ok and I’ve figured things out too. But I’m not and I have in a way but still haven’t at the same time.

So now I’m just in this vicious cycle of frustration. Staring at the cell phone, going to Sonic Boom to hear a only a solitary stream of clacks of used cds, walking through College and University trying to find the subway station and doing my best not to litter... all of this, the same but not.

It’s just that there’s still all these places you know, all these places, museums, free showings of arty flicks, and all that. All these places I thought we’d go. I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.
(The Doctor finally picks up a pen and a pad of paper.)
Doc: Well I have a chart here that measures the level of “manic-ness” if you will. So let’s go over these and...
Fade.