Surrender Your Sanity

Surrender your sanity. Some times it’s best to just give it up.
         That’s what I did. I gave up my sane ideals and thoughts. And now I can finally live clearly. Why? Because what I thought to be sane things turned out to be totally crazy.
         While I was “sane”, I killed a man. He stole my girlfriend from me, the girlfriend who had told me I was her only man. And I mean stole. He didn’t win her over, didn’t charm her away like some Pied Piper of women. He tricked her away and locked her up.
         She cried from her room, but no one knew she was there. No one but the three of us—her, me, and the man, whose name was Martin.
         I managed to sneak to that house late one night, and gently throw a rock at her window. As quietly as the leaves rustling in the trees and as gently as the breeze that rustled them, she cracked open the window and glanced down. Her gorgeous hair framed her even more gorgeous face. She smiled. It was the best smile she had, but it was fragmented, sad, broken.
         “Jackie,” I quietly called to her. “I’ll get you out. I will.”
         “Les,” she replied, in a voice that sounded like a song with every word she spoke, “Don’t worry. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
         “Jaclyn, I can’t leave you up there, locked away for him.”
         “Leslie, I—“
         She was interrupted by the bang of the front door. Martin snarled, revealing a few of his many yellowed teeth. The fury in his eyes was as red hot as coals, in contrast to the cold metal of his pistol, made colder by the moonlight. “She’s mine, boy. Get off of my lawn or die!” He glared up at his captive. “And you, go back inside and lock that window, or you won’t eat nothing for the next week!”
         I stared him down. I had no weapon, but I couldn’t leave, not while Jaclyn was still in his—possession. To him she was not a person but a pet. He didn’t love her.
         I did. And I was prepared to die for it.
         Jackie didn’t close her window. “I won’t leave you, Les. I’m right here.”
         Martin made a sound that was almost like a growling coyote. “You get back inside!”
         She didn’t, of course, but this distraction gave me just enough time to attack. I grabbed his throat and threw him to the ground, wrenching the pistol away from him, and standing up to look down upon my enemy.
         He no longer seemed big or tough, but small and vulnerable. I had the pistol pointed at his head.
         “Please, don’t shoot me! Spare me!” Martin gave me a pitiful look, but I felt no pity. The look came from eyes of a snake. I think that eyes really are the windows to the soul.
         The windows I gazed through gave me nothing but a pitch black, hollow image of a soulless man. I shot him, and there he died.
         I dashed up the stairs, grabbed the key by the door, and let my love free. I carried her out of there, her smile finally warm again, her eyes a portal to a deep, colorful world where birds sang and flowers bloomed.
         The cops found me and charged me with the murder of one Mr. Martin Gringe. At the hearing I plead self-defense, and Jaclyn testified in my favor. It was up to the jury.
         The jury was heartless. The word “guilty” fell from their lips and hung in the air, thickening it like extreme humidity. I couldn’t hear anything but buzzing traces of words after that. The courtroom was a blur. I didn’t pass out, but I still slipped out of conscious thought for a moment.
         When I slipped back into it, I was being led away and was already halfway out of the courtroom. The first thing I heard clearly was Jackie, screaming my name. I made the mistake of turning back to look at her.
         The look of grief on her face, accompanied by the rolling rivers of tears, sent a jolt through my chest. It was like running into an electric fence over, and over, and over.
         Horror filled me as the full effect of what had happened hit. I had saved the girl from the bad guy, but, unlike the brave movie heroes, there was no happy, justice-filled ending. There was me, unjustly going to jail for up to a quarter of a century because the jury couldn’t accept self-defense and didn’t believe Jaclyn’s story.
         They didn’t want to believe that a man could lock up an innocent woman for his amusement, and I wouldn’t have blamed them if it hadn’t sent me to prison.
         But, I decided to be the epitome of good behavior, to be as gentlemanly inside those stone walls as I had been outside.
         The warden knew I was innocent. “I just feel it, Cid. After all these years, I can sense a lie, no matter how clever. You’re telling the truth.”
         He called me Cid because he liked nicknames. He liked me from the word go. “Boy, you’re proof that chivalry isn’t dead. Yep, chivalry isn’t dead.” That led to him calling me C.I.D., which just turned into Cid.
         It was good, because the inmates started calling me Cid too. It was easier to get by in a prison with a name like Cid instead of Leslie.
         And it helped that Jackie would visit me. “Babe, once you’re out of here, we’ll live a wonderful life together. We’ll get married, have a few kids, and forget this whole mess. I mean, you’re racking up major good-behavior points, according to the warden.” She smiled at the one way mirror and nodded at him. I knew he nodded back, even though I couldn’t see him.
         She visited weekly. That slacked off to every two weeks, then once a month…and then I barely saw her.
         Last time she came, I knew it was over. She smelled different, and it wasn’t a new perfume. It was a man’s cologne. She was dressed in new fashions, including a fur shawl and little fur hat.
         “Les,” she sighed, “I found someone else. Someone who’s there for me when I call. Someone who I can be with for hours at a time. Someone who’s not in prison.”
         I couldn’t look angry, just sad. “Someone who saved you from Martin Gringe?”
         She didn’t answer. She got up and left, shaking her head as her stilettos clicked against the cement floor.
         She was gone, gone from my life. Why? Because I was in prison and couldn’t be there for her. But I was in prison because the jury didn’t believe us. But I had to be put in front of that jury because I saved her in the name of love.
         So, through a chain of events, she left me because I loved her. This realization struck me like a kick to the stomach. Nothing made sense anymore. But the more I thought, the more I realized that nothing had made that much sense ever.
         That’s when it became clear. The “sane” world was nuts. I didn’t want to be a part of it any longer.
         And that’s when I surrendered my sanity. I’m not writing this from the prison, but a mental institution, which is fine with me. It’s nice here. It’s full of people who have had similar epiphanies to mine, and all realized: Sometimes it’s best to just give it up.