When In Doubt, I Ghost Myself
Disappearing Personality Disorder
Long ago, at a family party in Grammy and Grampa’s barn, my brother raised his Pepsi to me and offered a toast, or a roast.
You decide.
What kind of family party? The goodbye kind. I was leaving Maine for Louisiana to go to college.
I sat at the head of the long table, the exact spot where Grampa had sat for his birthday a few months earlier.
But there was a difference between my lawn chair and Grampa’s:
Mine was on the barn floor.
Grampa’s chair had been six feet in the air.
Impossible, I agree.
But with Grampa, anything’s possible.
Because it was his birthday, and because Grampa is Fred Williams, the Lunatic Tom Sawyer of Maine, he’d ordered the construction of a birthday throne. The grandchildren obeyed. We stole four Grecian columns from the garden (they weren’t really Grecian — they were Walmart). We placed a square of thick plywood on top of the columns, then hoisted up Grampa’s lawn chair.
The final touch was Grampa himself.
We braced the stepladder while he climbed. We braced the columns while he stepped onto the platform and enthroned himself.
From way up there, he looked down on his party. He could see everything, including what he still needed to complete the coronation he imagined.
He called for a scepter.
We brought him a bruise-yellow pool noodle. Grammy and Grampa didn’t have a pool, just noodles; that way, the grandchildren could endlessly cane one another and not die.
Next, Grampa called for a crown.
We stole a plastic lid from a coffee can, cut out the middle, the drum part, then frisbeed the golden ring to Grampa. He put it on his head.
From the stratosphere of the barn, he pointed at individuals with the noodle and gave commands:
GRAMPA: Hamburger. Let there be ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, and relish.
GRANDCHILDREN: Your wish, though disgusting, is my command.
GRAMPA: Dress two hot dogs in a likewise manner.
GRANDCHILDREN: Consider it done, my lord.
GRAMPA: I thirst.
GRANDCHILDREN: Pepsi?
GRAMPA: What else?
After dinner, he waved the noodle at gift mountain.
We the grandchildren moved the mountain stone by stone into his hand.
The Opening Ceremony:
Firstly, Grampa scalped the present by removing its sticky-footed bow. He stuck it to his bald head (by the end of the party, he had all the bows on his head, a rainbow crown of horns).
He skinned the present’s box with knives and violence, ignoring the voices crying, “Save the paper!”
He balled up the skin.
Threw it at grandchildren.
We loved catching it.
We loved it best when Grampa’s trash hit an unsuspecting party guest in the head.
Lastly, he opened the present then noodled for another.
Two months later, and six feet under this mad magic, I sat in my lawn chair, sitting low and scalping, skinning, dissecting, studying what my brother, my very own Joe, had just said in my honor.
He meant to be nice. I think. But what he said was a little mysterious. And when there’s a mystery concerning me, I’m usually pretty negative about it.
For example, when I get a headache in a different part of my head than usual, I think, That’s mysterious.
Then I correct myself: It’s not mysterious, it’s cancer.
One of my moles looks molier than usual.
Cancer. I’m riddled with it. I am now more cancer than man.
Someone tells a joke. Everyone gets it but me.
What’s wrong with me?!
That’s easy: early-onset dementia. The doctors missed it because they were distracted by all the cancer.
by author
Joe stood and raised his cup. He pointed the cup at me.
All the signs of an approaching toast.
I wondered what he would say. I wanted it to be good and nice, but our brotherly war had only just ended. It ceased when Joe married, moved away, and we realized our missing each other was far greater than our hatred had ever been.
But still, the peace was recent, the ground still hissing hot, still soft. The kickstand of your bike would sink in bike deep.
Joe raised that cup and said stuff I don’t remember at all, so it must have been nice.
Then he said the thing I’ll never forget:
“…when Dan is on, there’s no one wilder. No one funnier.”
He said some other things, then ended with, “To Dan!” Everyone echoed him then drank their Pepsi.
Joe sat.
I sat. I mean, I sat lower while my inner self sank at dizzying speeds, examining, analyzing its way into the deeps of Joe’s words…
…no one wilder. No one funnier.
“Wild” and “funny” are the greatest compliments. I also like “animal strong,” “hot as hell,” and “genius,” but those came later. In the beginning, and unceasingly since then, I’ve wanted to be wild and funny. Grampa basically. And I have been…
…when Dan is on…
A mysterious thing to say in a toast.
Smells like cancer.
It metastasized rapidly. In a blink, I knew exactly what kind of cancer I was dealing with:
“When Dan is on” implies there are times when Dan is off. He’s the wildest, the funniest…
But ONLY when he’s on.
Therefore, when he’s off, he must be…
boring
tame
empty
dim
dumb
dull
and
worthless
When he’s on, his chair is in the air.
When he’s off, he’s six feet under.
If Joe’s work of qualifying his compliment wasn’t cruel, then call it a bold and uncompromising allegiance to the truth.
What I mean is, Joe’s toast was more than a toast: It was a diagnosis and 100% accurate.
His words were bright and light and heavy and true. They were like a painting of sunlight. A painting in a fifty-pound frame. To hang it on the wall, make sure the nail bites into more than sheetrock. You have to sink that fang straight through to the bones of the house.
His painting hangs on the skull wall to this day.
Bright and light: Dan is magic, wild and funny.
Truth: His magics come and go.
When the bubbles in my marrow pop, line up, or join to make a mega-bubble; when the moon hums just right to make my brain stuff wiggle; when my excretion tubes are comfortably empty; when my belly’s full and my thirst slaked, then I’m on: wild and funny.
This is only a guess.
I don’t know if being on has to do with marrow, moons, or tubes.
That’s the point.
I don’t know.
I’ve never known.
Why am I sometimes wild and funny and at other times trapped in my head and drowning?
When I’m on…
I’m a talker.
I have everything to say.
I love the talking and the people I’m talking to.
They laugh. They keep laughing.
My spirit is a full moon that makes their brain stuff wiggle.
I’m mad, fun, funny, crazy.
I dance, climb trees and buildings, steal shopping carks, golf carts, stuff my head in pumpkins, speak in the tongues of crows and feral cats, eat snakes and ostriches, throw knives, leap from gazebos onto nearby tire swings, pick fights with chickens then run from them, scream-laughing, jump in swamps, lead wedding dances, invent dances, trespass on battleships (I’ll explain next week), and Thoreau myself into the woods by shitting in the woods like Tarzan —
I love myself.
When I’m off…
I’m quiet
shy
forgettable
invisible
and so afraid
I hate myself.
“Who invited him?” Him is me, gripping some party snack like it’s my ejection handle in a plane on fire.
by author
This is Off Guy.
When I’m him, I can’t even imagine what it was like to be On Guy.
This is “turtling.” My personality turtles. Something spooks it, and it goes away.
It’s worse than turtling.
My personality goes so far away that I’m only a shell. No meat in the middle. No life. The wind passes through without obstruction and sings a mournful song. Ghost town music. The boom that built this town has fallen silent. All that’s left is room after room storing darkness and dust, boohoo.
That’s what it is: not turtling; It’s ghosting.
I ghost myself.
This used to kill me in high school, back when I went to scary Erskine Academy. It was a small school, but huge to me. We had the biggest freshman class ever: 200 kids. I felt like number two hundred and one, but rounded off for cold math reasons. I was Off Guy at Erskine from 7:30 AM to 3 PM every day.
That’s so many hours of having your true self locked away. So many hours of having a terrible representative of yourself running the show. Off Guy makes a bad impression. Worse, he makes no impression. He slips through the grip of memory without leaving even a momentary trail of warmth.
I remember sitting in cafeteria hell. I attached myself to a kid I knew from elementary school. Not because he was my friend, but because he was low enough on the popularity ladder that he couldn’t reject me.
We the low boys sat in a ring around the high school’s drain.
The lunch crew talked and laughed and strengthened their friendships while I worked through my lunch as slowly as possible, so I’d have something to do.
One day, while I was sitting there, chewing my food at the speed of rust, Kid Elementary started watching me. He had a strange look on his face.
I smiled and said, “What?”
I smiled because I sensed the kid was about to say something mean, and I was afraid.
This is my smile, shown for you. See this in a figurative way. It is my belly, this smile. Exposed.
I am your servant.
He gave my belly a punch: “You’re always just… looking around,” he said. “Kind of creepy. You look this way, then you look that way. Never saying anything. Just watching. Really creeps me out.”
He said it all with a grin and demonstrated what I did, then everyone had a fun moment pretending to be me.
I grinned and shrugged. I laughed at myself. From then on, I tried not to look around as much. I looked down at my food. Hiding in a short tunnel of sight.
I wasn’t trying to be creepy. I was trying to do something with my eyes that looked normal. And I never said anything because you have to be brave to have something to say.
In college, I caught a case of Off Guy that lasted so long I fell into a depression, got on antidepressants and antianxiety meds, and I’ve been on them ever since.
They help.
But they don’t stop the awful back and forth from On Guy to Off Guy and back again. Repeat.
Forever.
This all makes me wonder:
Am I even a real introvert?
I’ve loved introversion ever since I heard of it. I thought it explained me.
Wait, there’s a thing that means other people are painful for you, and talking sometimes feels like bleeding out, from your heart? I think I have that thing. No, I AM THAT THING!
But maybe not.
I might just be a guy who’s scared of people because I don’t know what my personality is going to do around them.
It might ghost.
It does ghost.
by author
Will I have a personality, or will I be the guy who says a bunch of nothing-stuff, words that are place holders for something real that won’t show up?
Dearest On Guy,
Please break through, damn it. Please! I’m begging you. Off Guy blows.
Sincerely,
Dan
P.S. I am dying.
No, I’m not.
I’m dead. A shell isn’t a life. I’m Husk Boy. I’m the dust and darkness. No matter how hard I lean on the saloon piano keys, I can’t make a sound.
The other day, these many thoughts came together so clearly that I could say them all in a single sentence, and I was lucky enough to have my Mindy nearby.
Sadly, I’ve since lost the ability to wrap everything in one sentence, as you can tell. Be kind.
I’ve told Mindy about these things before, of course, but it had never seemed so clear to me, simple, so easy to explain.
We were on our way to Walmart, which is how we date. Since we’re so busy pulling in teacher money, we don’t have the time or capital for opera. Therefore, we elevate shopping trips. We hold hands in the car. We use our hands at Walmart for foraging and pointing out criminal children and future Mad Max extras. We walk through the toy aisle, our big baleen souls combing in all the nostalgia. We smell candles like wine people and marvel at our good taste. And we stop at the marshmallow section, press on all the bags, and sniff, snorting sugar lust.
Anyway, on the car ride to our date, I fashioned one legendary sentence and used it to tell Mindy everything I just told you.
After I was through, she said, “You should be nice to Off Guy. You should be grateful. He’s trying to help.”
I really liked the sound of that. I still like it.
For so many years, I’ve hated Off Guy. He isn’t me. He’s hollow. A loser with nothing to offer, nothing wild to do. He wouldn’t dare. And he’s never funny; he really wouldn’t dare.
But all these years, he’s been there for me. He’s never failed to show up when On Guy abandons us. Off Guy is there immediately to offer his best.
Yet, I haven’t thought to thank him for this.
How come?
Because his best sucks.
He asks questions I don’t want him to ask. They’re stone boring.
His reactions are fake: “Wow!” “Really?!” “That’s so cool!”
His smiles are masks.
His laughter is a death rattle full of terminal secretions.
Everything he does feels and sounds to me like crying.
But does he quit? Nope. No matter how long I need him, he’s there. Being his vacant, dumbass self, standing up for me when I can’t stand. Working hard to seem human enough to make other people comfortable, or tired of me, at the very least.
Tired is way better than scared.
Without Off Guy to fill in for On Guy, I would be scary.
I’d be standing there whimpering, gnashing, mewling, rocking, terrifying.
“Be grateful to Off Guy,” Mindy said. “Thank him.”
Fine…
Thank you, Off Guy.
And also, as I said, it’s still hell with you around.
Hell: when you know you’re more, but you can’t access the more, no matter how hard you try.
It’s terrible to watch your value drop in the mind of another person. Don’t tell me it isn’t possible to watch this. It’s called body language. The slow boiling of the body’s braille bumps. For the eye-fingers. It’s as easy to read as the weather you’re standing in.
But here’s some good news: I received more wisdom recently, enough to give me the strength to rise to the occasion of Mindy’s wisdom.
An Instagram psychologist said a lot of stuff really fast, and I gathered all I could. Unfortunately, I forgot to save the video, and now I can’t find this wizard.
Whoever and wherever you are, thank you.
Here’s what I learned:
You are not your thoughts.
You are the observer of your thoughts.
And being an observer is a powerful thing.
An observer can be a selector, a curator (this painting of sunlight, not that one; the frame’s too heavy). “Yes” to this thought; “No way” to that one.
On Dan is not me.
Off Dan is not me.
I’m the one behind them both.
I am The Observer.
That’s the real me.
Dan proper.
So, the next time I turtle so hard that it’s technically a ghosting, and this will happen, I’m going to try to remember who I am.
ON GUY: Guess who’s the best? On Guy. It’s who Dan really is.
OBSERVER: No. I’m Dan. And sometimes I’m in a bold and funny mood. That’s when you show up. Sometimes I’m in other moods, and it’s okay.
OFF GUY: I’m invisible, worthless, fake, hollow, dead —
OBSERVER: Wrong. You’re helpful. I need you when On Guy’s resting. I need someone to help me be cautious sometimes, and that’s smart. The world is a dangerous place, and people are often untrustworthy. Off Guy, your caution makes sense. You might overdo it at times, but we can work on that. Bottom line, you’re not bad. You’re trying to help, and I thank you.
On Guy and Off Guy bow to The Observer.
He’s a pretty cool guy.
The guy in charge.
The one sitting on high, and so high that he can see it all. He’s got a crown of many colors on his head. That’s his joy, his peace.
His power is this:
He wields the power of “Yes” and “No.”
To gifts, he says, “Yes.”
To trash, he says, “No.”
He balls up the trash and chucks it to the sound of cheering. All the children he has ever been cheer when he crushes the trash, when he throws it away.
And they dream of having that power:
Someday, I’ll be just like him.
by author