#leyaaa

Shrink

 My close friend Shrink had a psychotic break and sent us 200 texts in 48 hours. One of them said, “I as a man want to die just to save my sole concept of a woman in this world.” Another one said, “I’ve done no harm to women in the physical world, but I do know how smart you all are. But you’re all sinners in my mind. Sorry. No more words.” In the texts he apologized to God for owning an animal, for being a virgin, for recursing numbers, defining things in terms of their previous forms. He’s Irish Catholic and studying biomedical technology, so it was bound to happen. 

Mae called his parents and they brought him back tp the city. They took his phone away and then gave it back. He texts us, “Wow. Lithium is fucking amazing. Thank you for teaching me how to be a better man. Quit your drug habits this semester and I’ll see you in the summer. I love you all. Platonically.” 

I started hanging out with Shrink in 2021 because we were both bad at eye contact. He tried explaining his brain condition to me but I didn’t get it. But he wanted to understand me. He wanted to understand my friends. Do girls like anything? It should be easy to understand women with a pre-set binary in place. But it’s not. Even when you know them. Maybe especially then. He would ask us stuff like, Am I a bad person for wanting to fuck her? Does she not like me because I’m low-key autistic? Do girls like ANYTHING? Haven’t you always wanted to ask a woman these kinds of questions? You can ask men these kind of questions no problem. It turns them on. But you have to read books to figure out how to talk to women. That’s not fair. Women get to have books written about their esotericism. While they walk amongst us still. Shrink texts, “They call it recursion in computer science. But I know you women don’t understand this kind of stuff.” My friends are getting pissed off. He’s getting less Jesus-y but more misogynistic. Wtf. But we DON’T understand recursion. I don’t understand recursion. How can the output of the problem equal the magnitude of the number? It’s not about being retarded, it’s not about girl-math. It’s about conceptual differences. If the problem happens why can it force itself, by virtue of being itself, to happen again? Life isn’t a Cornell West lecture. Life is something that learns from itself and spits new things out. Isn’t it? DO GIRLS LIKE ANYTHING??? 

I’m texting things like omg that’s crazy sad face but in my present tense I’m trying to rationalize his psychosis. Is that fucked up? Driving yourself insane over somebody else’s revelations, that seemingly drove them insane? Im not allowed to text him, that would clearly make things worse. I’m not allowed to say the schizobabble has a point. Im not allowed to say he’s based, even though that’s what he would want. 

We’ve got this other friend called Ripper and he’s helping take care of Shrink now. Ripper says it’s been hard reteaching Shrink how to be “careful with language”. Because we’re in civil society. Psychosis is a problem that psychoanalyzes itself. The way a computer is a machine that computes data. You need to grasp the concepts to know the tidbits. It’s recursive. Was that Shrink’s point? Is it fair to find a point? How do I make my friend’s psychotic episode about me? Me and my friends are all thinking it. But saying that aloud would be insane.