The Man with the Green Eyes It started as sort of a joke. Get in touch with my “insane” side. I had before, consciously thrown out the idea of being sane, as the very definition of insanity is “altered perception.” Even before I created the man with the green eyes, I had gotten in touch with myself and eliminated every ounce of fear and anger that I could feel. I wasn’t entirely successful, anger could break through when I was in physical pain, but otherwise, I was the happiest, most rational person you could ever meet. My senior year of high school, at the beginning, I designed three mindsets. They were three versions of me that I could see, standing around me, talking to me, helping me through life. Rationality was the first and the one that I relied on the most. He was amazing. Sometimes I would shut out the other two to listen to Rationality. He spoke with a deep voice, almost like that of a movie trailer narrator. “In a world…” The second mindset was emotion. He felt, he advised me off of emotion, and I almost never took his advice seriously. He spoke with my voice, with a slight English accent (God knows why. I’m good at impersonating accents.) And, I guess he found that I never took him seriously, because he started to rarely speak in his time in commission. The third was insanity. **** him. He’s an *******. I liked him back then, though. While the other two were around, he just skipped around in the background. He was always happy. He hardly ever spoke, either. Sometimes, he would cut in to agree with rationality, coming up with something, and the severe scarcity of his opinion seriously made it almost worth more than the others. I had always thought of myself as the least emotional person. I never cried, never experienced anger, or fear, like a ‘normal’ high schooler. People were busy getting their careers and life plans in line. For me, it was hard to decide what to do. I had a lot of hobbies. I did computer programming. I played piano, guitar, xylophone, and as of right now, am learning the violin. I could solve the Rubik’s cube, often in less than a minute, and several of its sequels. I did lots of writing, though I never finished- and this was prevalent in my programming as well- because I simply lost interest in projects. One day, I was in class. I had a unique schedule that allowed me to leave school early in the morning on certain days, and it must’ve been ten minutes before I could go home. Rationality and Emotion weren’t standing around- they really just appeared when it was decision time. But insanity was just screwing around, walking around the classroom, playing with stuff. Almost like a child. The thing that scared me the most was that my personality most closely resembled that of Insanity’s. At first, I embraced being similar to Insanity, he was smart, almost more rational than Rationality, and he rarely cared about anyone else besides me. He did, however, encourage me to give endlessly. I remember on one occasion, I had a dollar change in my pocket, and he walked up to me, in his usual mysterious way, and told me “Get rid of it. Give it away.” That day, I gave several dollars to people, and told them “Use it to help someone else.” I never found out what they did with those dollars, but I gave the money to smart people. I bet they did what I said. My second class every other day was full of freshmen. I was a senior, and, after acknowledging that it was indeed a class full of freshmen, I decided to shove the usual stereotypes about them away and try to converse with them. Several of them were more mature and worth having a conversation with. (Little side note: if someone ever uses the phrase “I’m mature for my age” then rest assured, they ARE NOT mature for their age.) Anyway, I only knew of three other seniors in the class- my ginger friend Mary (Yes, I’m using fake names), and some other guy whose name I legitimately forgot, even though I sat with him and talked to him every time I had that class. He works at Hardee’s now. Cool guy. Hardee’s sucks though. It was an Environmental Science class, and I looked forward to it as it was the one that I left after. Returning to what I was saying earlier, I was in class, the Environmental Science one, shortly before I left. Insanity was running along, being an ***, like he always is (though I didn’t think of him this way back then). Eventually, he came up to me, looked at me, and said, “What are you afraid of?” The question took me by surprise. “I- can’t say anything,” I whispered aloud. The class was loud, I could talk to him and frankly I didn’t care who heard me. Insanity smiled. “Yes, you are, I found one thing you are.” “I don’t know, dying alone?” “No, don’t give me that typical bullshit. What are you afraid of? What do you do every day that you hate?” I thought for a moment. Then I knew exactly what he was talking about. “I, waste time.” “YES,” insanity shouted, throwing his arms up, “What should you do, instead?” “Not- that?” “YES,” insanity shouted, throwing his arms up in the same way. He kept running around, being an *******. Like he always is. It was true. I thought of this a lot after he told me this. I would listen to “Time” by Pink Floyd and ponder- how much time am I wasting? I have around fourteen games on my Steam account, and most of them have a ridiculous amount of time on them (I define fifty+ hours as ridiculous.)
At this point in my life, I felt mentally perfect. Rationality, Emotion, and on occasion, Insanity would give me the best decisions. I had full faith in them. Even my intuition agreed with them. I was happy, every day, thanking God for every morsel of food I ate and every drop of water I drank. At this point in my life, I saw it as a waste of resources to ask God for anything- He had already had me born in this first world country, where the best resources were handed to me at birth, even as a middle class kid. If I asked God for something, I almost saw it as being a stubborn little spoiled brat. I sort of feel that way to this day, even though I know God only likes to help. It was one day, in my Environmental class, where we folded paper airplanes (thinking back I have no idea what this taught us, I think it was wind resistance or something) where, as we were travelling back to the class inside, I went up steps, and I blurted the old Sonic the Hedgehog meme “C’mon step it up!” A girl laughed. I thought nothing of it. I ran up the rest of the steps, then said, “You’re too slo-ow,” and walked on. She chuckled again. That was nice. Dank memes and steel beams. I made someone laugh. In that class, I always sat with my senior friend, Mary, because I had known her for all of high school. She was cute, smart, and we always had funny conversations. A freshman, whose name I also can’t remember, so I won’t bother making a fake one, teased that I had a crush on her, but as much as he’d like to think, that simply wasn’t the case. I had thought I had evolved past simple, blatant attraction to people- the thought disgusted me. How sitting there, thinking of someone, letting them pop into your head… Ugh. What a waste of time. I thought I could stop myself from getting any attraction like the flip of a switch, (I now understand that this is simply because no one in the past had impressed me enough to make it otherwise) and it would be done. I thought about detailing the rest of the stuff happening in my life here, but I’m too lazy, so here’s the short version. People were living in my basement, I had no friends but was too happy to notice, and I worked at Publix. People at Publix didn’t seem to mind me. Well, I mean, not that much, anyways. Plus I got paid to show up and do what I was told. I also had two dogs, a sister who I love to death, and a brother living in Florida, whom I don’t see often. At this point in my life I would often think in code. Sometimes I still do, whenever I was working and needed to concentrate on work, I would thinking instance_destroy(all); and it would reset my thoughts. I could physically feel the difference, like shutting off unnecessary programs on a computer and rejuvenating its usefulness, relaxing it. An awesome euphoria would spread across my forehead and it was so relaxing. In the mornings, I would go to the Chorus room to play the piano. It should be noted that I don’t have Chorus, never had Chorus, and didn’t know anyone in those classes. I started playing the piano, and everyone seemed entertained. This is where I met another ginger girl, I’ll call her Marie. She has a sweet personality and supported my music and enjoyed it. She was fun to talk to. Also, around this time, the Environmental teacher got sick of the freshmen being disruptive and moved the entire class around. (This really didn’t help anything, but okay.) I got moved back with Mary and the girl who had chuckled at my Sonic jokes a month or so ago, who I’ll call Rosa. No, I didn’t know her before- not even by name basis, and no, I didn’t even know that she was a senior as well. To be honest, I didn’t think much of her. Rosa, Mary and I had hilarious conversations. I started looking forward to that class not just because it signaled that I could leave, but also that I could see Rosa and Mary. I started thinking in life, that damn, maybe it was about time I got a girlfriend. So, I had Rosa and Mary, and maybe Marie, from the chorus room (and now I realize that those two names are really similar and it’s sort of bugging me.) Rosa, was delightfully nerdy. (You probably could have guessed from her laughing at my Sonic joke.) I don’t know why, and even before I had met her, I found that personality sort of repulsive. I guess it just kinda fit her, thought, because it only drew me to her. November was coming up, and I am in Marine Corps JROTC, so I think to myself, hey, I’ll ask someone to the ball. I was in the Environmental class, I was next to Rosa, and Mary was across from me. So, I just think, hey, I’ll ask one, so I turn to Rosa (and I don’t know why I pick her instead of Mary, I just did) and asked her. She seemed happy, and said yes. I liked how conversation flowed naturally between us. The next Friday, the day before the ball, I go to her house. We take an Uber from school and hang out there, talking, watching her shows, she has a cheap keyboard that I play for her. I learn she likes tea, and I find out her favorite flavor. Later on, her friend comes over, I don’t remember his name either. (Ok, I’m really bad with names and I didn’t realize until I started writing this.) This was one of the stranger parts. He seems really cynical towards me, even though I make every effort to be nice to him. I conclude that he was friend-zoned by Rosa, and that he was uncomfortable with me being around. I didn’t really care, though.
The next day, we went to the Birthday Ball. After the ceremony, it really disintegrated. Rosa and I just sat in the corner, and eventually, she turns to me, and says, “DO YOU WANT TO GO SEE A MOVIE?” Now, since it’s so loud you can hardly hear in there, I’m just like “YES, I WOULD LOVE TO!” Her mom picks us up and we go to the theatre, and see Goosebumps [the movie]. We’re alone and we’re half watching, getting to know each other more than anything. I’ve had my arm around her for the entire film, even before the dumb commercial by Coke that tells you to put your arm around your date. I remember some of the stuff we talked about- we made jokes, about the movie or not… It was great. Rosa is a terrible texter, by the way. When I got her number, she told me that she had lost friends over how bad she was. I didn’t take it that seriously. You know, until later. That was… the last time I spent any time with her outside of school, I’m sad to say. We would have conversations with her over text, and Mary, Rosa, and I would talk in class. We would make plans to hang out, but it just never happened. For some reason though, my interest in Rosa only went upward. I was planning to ask her out in person, but she said she’d be busy all week and I wasn’t about to do it in class, so I went ahead and did it over text. What happened next, I may not ever fully understand. At first, it seemed cute- “No, I’m not ready for a boyfriend.” I know what that means. “Get lost, I don’t like you and never will.” But I wasn’t going to let that be the last line. I jokingly ask, “Is that get out of jail free card to let me off easy?” “Nope. I don’t sugar code stuff. I think you’re great, but I just can’t handle dating right now.” I respect that. She is amazing. I don’t know what kind of time frame we’re talking about here, but I decide that it’ll probably be a couple of months, and I’ll just wait for her. I texted Mary about it, she thought it was the same. I don’t know how much time passed, of us just casually texting (and yes, she is a horrible texter). I ask again- I pour out my heart. I don’t know what I said specifically, but for some reason I like her. And I can’t explain why. I said something along the lines of “I know it’s pretty unfair to ask you this, but do you know- when you’d be ready?” (I feel like such a chump for saying that.) “I think it’s the ‘if’ aspect about it- the idea that it could happen is driving me insane.” She responds “If you want a definite answer, it’ll just be no. I’m just not ready. I have a lot of emotional baggage, and trust issues, and I think you want to date me simply because you don’t know any better.” At this point I’m thinking, well damn, let me find out for myself. I don’t have a record of the texts, and I wish I hadn’t deleted them, because they’re relevant. If only I knew I would be writing this. Insanity is such an *******. I decide that I can do nothing about Rosa. I go to flip the switch, that stops me from liking her, from thinking about her, from borderline obsessing over her… and it doesn’t work. I still like her. While I was calmly thinking of deleting the aspect of my attraction to her from my brain, I’m in a panic now. I’ve lost control. I can’t do anything. This isn’t right. This isn’t what I planned for. Why am I still thinking about her? Why do I have this feeling in my gut still? I remember lying in bed, feeling defeated. I could feel the defeated look on my own face, staring in awe at the ceiling. “It didn’t work,” I whisper. “Dear God, what am I going to do?” I decide I’m going to force her out of my mind by replacing her. This is when I get to know Marie, the girl who hangs around in the Chorus room, I get her number we talk, and she has a boyfriend, damn. Not her. I go to get a number of a girl who’s in my Calculus class… Mind you, these are the only women in the entire school I would be remotely interested in. And the one in my Calculus class- is dead boring. That, or she didn’t have any interest in me. Both of these possibilities are equally likely. I still try to get to know Marie, however, maybe just having a good friend will help. I ask when we can hang out (news flash: that never happens either) but at least she seems to be putting up an effort. We go to Christmas break… and you know who I haven’t seen in a while? Emotion and Rationality. Maybe Insanity killed them. At the end of two thousand fifteen onwards, Insanity’s eyes are solid black- with a green fluorescent ring where the color of one’s eyes go. He is incredibly cynical. At one point, I was lying in bed, thinking about my future. Insanity is standing next to the bed, staring down at me. It’s just me, alone with my own thoughts, when Insanity butts in. “What are you going to do?” I sit there. I have no idea what I want to do with my life. Insanity is staring at me. I don’t know how much time passed. The atmosphere in my room is thick. Eventually, I respond. “I don’t know.” It’s the first time I’ve seen insanity angry. “I DON’T CARE, THAT YOU DON’T KNOW!” If he could flip stuff around, he would be doing it, but he lives in my head. “You need,” he said more calmly, but much more sternly than usual, “to figure it out. It’s never been a question of if you’re going to be successful, it’s how you’re going to be successful. But if you sit here, being useless, you’ll never amount to anything.” I roll over, away from him. There’s another pause. “You waste too much time, thinking about her.” He’s gone. I remember, one day, at work, Rosa kept popping into my head. I remember using my coded thoughts to delete her, and seeing them run by as she popped up. I was bringing in carts from the parking lot, and it was raining. I would see her, like a gopher, pop up, in a cloud of smoke, before she collapsed and disappeared in an instant. She never moved otherwise, just stared straight ahead. I was at a cart return. Stacking up carts. The infinite Rosas are popping up and disappearing- Rosa rosa1 = new Rosa(); rosa1 = null; (destroy them as they come.) I hear a slight chuckling voice, and look to my right, where Insanity is standing. “You’re pathetic.” I ignore him. “You realize that she doesn’t think of you? If she did she would go get her phone. She knows you text her.”
I’m pushing carts back in. The Rosas are appearing, collapsing, and disappearing, still. “Let’s be honest, she doesn’t care about you. Stop thinking about it. Stop thinking about her.” God, Insanity, I really, really wish I could. “Out of all the times you’ve asked her to hang out, how many times has it happened? Oh, and look at that, she’s never the one to initiate it- to talk to you. You know? It’s not even her… You don’t even get texts, you don’t even have any friends who are willing to contact you. Hell, Marie won’t text you unless you text first, neiter will that bitch Rosa, and who gives a **** about Mary? She’s a weeaboo who’s addicted to Korean Pop.” I had tried to hang out with Mary at one point, but her parents don’t trust new people, so I couldn’t do anything with her at all. “Hell, even Mark just wants to suck your ****.” I forgot to mention this earlier, but I decided to hang out with a gay friend of mine from work (Mark), and the whole ride over he talked about how it would still be straight if I let him suck my ****. He started bringing up real philosophical arguments and overanalyzing the definitions of “straight” and “gay” to make it seem normal. Although he never straight up offered to give me a blowjob, it was made obvious that he would do it. At this point I’ve noticed Insanity is right. I don’t have friends. And I’ve just been too happy in life to realize it. There are buddies that I get along with in school, but no one that has ever so much as come to my house to hang out. Not a single person. Seventeen year old boy, with no ******* friends, except maybe one person on the internet I play games with (but that’s not really relevant.) Christmas Break ends. We’re back in school. Rosa’s absent from the class I have her in. It wasn’t uncommon that she was out of school, but the next day we have that class she’s still not there. I ask the teacher if she still has the class. He tells me no. My heart sinks. I hear Insanity laugh. I look around, but he’s not there. I called up Rosa, it was ten in the morning, and I realized I had made a mistake, as I woke her up, but she didn’t seem to care. I asked her if we could hang out, I was dying to see her. She said she didn’t have a ride. I said, “it’s fine, as long as you have a place, I can probably get there. She said, let me ask my grandma.” I said, “cool, text me,” and never heard anything for the rest of the day. That was the day it happened. I was walking through the woods. Insanity was not letting up. “You realize, your plans are sound. Get to work on starting that business.” (At this point I have an idea about what I want to do in life.) I keep walking, and I think again, about Rosa. “Are you kidding me?” Insanity asks. I can see him getting angrier. “What is wrong with you? It’s over. Why are you thinking about it? Why is this so important to you? You just need someone to stick your **** in, you little *******, don’t you? Well don’t you get it? She doesn’t want anything to do with you, weird Chorus ginger girl doesn’t want anything to do with you either, and the weeaboo is ******* crazy. Stop it. You’re wasting energy, you’re wasting oxygen. Think about what you want in life. What you can do.” He comes around in front of me. “I’ve seen the **** you can do, how fast you do things.” His eyes are nearly blinding to look at. “You learned piano, and guitar in less than two months. Have you heard your own music? It’s not bad. Rosa doesn’t even deserve to hear it.” “Don’t you get it?” he goes on. “It’s pointless. It’s fruitless. It’s a waste of time. I hate people. And you, deep down, you hate people too. You know they’re horrible by nature. Quit searching for one. It’s pointless. And if you keep thinking about it, you’re pointless. Go be useful.” I looked at myself from Earth’s perspective. I looked at myself from the Universe’s perspective. And I thought, that my evolutionary purpose is to repopulate. And when I was around Rosa, I was so, so happy. I don’t care if it was a chemical reaction in my brain. I don’t care if it was something that forced me to keep the species going. It made me happy, and all the laws that people have ever made were based off of what made people happy. Don’t kill people. That makes people sad, therefore we must make it illegal. Insanity had never been wrong before. But I was sure he was wrong about this. I looked around for Rationality and Emotion, but they were gone- I hadn’t seen them in a very long time. Rationality had warned me about Insanity, and how he was- well, insane. I missed being the crazy, happy all the time kid. But then Rosa came along. I still can’t tell you why I like her so much. So I killed him. I killed Insanity. It wasn’t a physical reach forward, or a power struggle, but I flipped him off like a switch. He looked disappointed. “You know, I only want what’s best for you,” where his last words, as he fell to the ground and disappeared, much like the infinite Rosas in my head, on the days when I was working and couldn’t stop thinking about her. I went inside and lay in bed. I texted Marie about it, and it was no help. She just told me I was in love, and to wait for her. Today, I did the hardest thing I had ever done in my life. Not a thirty-nine mile hike, not spinning a twelve pound rifle, not throwing code together and making a computer think, not solving a Rubik’s cube. I text Rosa for the last time. I deleted them too, because I didn’t want to hold on to them, or reread them. But this is how it went. They’re still fresh in my mind. The dried tears are still on my face. “What happened yesterday? I don’t know if you’re getting my texts. I just want you to know that while I was waiting for an answer yesterday, it almost hurt. I felt sad. And I thought to myself, this shouldn’t hurt. This shouldn’t be sad. I don’t know why. But I like you, too much. I don’t know why I do. I guess the best thing to do would be to just stop.” I know it went on but I don’t remember what I said. “I’m sorry. Yesterday, I couldn’t figure out how to make it work so I just never texted you back because I felt bad. If you’re saying you don’t want to be friends anymore, I’m sorry. I had no idea you thought of me so highly. I don’t want to date, maybe for a very long time. But if this is the end, I wish you the best of luck.” I know this one was much longer too, but I didn’t ever want to read this again. “I don’t want to lose you. But I also don’t want it to end like this. I’m crying right now- I haven’t cried in two years.” “I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?” “You can tell me that it will never happen. That I’m delusional. That you never liked me, and that you never will. “I will not be ready to date for a long time.” “No, Rosa. Part of me wants to wait, no matter what amount of time it is.” “We will never date. I’m sorry.” I almost started bawling. “It hurts, so bad. Thank you.” “I’m sorry.” I started to play my guitar, a song which I had wrote for her. She never heard it. As I lay in bed, playing, I heard insanity’s voice, again. “You know, she wouldn’t deserve that.” It only hurt more. “I killed you.” “Yeah, right,” the perfectly cheery Insanity said. “I am you, and I won’t be going anywhere. You did the right thing, though.” “I hate you… I hate you so much…” I said between breaths. Insanity was not phased. I stood up, and walked to my door, away from him, and leaned against it. “The music is beautiful,” Insanity said, “and she wouldn’t deserve it.” I turned my back to him, and cried against the door. When I turned back, Rosa was standing there, with the green, luminescent eyes. “I wouldn’t deserve that,” she said. I only cried harder. I haven’t seen insanity since. And I don’t want to. But part of me thinks that “Insanity” was just a name. Because, he wanted what was best for me. I guess I just designed him without information about what would happen if I fell in love. He reacted by trying to destroy the scenario and get back to being productive. Looking back on it all, I still don’t have friends. I’m still lonely. Now I just know I’ll never date Rosa, the only person who I had ever thought about in the way I thought about her. I guess I’ll go play PA:TITANS with my obscure friend who I’ve never met, but he’s the best friend I’ve ever had.
This is my last half year of life. I felt I just needed to share it. I don't know why. I don't know anything. Maybe it can help someone. Someone who sees versions of themselves with green eyes being absolute dickwads.
“Nope. I don’t sugar code stuff." -CCOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAT I'm sorry I don't quite know what it is about the combined act of misunderstanding thus mishearing thus misspelling an expression but it drives me up the wall. It's of course nothing personal. I know there's 90% chance it's a only typo. I even do it myself but even when it's me who's done it I'm furious at myself. I know it might have been an intentional play on words but given it didn't originate from your own thoughts it would be misleading for the reader at best. great stuff loved it! great writing skills too! could do with a bit more detailing but the fact it's coming staight from the heart more than makes up for it and makes it an almost perfect read. I personally am the sort to give voices and visuals to whatever I read so I characterized insanity as moriarty from the sherlock holmes series in my head while reading it and also gave him his voice. couldn't really help it it just naturally and instantly sprung up as soon as had you named him : by any chance have you seen the garden of words ? here's another mock-up i made of Insanity : no rosa version as I don't have a cutout for her general look but in my head I imagined her this way :
i really like the top 2. I never really described the characters, but you got most of Rosa right, but her hair isn't an Afro. Insanity didn't have any white at all in his eyes, even the outside the ring. Plus, as I said, he's got my body, it's me with black/green eyes. (I don't think pics of me will happen, tho.) I really appreciate this artwork- being not actually schizophrenic, I don't actually see them, but its what I picture standing there when I hear those thoughts in my head. I guess you could say I almost see him (or saw him) edit: also i haven't seen garden of words
yeah I would have imagined you didn't actually see them. I personally liked visualising them which helped with the narrartion in my head. glad you enjoyed and surprized I was this close for Rosa, am I a psychic? : D here's fixed insanity : and go see garden of words!
this is awesome. The only tips I can make are: The ring is slightly wider and brighter. But this is perfect. The girl called Rosa in the story is African American, and has long hair, basically. I don't want to go into to much detail, for obvious reasons
YAASSSS the only feedback i can say is that the green is distinctly green and the black is distinctly black- there isn't really any mixing, to accomplish this, make it slightly less bright.
Perfect. That's perfect. The dull green I've seen him in cases where his defeated, or I directly stood up to him. The brightest greens are associated with his obsession and intensity with achievement and production, and the momentum he has against me. I think the first 2 are the best in context.
