Short Story: Concrete Jungle

Short Story: Concrete Jungle

As far as I can make out, nobody can see the world as I see it. Around ten years ago, when I was nineteen the world started to transform. The office blocks down town and the houses surrounding mine began to resemble something else altogether. At first, I could only hear animal noises on the wind, the rustling of dead leaves and detritus whenever I walked outside. These alien noises became the norm over the next year or so, despite my early suspicions that they weren't and couldn't be real.

A doctor once told me I had frontal lobe epilepsy, this turned out to be a misdiagnosis. Doctors tell me a lot of things. None of these gave a full account as to why I inhabited a completely different world and didn't care. Before she died, my mum hedged her bets on some sort of social phobia, thinking I was lying when I described how the ferns surrounding the corner shop slowed my journey home.

Lying as an excuse to avoid social contact. Autism. Aspergers Syndrome. Simply attention seeking. Just whatever seemed to roughly stick.

I've been on medication previously for bi-polar depression.

It didn't work.

I don't have bi-polar depression.

A number of week ago my doctor informed me that he thinks I have schizophrenia and wanted to try me on a prescription. An anti-psychotic. I told him I would think about it.

Three weeks later, I'm still thinking about it.

I have been diagnosed so many times and by so many doctors, individuals, internet health pages. With doctors, any diagnosis would do so that the conveyor belt of passengers continued to move. Did you know that in the United States where medical care is provided by insurance for the majority of people, this conveyor belt often dictates life? When birth rates have slowed down, as they typically do in a natural ebb and flow of human life, obstetricians often recommend birth by Caesarean section, instead of naturally. Lower birth rate will typically equal lower income for the hospital in general and the doctors in specific. Can you guess which birthing method is more expensive? I don't think it is hard to understand why I distrust the medical community.

I left school and had no idea what to do next. I became a member of the growing unemployed community and walked around in my own daydreaming world while pretending to be looking for jobs. After the noises became regular and the norm for me, I started to become aware of the buildings changing colour; the pavements and roads degenerated into dirt tracks, streams and marshes. For reasons unknown to me at the time, my world was gradually changing into a maze of building shaped trees, until almost without notice, the city had disappeared. Whole neighbourhoods were surrounded by fast flowing rivers. My old school, a monolithic '80's grey scale feature, was replaced by a ruined building covered in vines. I was amazed by these changes.

Instead of being confused or scared I soon realised that the world as it was now made a lot of sense. Walking around town became a magnificent sensual spectrum of smells, colours and sights. The cold grey world became a world filled with excitement. The only thing that made me feel sad was that nobody else seemed to react to these changes. I soon realised that these changes were only for me. Without me, this whole environment would disappear...

In primary school, a life skills teacher at school warned us of the dangers of keeping your emotions inside.

“It is healthy to open that bottle sometimes,” she has told us. I didn't know what to make of it; who keeps the lid screwed firmly on their emotions? It seemed like such a bizarre metaphor at the time. I now often think of myself holding my happiness on a string to stop it floating away from me. Fear isn't the mind killer that it is made out to be; you just need to know how to stop its darkness from blinding you. Each emotion a puzzle.

Like a Columbus egg.

The drive to find out what is wrong with me doesn't come from me. I don't think there is anything wrong with me at all. The problem is everyone else. The drive to get to the root of this is my one and only friend John. He was once my therapist but when my mum died, I had no idea how to pay. He is now my friend instead. It always seems that he is desperate for me to be “normal”. I ignore his obsession for normality and he seems to ignore me when I tell him things that make him uncomfortable.

He doesn't like it when I tell him that to me, death is almost tangible, like smoke. I can feel and see it. It doesn't have a smell. He is disturbed when I lose my emotions. I keep them in my pocket but sometimes lose them. During these times I have to hunt for them, completely void of emotion, with my face stuck, in what he calls, a blunted affect. After recounting this to a doctor, he described this as Anhedonia but I looked this up on wikipedia at the library and it said nothing about losing your emotions like you lose your keys, or someone's phone number; only that the individual cannot feel pleasure.

One time, I found my emotions stuck in the muddy bank of a stream outside the tax office. Nobody can understand how this feels.

For the past three weeks, I've been contemplating medicating. Weighing up the pros and cons.

I can't remember what a sunrise looks like any more. All I see is the spotlights that the thick canopy so far above my head allows. It might be nice to see the sun rise. On the other hand, I'm so used to seeing greens and browns, windows in trees and vine thickets. How would I adapt to something that was once familiar ten years ago? I spent almost a week sitting alone in my hut with these thoughts. The most bizarre aspects of my world would be gone – a good thing. Who really wants to see a huge tiger roar down the street, only for people to get in and out its ear at regular intervals? No matter who you are, this sight is disturbing.

If I was on some sort of medication, would what I see be regulated? At the moment, the inside of any building is the same as before but if I look out the window all I see is jungle. From the outside, the library is the biggest tree I've ever seen, a very old and ornate African mahogany with rotating doors built into the trunk. Inside, it's all books and posters encouraging kids to read. What is consistent now will become unpredictable on medication.

Sometimes I feel like I am alone in this city.

The only human walking amongst animals in a concrete jungle.

The first time I heard that phrase it instantly struck a chord somewhere inside me. Concrete jungle. As if there were a number of different species, each adapted perfectly to a certain part of the ecosystem. Revolutionary primates and artist-birds floating, climbing, mating amongst and above the foliage; above the office worker bureaucrat ants who toil tirelessly in the dirt below.

Yet with the multitude of different species in this jungle, I feel like the only human, walking along on my own path, tied to no determined outcome. The way I see it, the common link between birds and ants is that their lives consist of the same tasks, every day wake, collect food, eat, shit, sleep. This schedule is built into the social fabric of the jungle, there is no escaping it.

Instinctual tasks for the kingdom of animals within this concrete jungle give life meaning. There is no need to wonder about the meaning of life, since that is predetermined by the next task on the list. Finished working for the day? Go home and laugh at an American sitcom. Meta-narratives have no purpose since the only one that matters is in and around everything. The perpetuation of the jungle is key to the mental, social and physical survival of all these animals. But I somehow managed to be out of sync.

That's where I find myself now. In transition, a decision between a living city and a living jungle. The features of both are as clear and real to me as the water and the air around me, as real as I am. I've found my purpose.