Do you know that show, Orange is the New Black? Well, if you don’t, you really should. It’s the type of show that’s a more than a guilty pleasure, simultaneously an indulgence and a commitment. I mean, fifty-minute episodes. You can’t lie to yourself and say that you’re just taking a break from work, but it’s so compelling that you don’t really care.

The character Suzanne Warren, better known as “Crazy Eyes,” is no small part of why the show appeals so much to me. One of many incredibly diverse women around whom the show is centered, Crazy Eyes is just this beautifully and amazingly complex character. As you might guess, she’s more than a little emotionally unstable, which results in more than a few scenes that are alternately hilarious and terrifying. But Crazy Eyes is so much more than that: her story, her motivations, her pure heart. And yet somehow, despite the infinite intricacies of her persona and the seeming superficiality of her epithet, her eyes undeniably remain the epicenter of emotion. The way they capture so perfectly every fleeting ardor, each permanent caprice differently and all at once is hard to understand, unless you have seen those eyes in reality, difficult to comprehend unless those eyes have stared at and through you, impossible to grasp unless you have lived with Crazy Eyes. As strange as it is to say, Crazy Eyes is more than a character to me. She is a reminder of everything that has changed me in the past few years, a rerun of someone close to me. You tell me: does that sound crazy?

…

You are the lens of a yearbook student’s DSLR. The volleyball is floating in the air, its stillness in the photo an exact replica of reality, if just for that instant. Residual velocity has just given way to gravity, and for this second, pulled down to earth by the inescapability of nature, it seems to exist in a happy equilibrium. Her left arm is still in the air, a guide for her laser focus as my sister squints through the sallow fluorescence. Her knees bend with the precision of machinery, each muscle throbbing in anticipation like lit sticks of dynamite. The inchoate beads of sweat will never extinguish the flame in time, but they do shimmer on her scarlet cheeks, connected by a slim, smiling river pursed in confident concentration. Look through the sharp ebony of her neat ponytail partially staining the white number on her back – can you see the way her right palm behind her skull curves ever so slightly, ready to rip the unsuspecting sphere from its joyous life of symmetry? Click. Do you feel, in the crystalline beauty of what you have just captured, the tension ready to explode, the crowd ready to roar?

Happy Eyes.

You are the iPad resting on the bed. Are you confused? Why did she press pause on the movie you were so excellently rendering to us? Can you see through the 1.2 million pixels and tell me the reasons tears have carved shining rivers into Jennifer’s physiognomy, her bone-white knuckles are suffocating her folded arms, the gaze that will cut me, on the periphery of the shot, in half? Siri, can you find the missing audio, listen closely to my words for once, find what it was I said wrong in the moments before this emotional eruption? “Today will be a beautiful summer day” – no, it wasn’t, where was this in your daily forecast? Why didn’t you tell me about the thunder raging from the pit of her throat, the erratic flashes of deadly lightning searing through her eyes? Why doesn’t it make sense? It has to make sense somehow. It has to fit in the universal narrative of causes and effects I thought I understood so well. The movie has not just paused, it is falling apart, the best friend has been swapped for a stranger. Your camera must be malfunctioning – the now-empty bed between our standing bodies is not feet in length but thousands and thousands of the most infinite miles that increase by the millisecond – isn’t that nonsensical, isn’t it stupid, isn’t it just absolutely – insane.

Confused Eyes.

You are omniscient God, paying a visit to Saint Timothy’s, pressing pause on Your creation, for who mortal could ever notice. The pied chromas adorning the carpet are interrupted by her presence, shaking as her voice ricochets off their glass progenitors. Time has stopped, but you, of course, know the conversation occurring.

“Father John, I am telling you, I know what I felt. There was this horrible pain in my hand, I know it was a demon, and then I prayed with the holy water and it went away. I know Satan has been possessing me lately. You can ask my dad, he – ”

“Jennifer, I know, but what I am hearing is that you didn’t have sleep for 72 hours, you are having mood swings, and you are pushing away everyone around you. I cannot know what you felt, but you seem a bit…unstable. Please, just get some rest. Are you sure you’re…alright? Do you need medical attention?”

Tell me. You are the only one who knows, after all. Was it true? Was it You who exorcised my sister?

Are you there?

Desperate Eyes.

You are a security camera in the hallway. Thirty minutes into lunch and she hasn’t moved an inch from her sitting position on the floor. The medication has increased her appetite. The skinny jeans she used to wear are now sweatpants, the tight tees have been replaced by an XL hoodie. A paper has been halfheartedly stuffed into her pocket, of which the only marking visible is a red, two-digit number that starts with “6.” You can’t record audio, but you can tell anyway there is no sound here. She is alone. The friends she once had are nowhere in the frame. Rewind for me, if you will, retrace their steps as they walked away from her in confusion, fear, disgust. She is too drowsy, thanks to the medication, to stop them. The same fluorescence that illuminated her athletic talent now casts shadows across her face, highlighting just how much more of her there is to see these days.

Lonely Eyes.

You are me.

I have just arrived back home from school, still wearing my backpack as I trudge towards my room. En route, I pause as I am leaning on the banister, staring at her back. The sun shines bright through the window in her room, and the warm glow permeates the air. She is typing away at her computer, finishing up an assignment for Human Geography. Ever since she transferred schools, Jennifer gets home about thirty minutes earlier than I do. Her medication has been doing wonders; she is now extremely happy and maintains perfect grades. I am saving this mental picture because I couldn’t be more proud of her – and more ashamed of myself.

Every day I pass this same spot, commanding myself internally to break the months-long silence between us. It isn’t like I can just say a chipper “Hello!” and expect everything to be back to normal. How can I raise my voice now when my silence has destroyed her for so long? I claimed that we were best friends, and yet, I had nothing for her. I was too terrified to speak to her, too selfish to ever consider the mountain of pain she was going through without my support. Type 1 bipolar disorder was the problem, not Jennifer.

But the only one I have to blame is myself. I am the one who couldn’t face her. I am the one who couldn’t stop wishing for “my old sister” back. I am the coward behind the lens who left her when she needed me most. Doesn’t it make you wonder who the sick one is?

You can’t see it in this mental picture, but I’m crying.