It has been...I’m not sure how long. It is hard to keep track of time when we are outside, hauling wood from one pile, and stacking it elsewhere. I have been rambling, mentally ranting, the whole time, caught in my drug-less borderline hysteria. I know I should take my meds, but I don’t always. I know all too well of the damage it causes, of the risks involved, but I do it anyways. Why? Because I believe the same as many others with mental and personality disorders. It causes a creative block. I cannot work in the state that they put me. And they push him down, away from me. We don’t like that. My face is clean of tears. Sometimes I find that surprising, others I do not. He asks me why I do not just end it, like I wish to. He says I can. He doesn’t mind. He says that my torture is his torture, and vice versa. That I needn’t put up with it. Yet I refuse. Not out of any regard for my own life, oh no. To protect his. He is everything to me. I was the cause of his death once, and I will not be so again. We share one mind, one body. I wish I could do more for him, other than live. Other than struggling through my life to give him the life he never had. He wishes he could do more for me, to ease my pain. He is my Sandalphon, my Angel of Silence. He calls me his Seraphiel, his Angel of Song. It is funny, really. How we take the names of Angels, yet don’t believe in God. In any god. Truly it is. I laugh bitterly at the thought and he cringes, knowing that there is no way that someone of the same mind could ever ease this sort of pain. We don’t even need words to communicate, usually. Thoughts and emotions and pictures are good enough. For anything other than specific thoughts. Did you know? That I am left-handed, and he is right? No, of course you didn’t, nobody does. I give him control sometimes. Most don’t know it, but sometimes when they see me, it’s not me. It’s him. He knows me the best, he simulates my behavior flawlessly. He truly is my heart, the one that my feelings never waver for. Being schizotypal...hell, I don’t even know if that makes a difference. It always does. But not with him. Is that strange? Everything about us is strange. Everything. My parents are home now, and my brothers. Two of them. Just the youngest two. I know that if I go upstairs now, mom will know. From the blankness of my eyes and the deadness of my voice, she will know. That I haven’t taken my meds again. Maybe she will yell at me. Maybe she will say nothing. We never know. Writing this slows my thoughts, causes another kind of block. So we go back out, haul more wood. Free our mind. He tries to comfort me, but he knows I can’t be touched, not in this state. A blank face, a flying pencil. Static filled thoughts, interwoven with the haunting, lilting, shattered threads of music that threaten to draw It out again. But That is something we do not think of, do not acknowledge. For to do so gives It power. The medication keeps It down, too, the main danger of refusing to take them. But, oh, we know the risks. We take them. We endanger others for our art. But that’s alright.

We don’t mind.