Dear Diary,
Everyone has characters in their neighborhood. When I was growing up, we had "The Walker". We never bothered to ask her name. She walked everywhere, muttering under her breath, or sometimes yelling. She argued with her mother who was, as far as we could tell, not there. She said she was friends with Jackie Kennedy, and told me I was the spitting image of her.
There was the cat lady. She wore cat eye glasses, and cats were always following her. She carried treats for them. When I got a job at the grocery store, she would always ask for paper bags for the cats to play in. Not just for her cats, but every cat in the nieghborhood... which I suppose you could argue were also hers.
A local artist with schizophrenia openly identified himself as "crazy". He often got kicked out of the grocery store for walking in and singing at the top of his lungs. I always wished they would let him stay. Everyone loved his singing. He got permanently banned from the public transit system for causing disturbances. He was overly friendly, and childlike in his demeanor, a beloved local celebrity.
To me , they were "they". They were "those people". They were colorful, and made the nieghborhood interesting, but ultimately we didn't really associate with them. When I looked at them back then, I didn't know I was looking in the mirror.
As my reality slips in and out of public reality, as mind drops information from my memory, I begin to relate more and more to the nieghborhood characters. As I realize I'm in an argument with someone who isn't there, I worry if the nieghbors heard me screaming at the voices just now. When I notice I've been talking to myself in the grocery store - a long string of swears and numbers - I sigh with relief that I am wearing a mask, so maybe nobody noticed. I keep taking my medication in hope that my connection to the world won't completely dissolve, but the possibility forever looms over my head. Or maybe I'm just paranoid. I guess that doesn't help.