Dear Roy, It's Me, God.

There's a man inside my head. I'm sure he's only me; Though I've never seen him clearly nor heard his voice but as from the farthest reaches of some deep chamber. Still I know, at least, he's in there - tucked within some distant cave. I know this because he's driving me quite mad.

I'll sit at work when no one's around and nothing's to do; my mind wastefully spinning its gears, slowly burning off the oil in the pan, considering some fleetingly irrelevant topic. Or sometimes I'll be busy at the thankless labors of torturing myself, the way we're all so often called to do, with thoughts and memories that drive me into fits of shame or rage or hatred. There I'll be quietly, privately digging open old wounds; chewing into the tender flesh of my psyche -- not bothering anyone. When all of a sudden this fellow in my head will bellow out a din of inseparably overlapping echoes from the back and bottom of that far-off parking garage of his, leaving my head swimming in the reverberations.

What he's saying I can only ever guess at by those few chance syllables that somehow manage to pierce the thicket of low-frequency noise that accompanies all his chatter; which shutters the chambers of my mind like an elevated train rattling the walls of low-rent housing. I sometimes lose my balance for a moment in the unexpected cacophony of his words. And it feels like I'm losing my grip.

He's an aggravation to me, really. He upsets me. Over the years I've gathered enough from his disjointed words to see what he's after; to understand what he's on about, more or less. And I say, he's nothing but a bother.

I've grown accustom to all the other things in my head. The ficus in the corner, the oak desk that smells faintly of wood oil, the giant, winding water slide that puts out into the pool of warm, unbuttered ramen noodles... Absurd, uncouth, extravagant; at least the other items, places, and people tucked into my skull are tame enough to hold their peace until called; To take a numbered ticket and mill about benignly until their order's up.

But this fellow in the darkness - in the depth - he's no respect for democracy! He thinks his interests overshadow the others; that his demands are more pressing than those of the rage-a-holic trucker who accosted me at roadside last year. Even these most vicious memories know to hold their tongue until the right hour, but that's too good for the booming voice. He thinks himself the only I should entertain - having nothing of the others.

Yes, I know what that one's after. And he won't get it! You hear me? I can assure you, you'll not have it your way. I'll stand against you till the final hour! So won't you just give it up already and leave me to my folly? Won't you stop assaulting me with that insipid internal clarity of yours? I've heard you - heard your story out in full - and I reject you! So stop making me feel like I'm insane! Stop driving me crazy!!!

If you'd only leave me then I wouldn't feel ill as I do myself these harms. I could continue lifting trifles up for life and death; I could rest every thought and word that's ever hurt me in my bosom, vengefully and eternally; I could go right on giving years, decades, perhaps even a century of this existence to all that bears no consequence whatsoever. And I'd do it all happily, mindlessly, madly!

Why, without you I wouldn't even know my own madness and insomuch I'd be thought quite sane. Especially among these people! To them my insanities are considered wise and noble virtues. To them my sociopathy is canonical law. Surely, with but a bit of effort I could be king of the crazies if you'd only let me go.

Thou accursed sanity! This inner voice torments me with the lure of his righteousness; his calm serenity. He beckons me to join him in his cave, or rather to release him from it, while all I'd like to do is wile away my days working, eating, and vacuuming the rugs. Why must he reflect this potential state of being. Why must he reach into the fiction of my life and show me things real. Do you know the trouble you've caused me, sir?

Every time he speaks, the inside of my teeth start to itch, and each halve of my brain takes up a knife to stab its neighbor in the eye. And I feel I've suddenly lost my mind. But I've learned this from the voice, at least: I'm not going mad, but merely recognizing my own persistent state of madness.

I'm crazy, he says, so are you. But it's the noticing that hurts. It makes the world start to spin and there's no mystery why. The world was always spinning, but crazy people don't make record of such things. Only sane men wobble with the Earth. Only sane men realize they're upon it.

But I don't want this sanity he offers. Anyway, it's oh so difficult to achieve. How resolute you must be to persist at sanity while walking in the midst of psychotics. And how easy it is to lose all the gains you've made in but one relapsing act of lunacy. Just a moment's derision can send you flailing back to incomprehensibility in a wink!

So leave me, you! I don't want the Earth beneath my feet. I much prefer it wafting over head. And I don't mind living and dying in madness, so long as it means I'll get to slave away my youth to empty, heartless labors; burning all the while with hatred for the million men I lie awake at night writhing in contempt of; mending what I mean to break; cleaning what I mean to soil; and piling every rotten thing atop the last until I cannot see nor smell beyond the wretch and rank of every evil I've acquired.

Wait, that sounded crazy... Oh, won't you get out of my head!