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Not long ago, homelessness was the devil on his shoulder. He felt the devil was real. As real as seraphs or sirens. It was sirens that led him to that place in the past.

He switched his car from manual to automatic transmission because he was already on the highway. It was three hundred and forty-five miles from his home to his destination, most of it on the highway.

He never became homeless, really. If it was not for his parents, he questions whether or not he would have survived.

He had read about schizophrenic people before but never thought twice about it.

"That's not right," he said to himself. "I was intrigued by their disease in high school." He drew a deep sigh. "It's not important."

Remembering, he thought of the time he had been referred to a psychiatrist. The depression therapy sessions had become paranoid investigations into his delusions about cameras and murderers. The therapist finally gave him a card for a bona-fide psychiatrist.

"I can tell from your body language that you don't want to be here," his therapist said. "I regret ending our sessions but I am no longer qualified to help you."

Ending his depression sessions was like putting on a mask he couldn't take off. His psychiatrist was impersonal and cold, prescribing his medications only after intense interviews that filled him with shame. He saw nothing in the rorschatz ink-blot tests that indicated a problem, but they still gave him the feeling that the corpse of his childhood now unquestionably could never be revived. He once found rorsach tests to be interesting. Now he felt like half a man.

It was this, he thought, that characterized his illness. Not forgotten but trampled upon, his innocence and curiosity from youth had been lost.

He saw his psychiatrist once a month for twenty-four months.

Once, his psychiatrist asked, "Have you ever thought of making any friends at church or in your neighborhood?" It was out of form with his new in-and-out sessions.

He responded bitterly. "That's exactly what I need," he said. His psychiatrist told him later that he should avoid spending time with anyone new.

At that time, he identified with homless people in his large metropolitan city. Insane conversations of aliens and CIA plots, fidgety men and women cursing their damned luck. But something he never let go of, in these streetside discussions, was his sense of self-identification. On the highway, he compared himself to the homeless people and found many similarities.

Another time, his psychiatrist asked him what he intended to do with his life.

He said, "What's it to you?" and swore. "Why does everyone ask me what I'm going to do with my life?" He was furious and the doctor upped his medication.

In the clutches of his disease, he did have plans--grandiose plans that only embittered him more as he lacked the faculties to follow through with them.

Throughout this entire period, relationships with his family suffered. Screaming, he told them he was moving out to sell drugs. He could barely remember their reaction; he wasn't looking at them--he was looking at the voices in his head.

But something he did remember very clearly indeed was a conversation with his landlord, months later. It was after he had moved out, and failed to successfully sell drugs as he had planned. He was sitting on his porch, and his landlord was inspecting the windows.

"Am I getting new ones," he asked.

His landlord replied, "Weatherproof, sound-proof, double thick and double paned. The guy's coming saturday."

Alternatively pleased and terrified, he asked "Will I be here when he installs them?"

His landlord put down his tape measurer and looked at him with frustration. "I don't know, will ya?"

Something happened. Something happened inside his head. The delusions, the false thoughts and rapid, impressive hallucinations suddenly were in his landlord's voice where he could examine them more clearly. His landlord's face reminded him of his youth, reminded him of the personality that had been transformed over the past year and a half and longer. He saw a glimmer of he former faculties in his landlord's features.

"I guess I will be..." he said, voice trailing.

Solidarity. Continuity. These were his new ideas, two things he had forgotten about.

His landlord said," I'm using your deposit to pay for em. Should block out the noise."

And he remembered thinking, the noise IS very bothersome.

He was on the highway still, almost to his destination. He said to himself, "It was his body language, that's what helped me. Rationality. Presence. And it was an out-there question, after all."

Arriving in town, he flipped back to manual and galloped down the streets at a determined pace. He was a skilled driver. And, after buying the car, it was a challenge to stay under the limit.

He felt like he was floating as he entered the office. A familiar voice greeted him, then his depression therapist said quiety, "I can tell from your body language that you want to be here."

And twenty-four months slipped from his memory.