Yes Super Nintendo Chalmers

 I got a bit freaked out by a phone call I had with Jones last Friday.   No, it wasn’t because he was delusional or talking crazy shit.  He didn’t waffle on for ages forgetting he was talking to someone, or try to weasle out of answering regular everyday direct questions.  And it wasn’t because he was talking in that annoying little mouse voice with childish phrases that make it hard to treat him like an adult. 

Actually, it was the complete opposite.  It was the fact he wasn’t doing any of that.  I was actually the craziest person on the phone.   I was being a stupid bitter emo cunt and he was being 100% rational.  He used words longer than 2 syllables and nuanced arguments. He even disagreed with me in a grown-up way, without being a belligerent monster or an obsequious doormat, which previously were the only two modes of conflict he could conceive of.  It was fucking weird.  It was like that time my mum invited my dad to Christmas dinner (which is a repeat occurrence now…. ew).   Out of sheer disbelief I kept trying to provoke him out of his composure and he just ended up saying "I think YOU are the one who needs professional help, Rebecca."     O_O      

We both went to a friend’s gig a couple of weeks ago, and I saw the friend again this weekend, and out of the blue she said "I have to say, it was pretty good seeing Jones sane again.  Like… really really normal.  I always knew he had it in him."  
That’s quite a turn-around from someone that he once proposed a wife swap with (she was Mikey’s soon-to-be-ex girlfriend, Jones felt he would be better off with a hippy stoner like her and that I would better suit a metal head like Mikey, so he sat on the end of her bed one morning to tell her that.  And you thought that Twilight dude was a creep…). 

I don’t really know what she means by sane again.  He’s always been crazy in my book.   This isn’t a return to normalcy.  This is a whole new person.  It’s pretty weird how being mentally ill affects your entire personality.  Things that I previously thought were just unfortunate personality quirks or social inadequacies have almost completely disappeared.  Sure, it might be part of a separate concurrent process but it correlates with the slow ascent back into sanity and his psych nurse always said that having an odd personality tends to turn up in cases of psychosis a lot more than the general population.  

The point is, one can have a conversation with him and dare I say maybe even… fun?   Sober fun too.   Whatever this new person has done with the old Jones, I don’t think anyone is going to be sending a search party out for his body.  I think we should all just play along and accept Armen Tanzarian as Principal Skinner as if nothing ever happened.  

He’s off meds now and that means he doesn’t have any more blood tests to monitor the level of olanzapine in his system.  The same blood tests he thought were drug screens.   So it’s a bit early to call it yet.  His improved social skills are a double-edged sword – making friends again will mean making connections again, and connections means temptations and opportunities.  Still being separated means I have less ability to monitor it too, although the Palex means I have just as much reason to.  That makes me a bit nervous.   Something about the distance I can throw him…  blah blah.

But still, it’s proof that he shouldn’t be completely written off just yet.  There may actually be a cure for zombie-ism after all.  Stay tuned.