By Tyler Dempsey
When I was in eighth grade I got so depressed I was delusional, convinced everyone at school knew how terribly unhappy I was but they were all pretending they didn’t. But, every now and then, someone would give me a look or a smile and, in that moment, I knew they knew.
I carry my stress around in my stomach, always have. When I was a teenager, I’d have diarrhea or vomit on a weekly or daily basis. Despite owning no money or health insurance my mom took me to the doctor. The doctor sent us home with a plastic container that I had to scoop diarrhea out of the toilet into so they could send it to a lab somewhere. The results were inconclusive.
I used to fantasize in bed about my stepdad’s gun cabinet glowing on the other side of the wall. Thinking of the act, or the word “suicide” would start me hyperventilating. I would desperately try to redirect my mind elsewhere before the thing that had power over me reached a point that was irreversible.
I didn’t know if the depression was a result of my circumstances so much as a byproduct of violence and anger that lived in me but tried so hard to hide. The effort of hiding was causing it to consume me. When I was fifteen, I had a moment during a night like so many other nights where I heard my stepfather yelling at my mom, calling her names. But this time I broke. The anger and other feelings wouldn’t stay back. They oozed and my body convulsed and when it was over it felt like my brain was emptied of electricity. Like everything that used to be the thing or person that was Tyler Dempsey had left. I was a shell that looked like me. I call what happened that night a panic attack but actually have no idea what it was.
A week later, I experienced my first auditory hallucination. It’s hard to describe, but a voice that was both in my ear and also outside whispered like a scream. What did it whisper? Tyler. It said my name. What’s more, the voice was one I recognized. It was Joe Tiger. A friend in grade school that wasn’t my friend anymore. I’d said something that made him mad and he never got over it. It made me sad that he had been a part of this really scary thing. Like fear wasn’t enough, whatever it was wanted to hurt me, too.
When I was in college, more things happened that made me wonder if I was, just maybe, insane. The last day of Freshman year my best friend, Brendan, and I drove to Denton, Texas, for a Pinback concert. It was late getting back. Brendan took backroads and it was raining extremely hard, the sky opening and the wipers fighting but you could barely see the road or our weak headlights. A burst of lightning hit and something very small appeared in the center of the windshield, then expanded, then expanded more, then took over the whole frame. It was veiny and a shade of brown I’ve never seen before or since. It didn’t splatter into the glass but simply vanished as quickly as it appeared. Again, just rain and wipers. Brendan said, “Did you see that?”
Fast forward to Sophomore year. We’re living in the dorms, Brendan and I, one wing apart from each other. We start having dreams. Cryptic, demonic kinds. I started hearing what sounded like a pool ball dropped on the floor of the dorm above me, rolling into the corner the whole building slanted toward. But no one lived in that room. No one lived in the whole wing actually, except me. Another time it sounds like something very, very large, running full speed, ducked its shoulder and tried to burst down my door. But you know dorms, it’s just one long hall with room after room in a line. There’s only the width of the hallway, no way something could get a running start like that. I eventually worked up the nerve and looked but nothing was there. Brendan watched a black thing with long arms walk across his room into his closet. A week later it visited me. I was in bed with my back against the wall facing a window that faced the streetlight. The light flickered and slowly went out. Then my vision distorted. I felt suddenly, irrationally terrified. I realized I couldn’t move. Then it walked into my peripheral vision. Tall, black arms, everything black. It lifted one arm and pointed out the window. Then, just as unexplainably as it appeared, it was gone. Things like this continued till one day my phone rang. The ID said “Brendan.” I picked up and there was a silence so heavy and somehow, I knew exactly what he was going to say, then he said it. “My brother killed himself.” All of the weird stuff stopped after that.
Fast forward some more, a year after my brother was arrested, I got really, really into smoking weed. I lived in California and had this bong as tall as I was. On occasion, I’d get super stoned and different parts of my body would spasm. Kind of like what I’ve read about restless leg syndrome, but it was restless everything. Around that time, I had my second, and, up until now, last auditory hallucination. Again, a voice I knew. It was a previous stepbrother I hadn’t thought of in years. This is what he said: Tyler. In a whisper, just like last time. I didn’t tell you this when I mentioned Joe Tiger, but each time, two months after they said my name, in real life, that person died. Joe was in a car with a friend who’d been drinking and they clipped a guardrail on a bridge on some backroad. My stepbrother, Colton, was caught robbing a convenience store. The details get fuzzy, but somehow a cop shot him. Poof. Gone.
Speaking of spasming, I quit doing it after Colton whispered my name, but one time—this was just a few years ago—I was coming home from a strip club with my friend and he told me something he’d never told anyone but his parents. The jist was: my life could have been irrevocably fucked if we hadn’t had the financial means to fight my way through court. I sat in the passenger seat and he caught himself, and said, “Shit, man, sorry, I didn’t even think about your brother…” but it was too late. Once again it was like a dam in my mind broke. Thoughts and feelings were suddenly flooding out and I started shaking. By the time we got to his apartment it was done but I could barely walk. I sat on his couch like my body and mind were a huge sponge that had gotten wrung out. That feeling continued, accompanied by growing depression and a fear it would happen again. Eventually, it was like the sponge filled back up. Life once again came at me faster than I could process. I never did get that checked out.
Tyler Dempsey is the author of three books and host of Another Fucking Writing Podcast. He lives in Utah with his dog.