20 Years Older

Based on some true events, with identifying information obscured. Should you somehow manage to uncover any identities, please do not harass anyone.

By Snarky LisaPublished about 9 hours ago • 8 min read

He was 20 years older than I was, give or take. In many ways, he was a fairly typical American man of his age.

He had a wife and children, he worked a 9 to 5 job five days a week to pay most bills, and he was good at fixing equipment in his free time. I’m really not sure if he ever liked football, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he did.

While not as Anglo-Saxon as many of his neighbours, he had a close enough build to pass off as one of their own. Besides, he was from a rather respectable family. His own father held down a government job prior to retiring and he had another close relative working at a church.

Unlike many of his peers, though, he had a solid presence in the online world. I don’t just mean a private Facebook account or some heavily curated corporate Twitter or LinkedIn. He actually had a video channel and streams about trendy shows and music cool with the kids.

He also wasn’t afraid to call injustice out, effectively solidifying his positive reputation despite his unusually devout Christian faith compared to many of his viewers. It wasn’t exactly of the political kind most times, of course, but still.

I never really knew him that well. I mean, I watched his videos from time to time. But I wasn’t a die-hard fangirl the way so many of his fans were back in the day. I didn’t watch everything he posted, I avoided engaging with his content discussion boards a lot, and I certainly wasn’t interested in making fan material for him. Nonetheless, I knew who he was.

In multiple fashions, I was and still am the opposite of him. He was always outgoing; me, more reserved. He took solace in antique ornamentals I couldn’t ever name. I was never as religious as him. We’re generations and a border apart, and I definitely can’t pass off as someone of settler descent the way he can — no matter which side of the chopped 49th parallel I’m on.

Most importantly, however, he possessed the kind of charisma I could never quite have no matter what. Whether he had enough sleep or not, regardless of how many documents he had to finish at work, no matter how much burnout he had to suppress or how many idiots he encountered, he always had an air of outward conviction I struggled to maintain.

Nevertheless, I still had the gall to find what seemed like cracks in his image. They were subtle, and likely false flags. But I couldn’t help but notice the questions he dodged. The select few people he acted…different around. He wasn’t obviously fearful, of course. However, he was strangely grounded in a way he wasn’t around most.

It was my blind suspicion that caught his eye for all the wrong reasons. I managed to keep it under plastic wraps at first. As the days went by, though, he caught on. This realization ended up sealing my fate with him.

…

The room I sat in was quiet. It was also dark, thus prompting me to turn on one of its lights in hopes for some slight comfort. The weather outside was rather chilly, although the insulation in my vicinity obscured much of it.

Whoosh whoosh, echoes of a breeze outdoors went.

Like many others around the Internet creator before me, I got into a call with him. He found out about my exploits, after all, and wanted to find out more.

In his circles, avoiding his requests for too long while being a person of interest was a one way ticket to eternal mockery. It was a train line I did not wish to take. Besides, it was also rude anyway. I didn’t want to make things worse after my idiocy led me down the wrong trail of clues. Nevertheless, I still got the discount version of the pass.

I was first properly introduced to him by some friends of his. After that was done, he started talking.

The first few-ish questions were fairly normal. He asked for a rough outline as to what really happened, although he didn’t seem too happy no matter what I answered. I don’t begrudge him for it, especially considering what he was dubiously fed from one of his other friends about me. It was the next question that gave me pause.

He asked about my psychiatric history.

What is the relevance of this? I wondered, confused.

My body was still on the same side of the room it had been since the start of the call: seated on a chair, near a desk in a questionably insulated area, hands gracing the hardware of an electronic device. My mind, however, was not.

Just as suddenly as the questioning from the man commenced, I became an outside observer of my own physical presence. An observer with a decent remote control, mind you, but an observer nonetheless. Someone with my clothes, my body, and my voice was in front of a glimmering digital display, but it didn’t quite register as me.

Oh God, I panicked, how do I even respond to this?

To be clear: he wasn’t asking if I had a bad day. He wasn’t vaguely wondering if I had come down with some morning fatigue or, conversely, if I had recently dealt with a death in the family I keeled over to mourn. He wanted a definite diagnosis. A scientific name for how knocked out I seemed.

Don’t get me wrong. I had mentally practised a bit for this sort of situation. I watched leaked footage, analyzed popular responses, and managed to connect with a few people in his circles beforehand. What I wasn’t prepared for was the question he had just asked.

I was so confident I could avoid it if I just tried hard enough. I thought I’d be off the looped hook if I forced myself fully awake, kept my tone proper, and didn’t stutter a line. But I guess I was still doomed from the beginning, if his pivot here was anything to go by.

Memories came flooding of professionals floating in and out of my life. Appointments where I felt a far different kind of emotional dread from the confusion they said I had. Secrets of obscured mistreatment and scars I kept because they didn’t register to me as anything wrong until it was too late.

As the years passed, I became increasingly suspicious of what was going on. The symptoms that didn’t seem to match up; the inconsistent stories I had been told about my childhood demeanour. All around submissive, yet extremely assertive somehow? A social butterfly, but unable to socialize? Analytical of human cues emotional and physical, yet absolutely clueless?

But how the hell could I explain this to some older, respected, all-American man who had much of my online presence’s fate at his fingertips despite barely knowing me? His world was full of blacks and whites; referencing the colours, of course, and not anything to do with race.

Yes was yes and no was no. There were normal people, and then the criminals and cheats of the world like gangsters and shoplifters and anyone who dared touch them with even a dangling pole. Categories of most things — hobbies, media, morality, sickness — were clearly delineated to him, and there was little to no room for grey or ambiguity in his eyes.

So I told him the truth — the short version, of course. Three words: I don’t know.

He didn’t believe me.

“It’s a yes or no question,” I remember him saying. “You’re old enough to know the answer.”

Was I? I wondered. I mean, not even the healthcare professionals themselves could agree on what I was.

Shoved into an intangible corner, I decided to just succumb and say I was diagnosed with what he was guessing. Indeed, that specifically was true — even if I had been given conflicting messaging suggesting other mishaps in the past.

In disbelief, the man on the other side of the screen coldly insisted I was lying. He demanded an explanation for my unwittingly forced confession — one which I improvised to him, as I was already in trouble and didn’t wish to worsen things by throwing in any version of my life story.

I wanted to be treated normally, I tried to get across in some wording that I’ve long since forgotten. It was a similar excuse to what he had heard from at least one of his rivals in the past, but I had to say something. Besides, it’s not like that also wasn’t true.

“Oh, come on!” piercing voices echoed through the earphones tightening my head.

Disliking the sudden change in noise level, I summoned the control center on my device to lower the volume. My heart began to alternate between skipping beats and racing with the pace of the wind picking up outside. Before it could even start to return to a normal rhythm, I was swimming in the throes of ad libbing the rest of my entire call with him.

The rest of the call was clouded in low-visibility fog. I cannot recall much of it beyond the roughest of ideas, if at all. Some artist tried to calm things down ever so slightly in my favour, but it didn’t stick. More accusations were thrown at me that were dubious at best and point-blank based on lies the callers were told at worst.

Mixed in, though, was a nugget of truth. I was horrible at communication when it came to certain high stakes, that was for sure. I did struggle to properly fit in when I needed to, and failed to quiet down when I should have instead of running into a figurative fire lit from an unknown box of matches.

After a surprisingly short set of minutes my warped brain had perceived as much longer, the call was over. With that, the phantom from the other side of my room shoved itself back into my figure.

…

Months passed. The artist who attempted to settle things down during my call with him soon couldn’t settle their own life or affairs properly, spiraling into creating unhinged public screeds and scribbles that got them mocked by the public and cost their friendship with the 40-ish year old all-American man.

The man, in the meantime, started to struggle with keeping his own wholesome family together, with arguments breaking out daily and scrutiny dominating public analysis of its dynamics. In an ironic twist, he ended up being unsure of his own diagnoses as well.

I never returned near the old places he hailed from, let alone to. He and his other friends who led me to him had treasure troves of power wrapped in platinum, after all. But as the years passed, I began to wonder whether he’d ease up on me if I decided to ring him up again.

In the end, though, I passed up on the idea. The artist who had defended me had become synonymous with hysteria of a worse kind than even I did during the call. I already bore the touch of a wraith, and there was no way I was going to let that touch define my being.

I know it likely sounds rather peculiar, to be spooked out by such a simple voice conversation over computational devices. But to this day, his words about my psychological state still haunt me.

Perhaps some things — no matter how confusing the answers may be or how dead ended the paths they must lead — are unavoidable.