A Psychotic's Love Letter

Jewel arrives home from the gym, where she went after work. She enters her bedroom to lay down the tote bag she lugs to and from work and remove her stiletto heels and then enters her kitchen to retrieve from the refrigerator a bottle of alkaline water.

With the bottle in hand, Jewel reenters the bedroom and then sits down at her computer desk and turns on her computer to check her email. While sifting through her emails, one email grabs Jewel's attention. It's an email from Jerrod Thomas, an old flame.

Jewel and Jerrod dated in high school and eventually grew apart. Shortly after their amicable breakup they relocated to separate cities. Like others acquainted with him, she recalls when he seemingly had the world on a string.

Like Jewel, Jerrod was popular and attractive and so never alone on Friday and Saturday nights. Her being the high school's head cheerleader and him being its football team's first-string running back and basketball team's starting small forward meant their also having mutual friends. Among hers and others' recollections is his being extraordinarily athletic as well as someone who showed great dance moves at house parties.

As a high school and college basketball small forward and football running back, Jerrod set still unbroken local, state and national records. He was part of his college basketball team's first three championship squads, and the third championship win is still widely discussed and referred to as "The Game." His team, the underdog, was down 45 points at the start of the fourth quarter when the junior went INSANE (no pun intended) on offense.

Jerrod sunk multiple 3-point shots--one from half court--and repeatedly split double, triple, quadruple and quintuple defenders for a dazzling array of dunks, layups and trick shots. The game-capper was him splitting five defenders at the free throw line and then leaping and soaring to the basket, spinning 360 degrees in the air and then coming down with a thunderous slam dunk. It made the fans either roar or stare in bug-eyed, slack-jawed amazement and is a regular basketball video highlight inclusion.

After "The Game," prevalent on the faces of the opposing squad, its coaching staff and its fans' faces was an expression that read "What the fuck just happened?!" It was as if they had seen the Second Coming or God Himself. Jerrod's phenomenal game performances made him the talk of basketball fans in barbershops and elsewhere worldwide and a top NBA draft prospect.

Jerrod would have been the NBA's top draft pick the following June and was ready to enter the draft. Then the affliction of his mother, maternal grandfather and a maternal aunt ended his ambitions. He soon dropped out and his father traveled to and picked him up from the campus to move him back to his hometown to live with him.

Jerrod's father had divorced his mother long before her condition because of her repeated marital infidelity. It was several years after their divorce that his mother started acting strangely. The particular behavior that led to her commitment to a mental health facility was her sitting catatonically in the parking lot of a busy supermarket.

Jerrod's college coeds, administrators and faculty have recalled him once during that fateful college semester yelling "Shut the fuck up, asshole!" while alone in the student life center and another time wandering the courtyard aimlessly while muttering incoherently to himself, growling and chewing on his shirt and him neglecting his grooming and hygiene. Expectedly, the reporting of Jerrod's schizophrenia meant NBA teams losing interest in him. He would have been lucky if a team had acquired him even as a walk on.

Jerrod's father, someone Jerrod has always idolized, tried mightily to care for him. However, a military career and a successful entrepreneurship could not have primed the retired US Army senior enlisted man for handling his child's schizophrenia. It took much prodding and pleading from friends, family, neighbors and associates for Jerrod's willful father to have him committed.

Jewel opens the email and knows instantly from its disjointed content that Jerrod is off his medication. This is no surprise given the mental health facility's notoriously bad management. It has been the subject of at least one exposé, and how it has avoided closure for so long has puzzled Jewel and many other people knowledgeable of the facility.

The exposé revealed issues including high staff turnover, patient neglect, missed or wrong medication dosages, patient malnutrition, patients remaining in soiled clothing, food mishandling and lack of dental care. It reported a case of a patient defecating in her clothing and remaining unattended to for at least an hour. Patients must endure this living hell merely for the sin of being mentally ill.

Jewel's mind flashes to images of Jerrod and his father playing basketball one-on-one on a city park's blacktop, throwing a football back and forth, fixing a vehicle and barbecuing and his father attending all of his games and cheering for him. She knows Jerrod's father loves his son. She also knows through her fiancé--a mental health professional who has met Jerrod's father and is familiar with the situation--that red tape, system backlogs and staffing cuts have stymied his father having Jerrod moved to a better facility.

A better facility includes where Jerrod's mother was until her illegitimate son Marion, a trained and licensed mental health professional and Jerrod's half-brother, took her in. Jerrod is in the sole local facility that had patient room available when his father was searching for mental health facilities for him. His father chose to have him in a local facility to facilitate his visiting Jerrod.

Jewel's fiancé, Nathaniel, has called the difficult situations of Jerrod's father and others with loved ones in the system "a hot mess" and "a total disaster." He has also said "Suggestions for improvements have fallen on deaf ears. The system's failing the patients and their families, and those who can fix it don't seem to care enough to do so." As a mere cog in the wheel, he is powerless to make the changes he and so many others desire.

Jewel winces throughout her reading of Jerrod's letter.

"Dear Jewel,

"Anyway, let me just say that I want to ask you look so good today a question. How do I know--i know--because you always look good to me. I am going to get straight to the point of the matter is: I love--What is it?--you and really. And I want to what i need to know whether you will marry me.

"I really may be am love you slightly psychotic a nice guy. As a matter of fact--Well--I am very well. (Can't you and I ought to get together tell by my letter?) You know how I aim to please me and you ought to get together. And--you really did look good when i last saw you really ought to visit me.

"We could all do all the romantic things all romantics do all you love me as much as I love you all? I hear someday wedding bells just around the corner... of... the closet (cramped?). They sound good to me, and you and I ought to get together. Will you marry me? And you and I ought to get together.

"Just think of the caring and sharing, the laughter and conversation, the long walks together that could be a reality after I leave this asylum I am coming home to you.

"i just wish upon a star I could eat in peace without being pricked with needles that you would visit me sometime. Am I making I cents... sense... that you do not understand.

"'Please repeat,'" the Israeli woman begged. And eventually, he stopped asking her. Comprendez-vouz vouz-aimez moi? How do you like my French kissing... Uhh... dressing and undressing?

"Well, I awoke today at 10 a.m. thinking of you feeling myself good... going to the moon? Shall we get together? My daily breakfast of rocket-fuel soda ensures that I do not realize how tall I am right now until I have a lift in the morning. Do you realize how tall I am right now much I love you?

"I love you more than there were tall trees flanking the House of Glory words can express. (Espresso! You would like some, would you not?) I guess, hope that that is good enough for you--and I hope that that is good--you feel the same about me, and you and I ought to get together.

"Sigh. Memories so bittersweet. Last time I saw I you must depart better go when I say 'go' on a green light. Well, I guess that is life--a series of green, yellow and red lights up my world. Hey, but I am my own car! But what it is is a red sports car it is has been for some time impounded since I have been waiting for you to visit me. (Why do these things happen to yours truly? Why do these things always have to happen to yours truly?) Do you know why I really love you so much?

"Because you are the --sunshine of my night descended upon the metro?--jewel of my eyes. Pretty sweet tasting--Huh?--you are to me the best is yet to come to the world has to offer. I hope that you will visit me soon I am tired of waiting for you are the candied apple of my eyes have not offended you.

"I am here to defend you to the death and I ought to get together we will conquer the world from the demons of the world at large. Let's unite and conquer the world is ours to take!

"Well, I guess I will have to close my eyes and imagine that you are with me in my mind is okay is a mighty fortress against the invading demons of the world at large. I am not as crazy as you think waiting for your lips are so sweet reply. And I am nameless without you and I ought to get together and soon I will be free you from the demons of the world.

"Yours truly is the best,

"Who I am?"

Jewel opens the included email attachment. It's a picture of Jerrod with uncombed hair, sunken eyes with dark circles, a sunken face and him grinning with his teeth either missing or rotten. It is captioned "Hello, my beautiful Jewel. It's me."

Jewel simultaneously lowers her head and covers her face and then sobs.