Michael Seidlinger: The Strangest

Veronica does nothing but apologize. She sobs, tears running down her face, with every question. She apologizes.

She is given dozens of pardons. She tells them, “I’m probably the only person that stuck around.”

The prosecutor turns it around on me, looking not for evidence of my relationship with Veronica, but for nuggets of information that can better explain my actions, my very being.

She cries.

Apologizes.

They accept her apology.

Veronica cries for over a minute, and they let her sit there, sobbing. Captured on film. They would turn this against me. They would showcase her distress and label me as the cause. Technically I had caused her quite a bit of distress. But we were the same. She simply couldn’t keep her mouth shut. Where I avoided she appealed. We were both obsessed.

She is afraid and her fear ruins her chance to say much of anything.

When she looks at me, on her way out of the room, she can say nothing. I can only think of how our last encounter went.

I threw up on her, and it should have made me feel sick to have treated her that way. But now it didn’t. That was the past. This was all the past being revisited. I did those things. Can’t take any of it back.

Veronica has nothing left to say to me.

She will move on. She has moved on. Today will depress her but in a week’s time it will pass. Mention of this will eventually cause nothing but a minor flare of sadness. She leaves the courtroom.

She doesn’t stay to hear what I have to say.

The only area left worth judging was where I had hidden most of my thoughts, my feelings, where I had gone to seek acceptance when I couldn’t bear to find it in my immediate surrounding. They turned to Meurks.

Meurks’s testimony consisted of over a thousand pages of archival posts, complete with likes and comments.

The prosecutor scrolls down page after page, letting everyone see.

The room is silent, not even the prosecutor speaks.

I watch and become quickly impressed by my activity. It is impressive to think I had developed such a definite and recognizable online presence.

But to the judge and the jury, it was heinous. It was a clear indication of disorder. Meurks is evidence in a case that had been solved long before I ever bothered replying, “Guilty.”

The prosecutor shakes his head.

I hear him say, “Delusions of a madman.”

Keeps scrolling, stopping on some of the longer posts, where I wrapped my mind around the concepts of what I couldn’t outright accept.

The tension in the room increases with every page.

Soon the prosecutor tires of scrolling.

“Secrets of a sociopath.”

And then: “There is nothing to say. ‘Meurks’ is a second forum, a split identity, of a person that lacked one to begin with.”

The prosecutor turns to the judge and begins explaining some of the broad details.

I want to know:

When is it my turn?

The entire room sighs as I stand up, understanding what this means. Their “madman” is about to speak. Unlike what they expect, I can speak well.

I can and will. Just because I mumbled, ate my words, covered my mouth so that none could hear, or, as in most cases, just didn’t express myself, didn’t say much of anything. Didn’t bother to put myself out there, fearing that I would be sent back with the label, “no thanks.”

I fear rejection. Standing here, about to speak, I fear that they will reject me too. But I can only be genuine.

And I want to ask them for forgiveness.

I cannot change what I did. I cannot raise the dead.

I can only explain my actions; I can only be who I have become.

And then I begin speaking.

I wouldn’t have said much of anything, I would have settled on the one sentence and maybe not even that. But I speak.

There is an explanation, I am sure of it.

I tell the room, that I am sorry. I really am. This is sincerity from someone that wasn’t always sincere.

I tell them, once again, that I am sorry.

I explain my past. Or whatever little I have in the way of a past.

I talk about how impossible it can seem, sometimes, to coexist among so many others that evidently do so much better.

I tell them that I’m a fraud. I stand for everything because I don’t settle on one. I don’t believe in any one thing; I don’t even truly believe in myself. I look to you for forgiveness. You see, I have always needed more from people than people need from me.

I don’t know what to say when I’m supposed to say something.

The oddity, my awkwardness, comes from the fact that I fear what might happen if I never again see another human soul.

But at the same time, I look forward to those days when I don’t have to ever leave my room.

I need your kindness, but I also want to take that kindness and flush it down the drain.

That’s what I believe I am: A contradiction among contradictions.

You want an explanation, but just because I don’t fit those descriptions, it doesn’t make me lesser, or somehow a monster. I don’t fit in, but society is big. It is capable of a wide range of diversity.

Look at me and don’t just see a monster, I am also a magician; I want your approval. I want to be with people. I want to fit in but it always felt so intense, the need to do so, so much that I really focused on the “how” instead of the “why.” Perhaps the ‘living’ part is all a person has — their actions, their days. The struggle is the gain; the end is the end. There is no beginning because I can no longer remember it. It’s just a date in the past. Not a very memorable one at that. I did not live well. But I am living. I still want to live.”

I tell them, I never made anything simple.

The room was quiet, but not quite listening.

The room felt empty.

I turn to look at the audience. They hadn’t heard a single word.

No one listens to an outsider. My genuineness sounded like the ravings of their label. A “madman.”

I sit down, and in moments, it clicked into place. No one in the room was genuine. It was all routine, a demonstration. If I had been given a hearing, my voice would have been heard. They didn’t hear me. They waited for me to finish speaking so they could speak for me.

They made me into an example.

I became reference to everything they weren’t.

What happened next was of little interest to me. I want to go back to my cell. The prosecutor speaks like I hadn’t said anything. He talks about the victim, the man I murdered; the man I murdered, already the victim, is further victimized. The prosecutor focuses in on the life I stole from the man. The prosecutor focuses in on all the lost opportunities, the man’s grieving family, and beyond that, the prosecutor speaks of the victim as a greater man that I could be. I am spoken about like something less. Not just a loner. Nothing much at all. The talk continues and then it ends.

I asked for forgiveness. The judge’s sole reply:

“Do you have anything to say?”

I had said it all. But they couldn’t see.

Couldn’t hear. And so I said, “No.”

I walk back to the officer that led me into the courtroom, I want to return to my cell. I couldn’t figure it out. Reaching for an explanation, I come up empty. What had been said, what had been done, was absurd. It all fit so perfectly it felt wrong. I am a victim, I thought. And then that brought up a rush of anger. That’s what I feel. The absurdity of it all. Their glares, their assumption and entitlement to label a man without letting the man first label himself. Their demands … it makes me dizzy. It’s enough to sicken me.