Day 162 - Hyde Story

Hyde Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

There was no such thing as Jekyll and Hyde syndrome. Erica had researched it. Sure there were several J&H disorders, but those were mostly slang for something else. There was Irritable Male Syndrome and a dual personality disorder that dealt with extreme emotional highs and lows. And those were very real problems. There were lots of very real medical problems that concerned themselves with the abnormal function of the brain – Borderline Personality Disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Multiple personalities, and Bipolar Syndrome. Erica was no doctor, but she had read about them all. None of them were what she was looking for.

Erica was obsessed with the idea that there were two distinctly different people living inside the same body – her body. She was convinced she had some sort of sister creature sharing her existence. She didn’t take a potion like in the book, but she was sure she was experiencing a similar problem as the character in the book.

Erica had consulted doctors and psychiatrists. She had even consulted a priest, a witch doctor and a tarot card reader. She kept a diary of her visits and realized somewhat humorlessly that it all sounded like a set up for a bad joke.

None of them offered her the answers she wanted to hear. None of them would confirm that she had a second person living inside her. She was offered many drugs though.

She had studied disorders that struck twins and cases of Vanishing Twin Syndrome where a fetus is partially or completely reabsorbed by the twin. She didn’t think she was meant to be a twin. There was no evidence of it during her mother’s pregnancy or here and now in her own body. She had a geneticist check for Chimerism, but that proved a dead end as well.

It didn’t really matter even if she was secretly at one time a twin. None of the disorders, mental or physical, would account for her turning into another person now.

A case of Jekyll and Hyde would though. If such a thing really existed. She wasn’t sure if a human could really turn into another person. Would that be a metamorphosis? Like the book? A mutation or evolution? Transubstantiation?  Transmutation? None of it seemed very scientific. It all read like it was something out of a comic book or sci-fi film.

She read too much fiction. She knew that didn’t help her case. Anyone who would listen to her talk about this theory figured she either had some sort of overactive imagination or was full on psychotic. She learned to not talk about it. People were better off not knowing.

Despite people’s best efforts, Erica believed the syndrome could be real. She just didn’t know if she really had it. She felt like she had it. But there was no evidence that there was a Hyde running around some of the time.

Erica became a detective. She recorded herself in her sleep. She interviewed all of her friends, looking for signs of strange behavior. She was hoping that the tapes would reveal some sort of nocturnal personality. The tapes never captured any signs that she was living a secret life at night.

She studied sleepwalking and narcolepsy. There were narcoleptics that seemed awake, had their eyes open, and were actively going through the motions of their days, and yet they were asleep. Could that be what she had, a long blackout during the day? Maybe her problem wasn’t happening at night. Maybe she needed to film herself all day, everyday? But how could she do that? She thought about hiring a detective but didn’t have the money for that type of surveillance.

Erica grew worried. She became distraught. Maybe there was really nothing happening. Maybe she was just herself, and there was no Hyde. She hated that idea. She hated herself for thinking she had been special. She hated herself for doubting that she was special.

Everyone wants to be special. Special powers, special dreams, special futures. Special anything. Special whatever. It’s a nice thought. A nice desire. The Nutty Professor, Two-Face, the Hulk, Jekyll and Hyde. All sorts of literary characters. Good, bad, hero, villain, it doesn’t matter. They all get special powers. They all get to be special. Was being plain and ordinary so bad? She wasn’t sure anymore. Would that be so wrong or make her worthless? Did she really need to be special in order to be happy? She didn’t know.

Erica came up with a new thought. Maybe all the great works of literature had gotten it wrong. Maybe there was no great advantage to having a second life. They weren’t super powered heroes. And they weren’t the ID personified. They weren’t base or carnal desires that had been repressed. And they weren’t wish fulfillment of any kind. What if they were just like us?

Maybe Hyde was the boring one. Nobody ever thinks about that possibility. What if the flip was boring? Maybe Erica’s Hyde just sat around reading books and watching television. A person could zone out in front of the TV, right? What if there were no special powers, nothing special or out of the ordinary. What if her flip was just as boring as she was? Or what if they were more boring?

Maybe she did have a Hyde, but she couldn’t tell when she transformed. Her Hyde just kept watching TV and drinking her beers and reading her books and all sorts of average ordinary things. She certainly couldn’t remember each and every thing she did every day. Maybe what she thought was poor short term memory retention was really her alter self taking over?

But where was the fun in any of that? What was the point in having a flip if they couldn’t do anything? Everybody thinks they’re going to get to be a superhero. Nobody thinks they’re going to end up being plain and ordinary. Worse, what if it was a weakness? What if her Hyde was weaker or less intelligent?

Erica felt sad. She had ruined the whole experience for herself. She almost hoped she didn’t have a Hyde anymore. It would be just too big a disappointment. In all her thoughts, she failed to consider one thing though – what if she, herself, were Hyde and not the Jekyll in the equation? If she were Hyde that would mean she was free to do anything she wanted. She could be the excitement in life she was so desperate to find. She could have been her own change. Alas, she had trapped herself in her thinking and thus trapped herself in her own boredom, unable to see that freedom was just a simple choice away.