Max called me at 5.30 a.m. in the fits of a panic attack, telling me things about how he couldn't breathe and was going to die, how I wasn't allowed to say his name because it made me sound like his girlfriend, how he had a crush on me when my hair was blue, how he would build a huge home in the future with space for all of us who like Totoro and Haruki Murakami, how he needed to tell Knives Chau how badly she had hurt him when they had a fling two years ago, and just generally spewing out so many strange things as to actually make me really nervous for him ("I want to dance when I see you next. Do you want to dance with me? We should dance."). We breathed through it and he calmed down once he started describing in detail the dinner he would cook for O and I when next we see him, but was still far from coherent when he hung up fifteen minutes later to call O.
I don't think I ever wrote about it here, but Max had a complete mental breakdown around New Years and is at a psychiatric hospital. Meeting him for coffee with O a few weeks ago felt surreal. He told us all about the delusions and obsessions he had, and it sounded like one of the scariest things in the world. He was on his way to getting better, but seeing him was strange - he felt like Max, but x1.5 in speed, both thinking and talking. The result had a bit of an uncanny valley feel to it. Something still felt seriously off. I told him to call me at any time of the day if he needed to, so in that respect I'm glad he felt like he could, and I'm glad I could talk him down from some of the hysterics, but the encounter leaves you with this kinda sick feeling in your stomach. Going back to sleep and waking up a few hours later makes you wonder if it was all just a strange dream.
"You know," Max told me when I was helping him get his breathing under control. "You've been through some of this shit. You know." My panic attacks were never near the scale of his, I'm sure, but it felt both good to know what to do and a pretty intimidating thought that what I go through when things are really rough is a small version of what Max goes through, and if I don't look out for myself, I could end up just like that. Max has always been a super rational person, but he blames the fact that he hasn't allowed himself to be emotional for all of the shit that happened to him. "I tried lifting the whole world - school, my social life, work, thoughts about architecture in general, my girlfriend - on my intellect alone. I need to involve my emotions. I can't lift that much without them. It's too heavy."
This whole affair just makes me feel heartbroken for him. He was one of my closest friends in school and someone I really like, and it's hard to know what to do when he seems so helpless and alone. There's not much I can do, apart from being there if he needs me to be, and just hoping he's getting the care and attention he needs at the place he's staying, even if he hates it there. It's like he's caught in a deep dried out well somewhere, and I can't reach him so I sit at the edge and try to at least let him know that I care about him being down there. I just want him to get better.
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