Between the Ears (tWitch)

If you or a loved one is experiencing suicidal thoughts or ideations, PLEASE call 988, the national helpline for suicide prevention and mental health crises within the United States.

***

I am eighth in line at the pharmacy counter in my local CVS, the least happy place on earth. The woman in front of me wears black leggings, black Ugg boots, and a thick, black, hoodie. She alternates between urgent muttering and pacing side to side, pausing, then starting over. She is either in need of her next hit, or in terrible pain, or both. In any case, I want her to be gone, to go somewhere else so I can survive my wait in peace and noodle on my phone. All those apocalyptic movies pop in my head, where people begin to turn on each other. There is always that scene when one presumably nice person senses this is the moment when their life might truly be at risk, and they assert themselves. Maybe they grab the old shotgun from behind the hutch and shoot the guy who desperately wants shelter in this brand new, lawless society that has just sprung up. My life is not at risk, and this poor woman in line does not imminently need shelter, but she is a weak link keeping me from my prescription heartburn medication.

“Did you hear ‘bout Twitch? You know, Ellen and all that. I mean, his kids are so beautiful,” says the woman behind me. She has wonderful, dyed blonde, curly hair that sprouts from her head every which way. She is about four foot eleven and, I get the feeling, not someone to trifle with. I like her immediately. “I just don’t get it. He had it, ya know? He jus’ had it.”

I smile at her to say, hey, this sucks, but at least we’re in this together. She smiles back and continues her conversation. “You never saw him? Well, it’s just sad, is what it is. Jus’ sad.”

Number six is a guy wearing a long-sleeved, “DPR Construction” tee shift. A thin layer of dust coats his shirt, jeans, and tan work boots. He’s just ahead of the woman who goes back and forth from the kids’ medicine display to the Lindor chocolates in a choppy loop. The man keeps to himself. He’s holding something, but I can’t tell what it is, even though I’m straining to identify it. It’s none of my business, but if he doesn’t show his cards, I’ll make up some story about him in my head. I picture him as a new dad, grabbing a prescription and some gripe water for his colicky infant at home, running on only a few hours’ sleep after a hard, physical day at a job site. Or maybe he’s just holding condoms and in line for his Cialis.

Number one has an insurance issue, which means more delay. And number one is a senior citizen. Damn. I roll my eyes and sigh. I hear fragments like “denied” and “90-day supply.” Number one looks bewildered. She is pausing a lot, trying to understand the pharmacy tech who, I know from experience, is not a world class communicator. This customer could pass for my mom at a distance, my mom who sometimes appears snarky or rude in interactions with support staff because her mind does not work as fast as it once did. She looks confused a lot and scrunches up her face, because she is confused a lot in these conversations. And there is fear too—fear that someone will take advantage of her, tell her about a new CVS credit card that is actually a scam from someone in a CVS uniform who is not even a CVS employee. And just outside those sliding doors, that guy with the scraggly beard will be there again asking for a donation to the humane society. Is it really for the humane society, or is he looking to drain her bank account? If only Gene was still alive, she thinks, he would be here and know how to handle this.

I move to seventh, as the insurance issue seems to be resolved and the elderly lady shuffles on with her dull-wooded cane. As the next woman in line moves forward in her yoga pants, a guy walks up to the side of the counter. He is holding a venti Starbucks drink. The pharmacy tech looks over toward him and nods, but stays with her customer. The guy makes an angry face back to her, then turns to the little boy he came with and admonishes him. I can’t tell what the boy did, but the kid lowers his head and moves closer to who I now assume is his dad. The guy paces in circles and eyes our pharmacy tech again and again, pressing her to get done and come over. I don’t know why he can’t just leave the drink. She finishes with the yoga woman and comes over after motioning to the next customer to wait just a minute. Yeah, just another minute. Cool. That sounds cool. I love waiting here.

Our pharmacy tech then has a quiet, whispered argument with her partner who brought the coffee. I can’t hear it, but they move their heads up and down with fierce emotion, and vibrate their bodies, just shy of pointing at each other. It’s a ten second fight, but it’s a doozy. The man huffs off past our line, strutting as though he won but cussing as though he lost. His boy struggles to keep up, eight feet behind him. Our CVS tech heads back to the register, fastening on a smile halfway through to ready herself.

I raise my phone to await the next few folks ahead of me. I search for “twitch ellen” and learn that Stephen “tWitch” Boss, age forty, took his own life today. He was the DJ on the Ellen DeGeneres show. He had three kids and, by all accounts, seemed happy. He had posted a video of he and his wife dancing in front of their Christmas tree just three days earlier. It reminds me of the photo my wife and I took with our four children, in front of our tree, three days earlier.

I break away from my phone as I move up in line again. I catch my reflection in the dome shaped mirror up to the right, covering a security camera. I look up at myself, alien-looking in the warped reflection. The moment shines the light on my own situation. I’m in line here, picking up heartburn medication, yes, but also the twenty milligram tabs of vilazodone hydrochloride (also know as Viibryd, my third and most successful try at an antidepressant), and the one milligram tabs of clonazepam that I use to manage my anxiety when nothing else can tame it.

I’m here amid this circus of humanity, and I’m as much an attraction as anyone else. I’m in line physically, but mentally I’m contemplating a return to work after months off on a mental health leave. I’ve worked hard on myself. I’ve worked with my therapist and psychiatrist. I’ve been doing all the things. And I’m finally feeling like I might be able to reenter life fully again, sometime in the near future, and retake my place under the big top.

The voice of my friend from behind draws me out of my daydreamy trance. “Well, don’t come if you don’t want. It’s just the reg’lar crowd. We’ll miss ya though. What’s that? The guy’s name? tWitch, like ‘witch’ but with a ‘t’ in front of it. Yup, mm-hmm, that’s him. But like I said, I don’t know. Hell, maybe nobody knows.”

I take one more look on my phone because this man tWitch deserves a few more seconds of my time. This man who had three kids, a demanding job, a marriage, and, it looks like, a dark half that overtook his lightness, trolls who outwitted his more forgiving angels. I don’t know this man, never saw or heard of him until a few moments ago. But I empathize with him.

I reconsider the woman in pain and the pharmacy tech and the old woman. I will probably still want to pluck them off in the movie in my mind the next time I’m eighth in line. But at least, for now, I see each of them in a different light.

I scroll through some celebrity quotes about tWitch. Many contain the typical “thoughts and prayers” comments. One grabs my attention from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson: “You never know what’s happening between the ears. So sorry Boss family. Stay strong.”

Well said, Rock.

You never do know.

***

Please subscribe if you would like new posts mailed to you!