Beautiful Seaweed

I once watched a movie called "Beautiful Mind" or "A Beautiful Mind."  It may have been called "The Beautiful Mind," but I don't think so.  It was about a brilliant, brilliant mathematician (you can tell he was really brilliant by the fact that I used "brilliant" twice, back to back) who suffered from a debilitating mental illness - schizophrenia, I believe, but my recollection isn't clear on that, either.  Come to think of it, I'm not sure I even watched the movie.  Maybe I read a review about it from someone who watched it or maybe I overheard someone telling someone else about a review that he read.

Anyway, this guy was bedeviled by a group of individuals that he could clearly see but that did not, in fact, exist.  They talked to him, usually in a frightening, aggressive manner, full of paranoia and delusion.  They didn't have his best interests in mind.  No one else could see them which is how I figured out that he was mentally ill.  It's not a good sign generally when you hold conversations with people who no one else can see.  It must be very distracting at dinner parties what with all the people talking, both real and imaginary.  

These people caused a lot of problems for the mathematician so he sought competent psychiatric help to make them go somewhere else.  I remember a guy in a suit and a little girl being most problematic. For the mathematician, that is, not the psychiatrist, who was doing just fine.  The analysis helped him out a lot; he got better.  The last scene of the movie was in the psychiatrist's office; we listen in as the doctor congratulates the math guy on his recovery, pointing out the fact that he had successfully overcome the existence of the imaginary people.

As the math guy gets up to leave the camera pans out, and we see the little girl and the guy in a suit sitting quietly in the corner.  The math guy smiles at them and they smile back.  There seems to be an agreement implicit in their smiles.

I like the imagery.  It's how I feel sometimes.  I'm still crazy but I'm not that crazy.  I'm not can't-go-out-in-public crazy although it's good that SuperK is often with me, to serve as a buffer between me and the normal people.  I like the idea that the imaginary people were still there but not causing so many problems.  I think that's a good goal for people like me.  The imaginary people are free to stay as long as they behave themselves.  I'm not insisting that they go away, anymore.  

It's like letting the drunk guy stay in the meeting as long as he sits quietly.