I suppose the strangest thing about Simon and his arrival in my life is how un-strange the entire process has felt.

One day he just showed up.  A tall, lank figure with tangled black hair, standing a few feet outside the fence, watching me work.  He looked as skittish as one of the fawns, so instead of calling out, asking who he was, or what he wanted, I just kept on planting, feeling the light but insistent weight of his gaze.  Eventually we fell into an easy, rambling conversation, talking about nothing, or was it everything, everything but the only thing that mattered, namely what exactly he was doing there.  And then, just like that, he wasn't there.  Like I'd imagined the whole thing.

Which, apparently, I had.

A full week slipped by before he dropped in again.  Another day in the field, warmer this time, and with him feeling bolder as well, actually getting down and dirty in the damp spring soil, tucking each transplant into place.  Sometimes we'd talk, sometimes we wouldn't, and the weird thing was, it didn't seem to matter either way.  Because we were just being there.  Together.  I think that's when I started to get it.  That whatever, whoever, he was, he wasn't out there, in the world, more like in here, inside of me.  Or rather some inexplicable combination of the two.

After that, he seemed to start popping up everywhere.  In the car, waiting out a red light.  Sitting across from me at dinner.  It took me a while, ten or twelve visits, to realize there was a pattern, that it wasn't in fact everywhere, that he'd only make his presence known when we were alone, when it was just the two of us.  I thought at first it was because he scared, solitary by nature.  Only later, after a few offhand remarks he'd made, did I realize that it was for my benefit instead.  That he, or me, or whoever made the rules, had decided it would be just a little too awkward, having me stroll down the supermarket aisle with someone only I could see.

And, yes, don't worry, this whole time I was asking myself all the obvious questions.  Am I going insane?  How long before I break out the chainsaw and leather mask?  But like I said, that was the craziest thing of all.  That it didn't feel one bit crazy.  Like everyone else, I'd had my dark times, times I'd tried to forget, but this wasn't like that at all.  It felt more like a warmth, a light.  Like I'd finally found my way home.  And if someone had come up to me, palm outstretched, with this magic little pill in his hand, a pill that would make it - make him - go away, I would've told that someone to take it himself, preferably in suppository form.

Which means I really am crazy.

It's been a while since that cool spring day, since that very first visit of his, and I've had plenty of time to think things over.  And I've come to a realization, or perhaps just a rationalization, that lets me pretend otherwise, at least for the time being.

The fact is, I've spent my whole life living with imaginary people.  Some of them are memories, of people I haven't seen in thirty years, of ones I spoke to just last week.  Some of them are historical figures, or rather my own tacky renditions thereof, cobbled together from old textbooks, borrowed notes, half-forgotten lectures.  Still more found life as words on paper, or the pairing of incandescent lamp and celluloid stock, or all those frantic pixels, dancing on a screen.  I've grown up in a world where real people pretended to be imaginary ones, and imaginary ones insisted on being real.  And all of them, over the years, have been my friends, my family, my loved ones.  The ones who taught me how to be human, how to endure the daily humiliations that our lives seem to comprise, and enjoy the rare triumphs that nonetheless find us from time to time.

So if Simon is a form of madness, a symptom I'm determined to ignore, then the underlying disease is clearly congenital.  An essential part of who I am.  It also appears to be progressive and, if I'm lucky, terminal as well.  Lucky because sometimes being broken is better than being fixed.  And I'd hate to imagine living in a world where they've found a cure for imagination.