I met him at the Vans retail shop I worked at last summer; his name is Marte. He was very hard to ignore. The first thing that attracted my attention was the butterfly tattoo on his forehead and the fact that he needed to take multiple medications during his break time. I was curious. I wanted to ask what all those medications were for, but at the same time even small eye contact with him would make me shiver.
Marte and I kept having the same break time and forcing myself to eat my lunch with him just made me feel awkward and uncomfortable. I guess Marte felt the same way or he was just being nice; so he talked to me first. “It’s a blue morpho.” “I beg you pardon” I replied with no idea what he just said. “ The butterfly, it’s a blue morpho, it symbolizes a change in luck.” I nodded and smiled back thinking he may not be the worst person to have lunch with. Gradually, the more we talked the more I knew about him.
Marté lived in a foster home for the early part of his life; his family wasn’t the best. He was born in Florida and moved to California when he was four. His parents separated when he was just a kid. There was barely any memory of his father and his mom was in and out of rehab. She wasn’t able to take care of him, so the government arranged for him to live with kids who had the same problem. He dropped out of college because he doubted if college was right for him. He tried to be a make up artist; he even worked for MAC for a few years but he quit after all. “ I was a lost boy,” he said.
He suffered from bipolar for years. Because of the uncertainty in his life, it was hard for it to fade away. He wasn’t doing well in his early twenties; Drugs and alcohol were his only friends. Time was no longer a unit of measure; it was meaningless. There was no differences between day and night; it was simply a blank space where surrounded by loud music which made your ears buzz and your head spin, a space where balance and logic didn’t exist anymore. When he was not sober, the smell of the air was mixed with an extremely exciting high, something mysterious and tempting, floating in the room waiting to be gathered and erupt. Marte constantly lost track of time. He would show up to work even though it wasn’t his shift that day or even forget to show up to work at all. He would shut the whole world out of his bedroom door.
“ Being isolated with myself made me feel safe and free of judgment. Safe with my thoughts and free of insecurities that I need to please others. I idealized the thought of solitude. I wished to live in solitude for the rest of my life. Away from pain and anguish.” he said.
Marte’s mom was also a bipolar and depression patient for most of her life, but she didn’t get the medical attention she was supposed to get. Marte was very close to his mom, even though she wasn’t around him long enough to be a functional mother figure, but she was one of the only family members he ever had. He would transfer multiple buses to visit his mom in rehab, no matter how long that would take him. He said only his mom would understand him; she knew better about him than Marte himself. There were friends that tried to help Marte and listen to his problems but none of them would truly understand him, what it was like to suffer from sudden mood swings, what it was like to have the impulsiveness inside of him and how nightmares hunted him every night. Some of them tried while most of them choose to leave because the rapid description of something they had never experienced in their life made it hard for them to relate. Trying to think of a valid suggestion was even harder. Gradually people just faded away, leaving Marte by himself.
While talking about his mom, Marte was very emotional. “Thinking about her reminds me of all the times I would hop on a bus, all alone with my thoughts, in order to visit her. How I would just try to mend my pain and cry by myself in an attempt to feel better. I had no one expect her. Her face is a blur now but her voice, her gentle touch is vividly alive like a burning fire. It warms me but hurts too.’’ he said.
Marte’s mom had an episode which was a manic phase in a mall and Marte was out of the state when this happened. She caused public damage. No one did anything to help her until policemen held her down and locked her up temporarily in the police station before she was transferred to a prison. Guards locked her in solitary confinement which is often employed for violations of discipline, such as rioting and deadly assault. She simply asked for water but no one responded to her needs; she banged her head against the wall repeatedly. She had no self control over her own behavior without medications and therefore she was screaming and hitting herself aggressively. Through the security tape that Marte’s lawyer showed to him, she was treated like an lab rat, like her existence didn’t matter to anyone. “None of this made any sense; she was clearly ill; she needed help!” his voice was shaking; his fury was bursting out through the phone while talking about how law enforcement treated a mentally ill patient as a criminal. What’s even worse is how he would beat himself up, blaming himself for this injustice to his mom and the fact that she died in prison. Seeing how helpless she was and how she was swallowed alive by pain just broke Marte completely. He sued the guards that were in charge of his mother. All the trials tortured him over and over and needless to say it took him long enough to win the lawsuit.
The few weeks after his mother passed away, he refused to eat, to shower, to do the basic things that would maintain his life. “Yelling, weeping, sobbing, I shed every tear I had inside of me. However, looking back now in my thirties, all the cries were therapeutic and helped me in a certain way. At the same time, there was a urge inside of me to stay strong for myself, to open my arms to myself to make myself better since mom was no longer here to heal me. I’m tired of mental illness owning me, taking over my life. I need to get better. I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in afterlife either but what i do believe in is through my mother’s death, she reached deeper into my being and changed me more than I could ever imaged. I love her and what she stood for. I don’t dedicate myself living fernier but I thank her for helping me to get through so much of my pain.”
There is a tattoo on Marte’s arm which says, “Love you, mommy.” Even though it’s been there for years, the tattoo still reminds him of all the good times they had together. He would still look into her eyes in the mirror every morning, thinking about how much she helped him and loved him. At my age, I can’t imagine what it is like to lose someone that meant so much for me. I didn’t even know what to say or how to react after Marte told me what happened to his mom. A part of my heart aches while writing the whole story down.
Deep down I know that Marte and I were more than coworker, even though all we did together was joke around and eat our sandwiches together and I really appreciated when he would switch shifts with me so I could spend more time with my friends or didn’t need to close and open the shop by myself. It’s interesting that someone who suffered so much would still have a compassionate heart and willing to care for others. I asked him why, he said, “Being bitter and mean and blaming everyone for the unfortunate that happened to me may made me feel better for a split of second. But after a while I don’t even know what I am fighting, there’s no enemy in this life, I am doing this to myself and making myself feel miserable for no reason. I am not the only one that’s in pain.”
Marte won the lawsuit back in 2017 and the compensation helped him back on his feet and he got his life together. He even continued his education by attending a commiunity college. Even though it is difficult to juggle between work in the day and school at night, he managed to handle it somehow. And Marte’s current obsession is his french bull dog named Emmy. “After a long day, coming back to a cute dog that’s excited to see me, just makes me feel loved and needed which is an awesome feeling,” he said. The blue morpho on Marte’s forehead may have changed his luck but I think the only one who was capable of that is Marte himself.