Darth Harley was a Bark Lord of the Sith. Of course, Harley knew he wasn’t actually a Sith. The Jedi and the Sith were from long ago in a galaxy far, far away. But, he liked to think of himself that way.
Interestingly, Harley’s favorite movie series wasn’t Star Wars, but the Rocky movies. He loved their theme song Eye of the Tiger:
He liked that even though Rocky was getting knocked down all the time he kept pushing forward. His favorite scene was from Rocky 2 where the champion Apollo Creed’s coach warned him against boxing Rocky for a second match:
Harley liked this because he was the sickest boy in the world, and he was always getting knocked down by life and getting up again. Of course, Harley wasn’t actually the sickest boy in the world. There were plenty of kids sicker than him. But Harley was proud of his ability to overcome mountains.
Harley’s body was healthy, but Doctors told him his mind was sick. He had a friend Amanda whose was mind sick too. She heard voices that other people couldn’t hear sometimes. Amanda was tough though. She knew the voices weren’t real and just ignored them until they went away.
Harley had a “Wonderland Sickness,” that’s how Harley thought of it. He would be going along all nice and usual when he spotted a white rabbit that he decided to chase and would fall into a wonderful/terrible wonderland.
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He knew it wasn’t real, but once he was in it he was stuck for a while. He could hear and see conspiracies and secrets going on around him, even though he knew they weren’t real. Knowing it wasn’t real helped to end the episode, but like hearing voices, encountering secrets/conspiracies was just the way life felt for a while.
What Harley felt was remarkable was that he had learned to fight it. Do you know how they put blinders on horses? Harley did the same thing ignoring people when he wasn’t well and this helped him to gain control and focus. Wonderland thinking was big picture thinking and Harley needed to focus on one simple thing at a time.
His wonderland thinking started when a group of kids in class started a secret club called The Builders. Harley wasn’t invited to join but constantly saw them whispering and passing notes. Soon, he started seeing secrets happening everywhere – what seemed like teachers talking about him, and parents. The world appeared in a secretive/conspiracy way.
Harley also had to be careful not to let his emotions get control over him. One time he worried that he would forget how to ride his bike even though he had been riding for years, and sure enough when he got on his bike, he was clueless about how to balance himself, like he felt the absence of training wheels that had gone away long ago.
One of Harley’s biggest challenges was emails. He constantly worried when he was at the computer that he was blacking out and was sending bad emails to people. He did a lot of research on blacking out and found out many doctors didn’t think it was a real thing. He always kept in mind the steps for sending and erasing emails, and whenever the thought he had sent something bad, he replayed the steps in his mind and usually found some he didn’t recall being recent. If he didn’t recall the 3 dots at the end of an email needed to erase it, maybe he didn’t click on them recently – no bad email sent!
One positive thing Harley got from his illness was reading. He could always find little shifts and twists in texts that others missed. He thought part of this was his allergies, having a reaction at something unusual in the text. Another was his dad got angry a lot so Harley was always on his tiptoes at home, and so he was very sensitive to what the writer was saying.
But, there was something else. One day Harley learned the secret of how to turn wonderland on and off whenever he wanted. When he needed to be creative or thoughtful, he could tap into the energy of that other world without letting it take over. How did Harley do this?