Schizophrenia, 1

I was six when it first started. I remember the brown and white walls of the hospital room, being held down by the nurses as they yelled at you, demanding to know why I was so dehydrated. I stayed quiet, too afraid to tell them that I’d heard a voice telling me the drinks were poisoned. A tiny blue cup of grape juice on the kitchen table that I was too afraid to put near my lips.

That was childhood. Dragon Tales, cartoons of video games you liked more than me, and a crippling fear of the eyes that came from every corner. Judged for my nakedness, voices that crept into my mind from every corner, prying and godly. You were so unaware and yet knew too much, talking about me as if I weren’t there about how wrong I was in all the ways you thought counted.

Do you know I still draw eyes to this day? It all started in that tiny purple book, faded flowers on its cover. Ripped page with a scrawled eye peering through, surrounded by blood from a hangnail I had pulled too far. It was the first way I was able to get them out, stinging and smelling of iron. I didn’t do it again until twenty years later, at titanium’s edge.

You still know nothing about my mind, a secret I’ve better kept from you with the help of pills, pink, white, and blue, like a sick mockery of the patriotism you always put before me.

Life is going well now. Better now that I rely on myself, my voice silently ringing where it counts. May it outring yours.