I slip out of bed at seven on the dot as I always do. I shuffle in a non-committal manner towards the door of my room and out into the hallway, avoiding Kitty, who is rocking back and forward in the middle of the exit.
My current roommate can be found like this at any given hour on a good day, filling her time with her rudimentary hobby. On a bad day, she is more heard than seen, usually finding herself in solitary or somewhere worse but out of sight. Out of my sight, anyway. But not out of mind, no pun intended.
Making my way to the meds counter, I chuckle at my own joke, and when I see Nurse Jamie mixing the meds and putting them into the little white paper cups, I lose my smile, resigned to the mundane routine of how my every day ran. I don't particularly love taking the meds, but I'm aware of two definitive things here: Firstly, it's next to impossible not to take them anymore. The nurses always make me stand and swallow them in front of the counter and poke my tongue out to prove that I have. And secondly, if somehow I wasn't forced to take them, I would hate the thought of what might happen.
It's been months since my last episode, and the haze that the drugs create is much softer than the aftershock the nightmare of the episodes causes. Either way, all of the above is far better than what happened the night surrounded by a pile of innocent people that were mortally wounded or worse. No. For me it's simple; take the meds and live a semi-normal life. As normal as my life can be in this institution I now call home, that is. It's coming up to a full year now that I've called Beta Stone Lodge my home. I'm almost accustomed to the regimented life of each day. Wake up, take the meds, sleep off the after affects, lunch, therapy, more therapy, and then one-on-one sessions with Dr. Jasper. It wasn't the life I wanted to live, but whatever they're giving me here stopped the attacks for two months solid, and that alone gave me a glimpse of something I haven't had in a while: hope. The pity of that particular irony does not escape me. For now, I pursue the distant possibility of a future where I won't have to live this secluded, lonely, and controlled life. Maybe after I complete my care here, I won't always dream about my body burning and splitting into pieces., my mind being pulled into a different reality, one where I am someone else. Something not human. Perhaps I will be free of the night terrors that plague me, putting pictures into my turbulent brain and showing me a future where I become someone else. Someone horrid. Evil. Maybe one day, when I am well, I won't dream about turning into a monster. The doctor calls it delusions, an altered reality that is a part of my many disorders, the outcome of a troubled childhood I barely recall. But when I'm alone, pondering the meaning of it all, I often feel like it's more than that. Something deep inside my subconscious feels like it could be more than anyone truly understands. My mind, it calls to me, beckoning me to uncover the truth. But what exactly is the truth? Who and what am I? Maybe soon I'll find someone who believes me when I say I'm not sick. I know it sounds like the typical 'it's not me, it's them' story here, but I swear it's not.
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