The heavy metal door creaked as it slid across the floor, and my heart dropped. You could hear the click of the deadbolt from the door that sealed me in. I pretended I didn’t care as I walked into the bathroom. It was one of the two rooms I have, but somehow they still don’t feel like mine. I stare back into myself as I look into the mirror.

I used to look normal.

Not anymore.

My five foot one inch frame, ninety-five pound body, with curly blond hair and big brown eyes have changed. I weighed one hundred and fifteen pounds two weeks ago, and my long blonde hair with perfect ringlets now doesn’t even come to my shoulders. I can’t stop myself from pulling it out. The worst part is my eyes tell the whole story. They’re no longer happy and bright, but rather sunken into my face and depressed. They try not to cry, but the water in them build up and begins to fall. My eyes don’t even stay open. My body doesn’t want to be awake. It all wants to sleep; my mind doesn’t allow that. My mind tries to forget, but it can’t.

It really isn’t my fault.

“Victoria, remember to take your pills. You need them.” The nurse calls from the small open window in the door. “I know you don’t want to, but you want to get better right? You don’t want to be in here forever do you?”

Of course, that’s my main problem. They force me to take these pills I don’t want to take because they think I’m crazy; they all think I’m crazy. I pick up the two pills and stare at them. One of the pills is purple and the other one is green. The purple one reminds me of a tube. When I shake the pill, I hear a small rattle sound, I like the sound, but I don’t like the pill. It makes my only two friends I ever had slowly fade away.

At first I could only see them at night. Then I could only hear their voices. Now I can’t see them at all.

I’m starting to forget what they look like. I’m starting to forget what their voices sound like. I want to curl up in my bed hugging a pillow close to me, and make myself believe its hugging me back. I want someone to support me. I want someone to make me laugh.

The problem is no one believes me.

I hold onto everything I can as a silent tear falls from my face followed by a lot more. I gasp for air and my breath sounds shaken. My curly hair clings to my tear soaked face like its hanging on for dear life. Every time I breathe, my heart throbs and my lungs burn as they too cry out.

The walls were supposed to help keep me clam. They are a dull green color with an even lighter green ceiling. The tile floor is an egg shell color. The pictures were perfectly stuck to the walls. My favorite picture is of an old farm house with fields of long yellow grass and purple flowers peaking up. It has an old barn off to the left with blackberry bushes creeping up to the soon to be sunken roof.

“I can’t. I can’t do this anymore.” I tell myself. “I’m just not strong enough.”

It all started when I was 8 years old. It was my birthday party and my parents had a bouncy house, a slip n slide, and a pool all set up in my yard. I was so excited. They had everything I asked for. The wooden table covered with a cheap pink table cloth set up with my favorite Barbies was missing its cake. My parents went to go pick it up, and my neighbor stayed to watch over me for the time they were gone.

The bakery was just down the street. I watched the clock. It was an old grandfather clock that stood at least twice as tall as I was. Right across from it sat a leather chair that was in perfect position for me to watch the clock. Slowly five minutes turned into an hour. An hour slowly creaked on to night.

My neighbor called my friends and told them the party had to be canceled. I watched the clock all night.

I stayed at my neighbor’s house for a year. We often went and saw my mom. My dad died the night my party was suppose to have been. My mom just liked to sleep.

She had a lot of wires and tubes hooked up to her. The doctors said it is just to help her sleep.

I loved telling my mom stories. Even though she never replied, it’s what helped me through.

We went to see my mom everyday. My neighbor didn’t want me after my mom had died. I guess the machines were broken because the doctors said she never woke up from her nap.

Two years since my mom has passed, I was eleven years old. The kids in my new house picked on me. I only had one friend in the house. Her name was Martha and she was beautiful. She had brown hair with a red tint that came out in the summertime. Her freckles put some color in her pale face. My favorite thing was her eyes. They were bright green.

We made a pact, just the two of us. We both agreed from that point on we were always going to be there for each other. We were never to leave each others side because we were the only ones who understood each other.

Every time someone took me from the house, the lady who runs things told me to behave. She said that if I did something wrong, something bad, that my new family would send me back.

I never did anything wrong and I always got sent back to the house within a couple of months.

Everyone told the lady who ran the house that I wasn’t normal. That I talked to people that weren’t really alive. I was heartbroken. Who would want to say lies about me? I was never bad. I never needed to go to the hospital, I never broke a bone or got really sick.

That is when I first started to get this way. To get depressed. Then I started to cry before I went to bed every night. It became a habit. I couldn’t sleep unless I cried. If I didn’t have a reason to cry, I would think of one. It was really hard on an eleven year old to be thrown into a home with at least twenty other girls who hated me.

No one wanted me. I became the girl who was not wanted by anyone.

Martha and I kept our pact. They always took Martha with me, and she always came back with me too. I kept swapping from house to house and I eventually made a new friend. I was accepted by someone other than Martha.

His name was Joshua. He often accused me of things I didn’t do, but he understood me. I didn’t want anything else but to be loved.

I got out of the thing they called a foster system when I was eighteen. Martha and I moved out together. She waited until I was eighteen that way she didn’t leave me.

Martha insisted that Joshua should come live with us. He was our friend for four years and he was the only other person who understood us. His parents died too. He understood what it was like for everyone to hate him. He got made fun of and then became unnoticeable like me.

After Joshua moved in, the cheery room that was always bright with sunlight peeking through the enormous, colorful, church like windows became gloomy. The sunlight hid behind the curtains wanting to come in, but was to scared to really try. I wish I was like that. I wish I was the sun afraid of Joshua and to scared to come out around him. I wish I was able to hide and not be seen. I am not like the sun.

Maybe, just maybe if I was like the sun I wouldn’t be where I am now. I wouldn’t be in this stupid room. I wouldn’t be locked up and forced to take these pills. I am not crazy. I don’t know why everyone thinks that.

I am here because of Joshua. He is like a leech. He had to suck everything out of me until I was nothing. I belong to him, and he was so attached that even if I tried, I couldn’t shake him off. It was impossible to push him away. That is until he got what he wanted and left. Like a leech, he filled himself up by getting what he needed. Eventually he didn’t need me anymore.

Joshua didn’t fill up with blood though; he filled up with what was left of me. He was a bad mad. I realize that now, but I really thought those were the people. I really thought those were the people who killed my parents. I thought those were the people who put me in a foster home and ruined my life forever.

I hear the heavy door creak open and I sit up. I don’t see people much anymore. I never really did, but now that I am locked up in a room with no windows I realize how much I loved watching everyone. Even my doctors don’t talk to me. Not since I realized that the purple pill, the one that silently rattles when shaken by your ear, made my friends go away.

I quickly realized who was standing at the door. They are the ones who questioned the “accident” of “those” people. They wouldn’t stop asking me questions until I told them what they wanted to hear. What they wanted to hear wasn’t the truth.

* * * *

Name: Victoria Laurance

Age: 19

Diagnosis: Schizophrenia

Crime: Nothing. She thinks she killed two men by a hand help pistol.

Our Intention: To help her get over the fact that Martha and Joshua are not real. To help her realize the reality she made up in her mind is not real. She was never in a foster home. Her parents are both alive. Her parents came for help when she was 8 years old when they realized she was creating a fake reality.

Her Actions: Victoria often beats herself up thinking Joshua is doing it. Victoria refuses to take any pills, and have everything but her two new pills to help her overcome schizophrenia.

Other Comments: We need Victoria’s parents to come visit her. She believes they died.

Doctor’s signature: Ray Stone