I Know What Rhymes With Orange

Chapter 3 | The Orange Bottle

I Know What Rhymes With Orange

Chapter 3

The Orange Bottle

Sam Aiken is not my imaginary friend. According to my therapist Theresa, Sam is just a hallucination. I like to refer to him as my imaginary friend because well, for one it makes me feel less of a freak. What teenaged girl would like to admit that they're crazy? None, I'll tell you that. Teenagers are stubborn so naturally I've come to ignore my diagnosis. The second reason why to me Sam is just a friend is because just that, he's my friend. He's always been there, in my mind for as long as I can remember.

Theresa tells me that the first time I showed signs of schizophrenia was probably when I was around five. I was told that it's rare for children to have schizophrenia, especially a female, that's why I had undergone so many tests as a child. I would hear a voice speaking to me and I replied, and for some reason replying to a voice that no one else but I can hear is a sign of "development problems".

It was when I was ten that I'd finally been diagnosed correctly as having Undifferentiated Schizophrenia, which basically meant that I showed a little bit off all the types of schizophrenia. I have hallucinations and delusions that cause anxiety, as well as a mild case of isolation, some problems with paying attention, and some other medical technical crap that doesn't matter. I'm fine and I'm totally not a nutcase.

I always appreciated my parents for treating me like a normal person, because I am in fact a normal person. They never treate me differently and I like that. The main reason why I'm normal 'ol Silviana Bareto to them is because they don't really know what normal sounds like. They're not reclusive loners who don't go outside in fear of being swallowed up by the concrete, just deaf.

Yeah, my parents never knew that I was talking to a voice being projected through my brain as a child, and so naturally they had to be told. They were confused and shocked at first, but after a while seeing me mouth off to myself became normal for them since at the time I was having "developmental problems". The voice used to be labeled as my imaginary friend back then and it was suppose to be a phase. It was suppose to go away, but it didn't. Doctors searched and searched and finally decided that Sam needed a more technical and mature name than "Silver's imaginary pal", no Sam needed something fancy, something that was more suitable for their taste. And so I was told that my friend Sam's name was now Schizophrenic Hallucination, but in the end I still prefered Sam.

At first Sam was just an unidentifiable whisper that shortly turned into a voice, a voice that would talk to me ever so often. Then the voice became more distinguishable, clearer. The voice I noticed was one of a young boy. It wasn't until I went into my early teens that Sam had begotten a body. I was pleased that the boy had generated a body for himself since it felt quite weird speaking to someone who to everyone else was just air. With Sam looking like a normal kid my age it brought me a bit more comfort and soothed my anxiety about being different.

No one knew and no one knows that I am a schizophrenic, but me, my parents and our therapists of course, not even Rooney or Jael know. I'm sure they've both noticed me talk outloud to some invisible being a couple times before, but never made a big deal about it since non schizophrenics talk to themselves sometimes. They probably think that I've been talking to myself these past couple of years. If only they knew that I was actually talking to someone else, a very handsome and irritating hallucination.

At times I want to tell them about Sam, but I don't want to risk it. I don't want to reveal this big portion of myself that could possibly change our friendship entirely. I want to be normal and feel normal, and my friends might not provide me with that normality that I need if I tell them that I'm not like they are.