The Voices Inside Me

White Walls & Elias

This place reeked, and not of something foul. At least, to anyone else it wasn't foul. But to me, and all the others here, it was worse than when you throw a banana away and forget to take out the trash. To anyone on the outside there was no smell, actually, but to us on the inside, it smelled sterile. But that's to be expected within the wall of a mental institution.

That's right, that's where I am, St. Peters Psychiatric Institution, to be perfectly clear. I've been here for four years, so, since I was thirteen. I was seventeen now.

It was two thirteen presently, and that meant I was sitting in my assigned room, which I shared with five other "patients" as they called us. In reality though, we were prisoners. Forced to hide behind these walls, while everyone outside thought we were getting help. But they didn't know. In truth, they were just making us worse.

We all enter this place a bit "uneasy" and slowly but surely we work our way down the slides, instead of up the ladders. We go from "uneasy," to "crazed," and then, after a lot of hard work, we find ourselves at "insane," which was a word they didn't like to use often, but we all know the staff is thinking it.

I, myself, haven't quite reached "insane," instead, I sit right above "crazed." I'm one of the lucky ones. Usually the one's who are here as long as me have long been confined to single rooms, with a lot of padding. While others have slipped far enough away to be transferred somewhere with doctors who could help. But they wouldn't have gotten there if the "doctors" here would have helped them in the beginning.

Here at St. Peters, people are admitted for many different reasons. They may be delusional, or they may want to constantly burn things down. I was neither of those, instead, I got voices. Voices in my head that I couldn't control. They spoke up when they wanted to, and usually at the worst times.

My parents found out about this when I finally confessed to them about it. I had been thirteen, I had been terrified about these voices going back and forth in my head. They hadn't even thought of any different ways to help me. Oh, no. It was straight off to St. Peters Psychiatric Institution with me. I always assumed my parents just didn't want to risk their neighbors finding out their daughter was crazy. I think they told them all that I had been accepted into a prestigious all girls boarding school in England, or something along those lines.

During my four years here, I've learned to cope. I've learned strategies to keep myself sane. Or at least, as sane as someone who hears voices can be. I broke it down into three simple steps: 1) Accept that my parents thought I was crazy. That one was easy, especially since I'd heard them having multiple arguments about how they both agreed that I wasn't right in the head. 2) Make friends with the voices in my head.

Now that one, took some time. Eventually I was able to separate all the voices and discovered their were three others, not counting mine. One was Meredith, she was kind of the angel of the group, always wanting me to make the best decision. The second one was Madeline, she was the baby, she was always whining and speaking up to get attention. And finally, there came Moxie, she was the devil, always pushing me towards the dark. But thanks to Meredith — who tended to speak the loudest — and a little help from Madeline, I was able to stay in the light and not slip away.

Lastly, 3) Rule out every and all emotions. Again, that wasn't very difficult. In the past four years, I'd become a solid, emotionless rock. I didn't feel anger, or sadness, or even happiness. And that was truly the key to surviving in this prison.

Now, when I say prison, I don't mean steel bars, and orange or striped jumpsuits. But rather, stark white walls, stark white floors — which always seemed to be covered in mud and dirt, despite the fact that no one was allowed outside. The rooms were all the same, six beds — usually — with a cheap mattress, a thin white blanket and one small pillow. The cafeteria was and every other room was the same blinding whiteness, and I have come to realize that everything is white. We don't get shoved behind iron bars, but there are in fact iron bars within our personal prison. Every window is covered with them, and above every one is an alarm system that goes off, should anyone get them open. Which was actually impossible considering the locks were super glued into their locked positions.