Four White Walls

Short Story

This place is filled with dangerous psychotic people, the type you see on television, screaming at empty rooms and drooling from the mouth. Suppose i shouldn't just them too harshly as i guess I'm one of them now.

I suppose i should start at the beginning before all this happened.

It all started after my team had just won the senior year football championships. I ran of of the football field, people screaming and shouting my name. I ran over to my girlfriend and gave her a hug, i looked around me and saw my family smiling down at me, i guess that was before they thought i was worthless.

I was surrounded by friends at the after party, everyone wanted to talk to me and people were patting me on the shoulder or telling me how good the game was, that night was the last time that I felt that I wasn't alone. I haven't had a normal day with football, parties, classes and home made meals in the last six weeks. now all I do everyday, is sit on the plain plastic bed, that has been stripped of any that can be used as a weapon to self-harm. A bit excessive I think, but I assume there are worst cases in this hole than myself.

Anyway as I was saying I guess you could say I was the most popular guy in school, my girlfriend was the head cheerleader on the school cheerleading team. As soon as I started having my hallucinations and started to separate myself from everyone we became distant then when I got admitted to this institute she left me, just like everyone else in my life.

Today, my doctor told me how normal is to feel alone and abandoned but I don't think he fully understand how much my illness has ruined my life. I call it my illness but if I'm being honest this illness owns me. It has destroyed my life, my hopes, my dreams and most importantly my relationships. how can this doctor sit across from me and tell me what is normal and what isn't when he doesn't even have this illness? I resent him and his freedom. He walks in here three times a week to check on us, make sure we are making progress, question the nurses about our behaviour like we are a bunch of misbehaving lab rats.

I don't feel human in this place, I don't feel like myself, whenever I catch a glimpse of myself in a window, I barely recognise myself. I look sick. My bright blue eyes my mother used to say 'shone like the stars' are now bland and empty. My skin looks grey and colourless. My lips are cracked and dry, A side-effect of medication they promise me will work given time. How can I believe this doctor when he tells me, in his experience, everything will be okay? My mind has turned against me, my body is changing before my eyes and I'm  scared.

Before i got admitted to the mental institute i wasn't myself. I would over sleep and i would forget things like where i put my keys or school books but i didn't think anything of it until i started to forget bigger things like peoples names and I'm not talking about people who i have only talked to once or twice I'm talking about my closest friends and worst of all my sisters name. My mother would say to my father, all he needed was space. Its just stress from school. But it wasn't.

My family and friends knew that i wasn't attention seeking when my paranoia set in. Ive been called a liar many times but i knew the government was after me, I could feel them watching me when I was in my room at home and when a helicopter flew over my house I would try and hide so that they wouldn't see me. I remember i was on a jog in the afternoon one day i was nearly home when i heard a helicopter i knew it was them so i picked up my pace and ran home. I ran in the door and saw my mom cooking dinner and i shouted at her 'they found me' she turned around looked at me like i was crazy then turned around and continued cooking. That was the day i realised no one cared for me.

You may be wondering why I'm in this sad dull room. Its quite simple really, my paranoia got so bad one day that i attacked someone. I was walking into school when i felt someone watching me, i turned around and saw a guy walking towards me. He was one of them i knew it. I started walking towards him 'stay away from me, i haven't done anything wrong' he looked at me blankly. I threw a punch and he hit me back and i hit him a few more times until he was unconscious. I could hear the police sirens, i knew that was a good thing because they could arrest him after i tell them about how he was following me but when they got there they arrested me and took me to hospital to get checked out before they interrogated me.

The nurses and doctors checked me out and asked me questions. They then talked to my family and the police officers. The police officers left and my parents came and said goodbye to me i had no idea why they were coming to say goodbye. My doctor came and announced to me that I have this illness and they were bringing me to a mental institute. That was the day i lost everything.

So now you know the events that led to me ending up within these four white walls. I want you to read my story, tell it to your friends, your family members, and hopefully it will reach someone like me and stop them from making the same mistakes I've made. No one deserves to have this illness, to loose everything, to loose themselves. Since i was admitted, i can see the events that led me to being here, quite clearly. I wish more than anything i can go back and change things, maybe i could have reached out to someone, a doctor or a phycologist, but i know that its not possible now. I have no choice now but to continue taking my medication and to continue down this road to acceptance.

If you take nothing else from my story, take this, schizophrenia is not a make believe illness. It is real and it is debilitating.

Remember me, remember my story.

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Hope you enjoy xx saoirse