The Nightmare Has Only Begun

Chapter Fourteen

(Jared)

I'm not a good person. I know I'm not a good person when I'm not stable. I'm not sane and I don't know if I ever have been. I don't know when I realized I wasn't. I don't know when I began to realize the dark thoughts in my head weren't normal and everyone wasn't like me.

I thought I was normal. I thought the voices talking in my head I usually ignored as a teen into my twenties were my subconscious or the words I heard earlier in the day by someone else just repeating itself before I found out that wasn't true. I thought they were imaginary friends I didn't want to let go of through the years when they first appeared.

I liked the voices. I found comfort in them when I felt alone in a broken home where I was treated horribly. I wasn't loved. I wasn't cared about. I was a kid no one wanted and everyone at school and in town gave hell to.

I lacked friends. I lacked self esteem and a support system in my life. I had nothing. I had nothing hopeful of a future living at home that wasn't a home before Katelynn and I took off.

We didn't have much. We had little to our name to start a future and the voices didn't leave. I convinced myself they were my friends except for the days they made me feel horrible. They broke me down and tore everything down to make me sane and build a good future. They held me back but I didn't want to escape them. I didn't want to leave them because they were my friends. The voices were my company when I had no one and I liked having something then nothing. I finally had friends that didn't hate me. I told myself they were protecting me not hurting me.

While I did when they made me feel better even though they were trying to convince me slowly through the years into doing bad things. Trying to make me think everyone is laughing at me. Trying to make me believe everyone is out to get me and I believed them. I came close one too many times to giving in until I finally did I felt like there was no going back.

The first time was Alex when I talked him into coming over to the house I had managed to get for Katelynn and I to be able to call home. Small and nothing much but a lot of money and years it was going to take to pay off. We were happy though and that is all that mattered. We were free from our parents. We were free from what that old home held which wasn't anything good.

Katelynn was finding herself and enjoying life while I was stuck in a lonesome spiral with the voices talking in my head more and more. I wasn't happy. I was lonely when I started talking to Alex and it was easy to gain his trust. It was easy to get him to come and meet me. It wasn't hard to convince him I was a good person even though I wasn't.

Everything was perfect for a few weeks, a few months before he tried to leave and I didn't want him to leave. I didn't want to be alone and the voices in my head convinced me to make sure it never happened.

Katelynn wasn't around. She was off with Kyle living her life but she knew about Alex in the beginning. I told her about him and I. I told her about him and how he made me feel and I just wanted to be happy. She saw I was when she first met him when I picked him up to be with me. I lied and told her he was older. I said seventeen though I doubt she believed it from the look on her face. She didn't question though, she never questioned anything I did.

I'm her older brother. I'm suppose to protect her. I'm suppose to be someone she looks up to not down. I took her away from the house we both hated with a mom who couldn't love us and a dad that loved us too much in the wrong ways. I had us leave for a better start and give us both something in life to look forward to. I wasn't suppose to have us leave and become crazy. I wasn't suppose to turn into someone else and lose my mind. I wasn't suppose to let the voices take over and get myself into a mess I couldn't get myself out of.