My Sanity

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

    It was seven thirty, and I was heading to dinner. Dinner at Sunshine was from six in the evening till nine. The restaurant was situated close to the residential area; it took less than five minutes to get there.

    The brick path that led out of the residential area broke off to the left with an arrow pointing to the path on the left labelled restaurant and another arrow pointing straight labelled main office, more paths (all grey brick) at the main office led off to the psychiatric building, the recreation centre and the lake. The exit to Sunshine was through the main office to ensure that none of the patients sneaked out.

    I turned into the path that headed towards the restaurant, this path, like every pathway in Sunshine was lined by waist high hedges on either side of it. 

    The restaurant was a large circular building, painted in a shade of yellow. I walked up the front steps and one of the glass doors was opened for me by a man dressed in a pair of black pants with a white shirt tucked into the pants and a bowtie around his neck.

    “Good evening Miss,” he said politely as I stepped in, I simply nodded at him in response.

    The room was even more crowded today than normal, as it was Friday, and many visitors usually had dinner here on Fridays and Saturdays to spend more time with their loved ones. The restaurant was always full of chatter and laughter on these days. My parents visited me every Saturday and they would sometimes have dinner here with me, those days were always very unpleasant. Whenever Derek has the time he stays for dinner with me (this happens very rarely as Derek’s always doing an assessment or something), I was always happier on those days.

    One whole side of the restaurant was glass and provided the diners a view of a man-made pond with about a dozen ducks around it, this pond could be accessed by a door on the side. Right now an old woman, a woman that looked a lot like the old woman in her thirties and two children were outside feeding the ducks.

   All the tables in the restaurant were circular ranging in sizes, some could only seat two people while some could seat up to eight people. I usually sat alone at a table for two in the least crowded corner of the room away from the crowded buffet line.

    This area was usually always unoccupied as it wasn’t close enough to the buffet line for people, and the tables didn’t have a good view of the scenery outside; people usually always chose the tables by the glass wall and the tables by the buffet.

    I walked to the buffet that was way too crowded for my liking, but I had no other option. I grabbed a plate and walked along the line scanning the names of the dishes searching for some vegetarian dish that sounded good to me.

     I’ve been a vegetarian since I was eleven, I wanted to be one when I was younger, but my parents refused to let me be one and kept forcing me to eat meat. Why they did that, I don’t know. I guess they just liked having a sense of control over me. But after I turned eleven I refused to eat any meat and finally got my way.

    To my delight there was vegetarian lasagne, I placed a large piece of it on my plate and made my way towards my table. These were the little and only delights in my life, food.

    I was allowed knives in here as there were people to watch me and make sure I don’t start cutting myself, but the staff at the restaurant always checked me before I left this building to make sure I’m not smuggling any knives back to my room.

    I sat down on the chair that was against the wall, it made me feel safer to be able to keep my eyes on the crowd and I didn’t like having my back to them. I then turned my attention to my food and started eating; the table already had a bottle of water and a glass.