The Voices and I

chapter five

Is it bad that I didn't believe him straight away?

Is it bad that even when I sat there, and looked at him with tears streaming down his face I didn't believe him?

"You don't believe me, do you?"

I didn't say anything, I didn't need to.

"I guess- I don't even know why I told you this. What difference does it make? What I did was wrong, I know that. I-I really don't know what I was expecting."

He didn't even give me a chance to speak before he went up to the counter, paid for our food, and left without saying a word, just leaving me there with my mouth open catching flies. I don't know what I was expecting. I was just as bad as he was. If he was telling the truth, no wonder he didn't tell me before. He obviously knew that I wouldn't believe him, and he was right, I wouldn't.

I got up and sighed as I walked towards the door of the shop and everyone seemed to look at me sympathetically as if Sam and I had just broken up but I suppose that's what it must've looked like.

It hadn't even been an hour but in the time I had been sitting in the cafe it had begun to rain and what could be better? It seemed like everything was against me that day; by then my medication had already started to wear off. I could tell because what had first been a beautiful silence had now turned into tormenting hushed whispers and the voices were gradually getting louder.

I headed in the direction of home, not really with the intention of actually going there. I just wanted to sit somewhere quiet and be alone with my thoughts before the monsters in my mind took over and shrouded them in misery.

I must've looked like an absolute headcase sitting there in the rain with no hood.

I watched as people scurried around in search for shelter, looking like that moment that was their only worry but you could never be sure. They said never judge a book by its cover but it was a stupid saying. You see a cover before you read what's inside of it and the cover determines whether you pick it up and read it or not. You could almost say the same for people. You become friends with someone because they look fun and look happy but in reality, they're anything but that. The personality on top is just a glorified cover making the book seem better than it is but that's not anything new. You can't really be certain of anything anymore.

The reality was so hard to come by for me. Each day it seemed like it was harder to tell the difference between fiction and facts. It was all just a jumbled up blur of names and colors all seemingly irrelevant and unnecessary. I tried to make sense of it, I really did, but every time I had tried to put the pieces together the thoughts would get lost and pieces of the puzzle would go missing. It was obvious what took them.

The voices always played tricks on me like that. Sometimes they'd take away pieces when I had almost completed the puzzle or swap some pieces around to the point where I just gave up trying to figure out the picture they would've made. The voices did it on purpose. They thought that if they did enough damage I would eventually let them leave. They screamed at me constantly, begging me to let them out but I never could. They even took my most sacred and precious items from me. My silence and my sanity were being held captive in the darkness and they said that if I freed them then my silence and sanity would be free too. However, that wasn't an option. If I gave them their freedom who knows what they'd do. So my sanity and silence were a small price to pay. I thought I was in control, at least I thought I was at the start but perhaps I never was. They were a lot more powerful than I could've ever imagined them to be. I might've been able to lock them away but they were slowly eating up all the residents residing in me. My head was practically deserted for nothing lived there but them because they had taken everything- almost everything. The last thing they took was my freedom and the only thing left they had to take was my life.