minty × harry

five - research & bandages

h.s

Friday, I did not leave my room. I was too traumatized by the whole event to function properly.

The institution didn't do much about it, just left me. One of the nurses checked in and asked me how I was doing, and made me take my medication.

I just laid there, the whole day wondering how in the world it could be possible for me to see a dead girl. I was never a believer in paranormality, I wanted a logical explanation for all this because there was no way in hell I was seeing dead people. So I spend friday thinking up theories, I asked one of the nurses for a lot of paper, a pencil, an eraser, and a pencil sharpener. She was hesitant at first to give me the sharpener and I assured her that I had lost all urge to drag a pencil sharpener's blade accross my pale skin.

I thought back to the week before I came to the institution, I saw myself in front of myself. I was still trying to clarify that.

By noon I was so tired of writing down all these wild theories and sticking them up on my wall so that I could look at them again, that I went to the library in search of another opinion. I was so happy that the place actually had a library.

I asked for books on paranormality and the afterlife, and after skimming through two nothing made sense anymore. The whole paranormality theory was not linking in with what happened to me. I asked the librarian if I could use one of the computers and she said I could.

So I immediately went to the search engine, and typed in 'immortality'.

The first thing that popped up was the dictionary's definition, the definition didn't make anything clearer to me.

I decided to stop on the whole immortality vibe and typed in a simple 's' by mistake.

One of the search suggestions was schizophrenia and it immediately caught my eye.

I clicked on the Wikipedia page and started reading.

Schizophrenia (/ˌskɪtsɵˈfrɛniə/ or /ˌskɪtsɵˈfriːniə/) is a mental disorder often characterized by abnormal social behavior and failure to recognize what is real.

I almost clicked exit, but another link caught my eye, symptoms. I immediately clicked on it, out of pure curiosity.

Individuals with schizophrenia may experience hallucinations (most reported are hearing voices), delusions (often bizarre or persecutory in nature), and disorganized thinking and speech.

One of my eyebrows rose, needing to know more, I read on.

The last may range from loss of train of thought, to sentences only loosely connected in meaning, to speech that is not understandable known as word salad in severe cases. Social withdrawal, sloppiness of dress and hygiene, and loss of motivation and judgment are all common in schizophrenia. There is often an observable pattern of emotional difficulty, for example lack of responsiveness. Impairment in social cognition is associated with schizophrenia, as are symptoms of paranoia. Social isolation commonly occurs. Difficulties in working and long-term memory, attention, executive functioning, and speed of processing also commonly occur. In one uncommon subtype, the person may be largely mute, remain motionless in bizarre postures, or exhibit purposeless agitation, all signs of catatonia. About 30 to 50% of people with schizophrenia fail to accept that they have an illness or their recommended treatment. Treatment may have some effect on insight. People with schizophrenia often find facial emotion perception to be difficult.

With all this new knowledge swimming around in my head, I felt a bit overwhelmed. I stood up, quickly gazing to the time on the computer.

18:17