Schizophrenia Idea

Something Strange

"I live alone in a small, suburban home. My house is just like all of the others around me- perfectly green lawn, and a gray stone pathway leading to the front door. My neighborhood is full of cookie-cutter houses, nauseating me every time I take a glance at them- no individuality. No personality. Just row by row of red brick houses, all filled with small families of soccer moms and long-business-trip dads.

None of my neighbors are fond of me. Each day that I'm out, I hear neighbors utter quick, low whispers, and watch them tug at the arms of their children. While unfortunate that the consensus seems to be that I'm unsafe to be around, I don't quite mind. They don't need to be comfortable with my presence, I am not comfortable with theirs.

It never gets lonely at my house. I keep myself very busy with cleaning and gardening, and I have my dog Bailey to keep me company. Bailey brightens my day- she's a golden retriever, just barely three years old. Just a month ago I spotted her through the window of the dog shelter on my drive home from a doctor's appointment.

I originally bought Bailey to help keep me company. My therapist, Mariah, thought having a companion around would help to, as she says it, "ground me to real life". While I didn't completely gather the meaning of her words, I welcomed the idea of a pet. Bailey has brought an unmistakable comfort that my life was sorely missing.

Lately though, it's felt more like she came into my life to keep me safe. Almost to look out for me, a guardian watching my life. Strange things have been happening lately around my house- things that make my skin crawl, things that make me want to shrink to a grain of sand.

For instance, take yesterday morning. My house was clean and neat when Bailey and I went to bed, and when I awoke everything was in disarray. My table in my living room, with pictures of my family and I, looked as if it had been bumped into, and all of the trinkets on it had been knocked to the floor. It annoyed me greatly- my glass frame on my favorite photo of my nephew had been cracked. Papers of mine scattered the floor and a glass of root bear stained the wooden panels.

That might seem like something small to you, but more has happened. Had it just been this occurrence, I would have thought no more of it. Yet the keys of something strange continue to arise to me. This morning, I woke to find mud tracked into my house from the back door, leading into the living room. I tried to make out footprints for at least an hour, and I could only find one- it looked like it belonged to a beat up slipper. The mud had dried recently, and had not strayed further than the living room, to the same spot where my table had been knocked over the day before.

Then, even more odd- my food started to go missing. I baked cookies Saturday morning, and left them out on a plate near my sink to  take as I pleased. I woke up in the morning on Sunday to find that the plate was empty, crumbs and all. I'd also forgotten to put away my dirty plate from the night before- the remainder of my steak was gone, along with my baked potato. The fork and knife lay dirty on the floor, my chair recklessly shoved away from the table.

What you need to understand is these things have never happened to me before. I'm an orderly man, I maintain my home and myself. My schedule is rigid to keep myself together, and these events have begun to spiral my thoughts down a terrible path- I left to try to escape this path. And yet. I just moved into this new house recently, and that's when it all began.

I had to move away from my old home because it was too loud. Not in the city- it was the house itself. Every day my neighbor's daughter came and played in my yard- I didn't mind at first, but she was very loud- as if she was laughing and yelling inside my head- and I had work I needed to do. I would try to work for hours, my pencil hovering over paper and shaking with frustration, her giggles and yelps stinging my ears. So eventually I went over to my neighbor's home and asked them to please keep their daughter out of my yard.