Chapter 1

On the Inside.

Schiz·o·phre·ni·a

   [Skit-suh-free-nee-uh, -freen-yuh] 

Noun

Psychiatry. Also called dementia praecox. A severe mental disorder characterized by the following: emotional blunting, intellectual deterioration, social isolation, disorganized speech and behavior, delusions, and hallucinations.

 

"So tell me, did you ever think that you would come to this point in your life? Did you ever think that you could be somewhat under control?" 

"To tell you the truth after that night I never thought that I would come back...                                             "What do you mean by come back?"                                   "That night when I fell asleep, you know when I was in a coma?                                                                                       "Go on Stevie."                                                                     "I, I don't know. I can't remember anything. All of my memories from that night are gone, and all that I can think of is...NO! STOP!..."                                                   "Stevie, are you ok?"                                                            "Yes, I'm sorry I can't tell you. I, I can't say it! Please don't make me!"                                                                     "We need to get to the root of this problem. why can't you tell me? Or do you just not want to?"

"Look, if you want me to talk, I will do it at my own pace! when I say I can't say it I mean it" I was not going to tell her my whole life story just yet, she hadn't earned my trust.

"Now, why don't we start from the beginning; the first time you knew something was wrong."

Is it alright to tell her? Can I trust her? I just don't want it to come back, what if talking about it brings it back? "Stevie? It's OK, you can trust me." 

OK, I have to tell someone. This is it.

"Ever since the time I was a baby my parents felt that there was something wrong. There were little things like not being able to sleep or feeling depressed, to screaming or crying for no obvious reason that made my mother and father worry, but not enough to convince them that there was something wrong with me or that they needed to take me to a doctor or a psychiatrist.

"When I was seven years old my parents pulled me out of school and started homeschooling me because I was acting strange. I started getting more aggressive with the other kids and I still had 'imaginary friends'."

"What do you mean by imaginary friends? Were they Just normal ones or more?"                                                   "They seemed normal to me but I don't think they were. Most of them were named after numbers and they told me things that made me depressed or angry. Sometimes the things that I saw made me want to harm myself and others. One creature was a catlike animal named 700. He told me to do bad things like hitting other kids in school. The other bad friend was a little girl my age who told me things that made me want to kill myself. The girl never told me her name, but I knew she was important."                                                                              " Why do you think that this girl was important?" 

"I, I don't know. I  just felt like she was significant in some way." 

"What about your parents? Why did they never take you to a doctor?" 

"Maybe it was because they didn't want to notice. They didn't want to think that their perfect little angel had something wrong with her."                                                                 "I can understand that, now can you go on?" I nodded

"In school other kids called me crazy. I was moved to several different schools before my parents decided to take me out altogether.  Soon I began to hear a ringing sound that never stopped. My parents thought it was tinnitus - an inner ear condition that makes your ears ring - but I knew it was something else.

            "Finally, the ringing went away, but it was replaced by voices that filled my head so that no other thoughts could get through." 

"How did it feel to have voices talking to you? describe that to me." 

"It felt like I wasn't in control anymore. Something much more powerful had taken over. It is still there you know; it just doesn't want to be noticed right now." 

"Did you ever try to get rid of them?" 

"I shouted and screamed for the voices to go away but they never stopped talking to me." I couldn't go on. It was to hard to recall the first time I heard them; it was to painful to go back there. 

"It's OK honey, you got a really good start. we can talk about this some other time if you want." My psychotheripist ,Mrs. Ann, was nice and I felt like I could trust her. I decided to tell her a little more.                         "No, I can go on, just not about the voices." 

"That's fine", she said.

"My parents thought that I would eventually grow out of it and that maybe I just had a very vivid imagination. I can tell that they were hoping for the best. Eventually I learned to control the voices so I only heard them when I wanted to. My imaginary friends were still there but I learned not to talk about them so that people wouldn't think that I was weird. By using these techniques, the hallucinations and delusions went away.  My parents put me back in school when I was eleven years old and things seemed to be fine. 

"When I was twelve, I discovered that I had 'special gifts'. I could tell people what they were going to say before they said it and I could find hidden patterns in my math book. My teachers thought I was a genius so they put me into advanced math courses. Pretty soon I was doing algebra and calculus. 

"Did the voices bother you then?" 

"I could hear them in the back of my head all of the time. They never left me, they just slept for a while."           "Why didn't you tell anyone?"                                       "I didn't want people to know because I thought that they would call me a monster.

" You know that you are not a monster. Schizophrenia is not as rare as some might think."

"Yeah I know I have heard the statistics before. 1 in 100 people get it. That is my problem, I am the one that got it! Of one hundred other people why did it have to be me?" 

"You were made like this for a reason, we just have to find out!"

" before all of this happened I had everything I could dream of. I was under control." 

"In all of those years that you were struggling why didn't you tell anyone?" 

"I didn't have to tell anyone because eventually my secret would let itself out. I wanted to live a normal life where people didn't worry about me and my friends weren't afraid of me." 

"well Stevie we are almost out of time for today but I want you to know that once we get to the root of your problem you can be helped. It is true that there is no cure for schizophrenia, but with the right medication and ongoing psychotherapy, the symptoms can be treated and for some periods of time your schizophrenia can become sedentary."                                                         I had heard that before. Would I be cured? The answer was no, MY DISEASE CAN never be cured. Schizophrenia can never be cured. 

"You are right; I can be helped! I can be helped by being diagnosed as crazy and being locked up in a padded room for the rest of my life; high on medication and the false truth that someday I will be cured!" I tipped over the table and slammed the white noise machine onto the floor.

 I knew that this was not going to end well. The "guards" would come and lock me away in the highest tower of the castle. The only difference between my life and the fairy tale is that instead of being kissed by a handsome prince and being carried off into the sunset;far away from the madness of my life, I would eventually be escorted from the solitary confinement room into the regular room and all of the other mental cases around here would have a new found fear for me.  

There are four sub types to schizophrenia: Paranoid Schizophrenia, disorganized Schizophrenia, Cationic Schizophrenia, and Undifferentiated Schizophrenia.  Right now I have what is called Residual Schizophrenia. Residual schizophrenia is the transition between one active state of schizophrenia to another. There is one danger of residual schizophrenia; I can go from completely calm and sedentary, to a full out psychotic episode like what happened today.

The scary part is that I will never know when or if my symptoms will return. I sat there in "the room" while soft music played. I rocked back and forth in an effort to calm my nerves so I would not be visited by my imagination. All of the sudden I felt like I was falling in reverse and before I knew it, I was back to the beginning; before all of this started. 

Author's Note

Please tell me if you see any grammar errors!

Reviews

[Taylor H.]

This was a lot better. I liked how you used the therapy session as a way to drop the story in. This was much better than the other one :) Great job.

[Mark Anthony Games (Hum..]

The fact that you are bold enough to write on such an important subject is great in itself, people seem more afraid of mental health than a pack of hungry Lions!! I have written many poems on the subject, Demons and Mental Health are the two I have boldly put on here (Safe under my mask of Human Voice), lol. I Understand what Taylor H is saying, your writing is quite 'matter of fact' What compelled the rocking back and fourth, the dizziness. For me it was look that was not really there, words spoken that were mutilated by my mind. Someone saying 'Hello' would be translated as 'Ugly Prick' by the time I absorbed them, sent me in rocking defiance ready to jump and defend my self against a threat that never really existed! I am not a great writer so, remember it is just my opinion but speak as your character not as the observer, Overall though, I liked it alot and will be reading more.

[craybeast]

i dont understand your comment?

[Taylor H.]

Hes just saying, write as if you are the person in the moment, not a backing track telling it to us later.

[Mark Anthony Games (Human Voice)]

Yes, indeed. The difference of how you place a situation.

# He stared at the clock on the wall feeling every tick of the little hand until the largest would release him from school.# Tells us about a boy wanting to go home, its simple and matter of fact. Like someone is watching and observing.

Tick, I could feel the gravity of the handle pulling my hand towards it. Tock I can begin to hear the creek of chairs as students pile pressure down ready to propel them from their captivity. Tick I feel the sweet surrender of sliding books into my bag and the soothing sound of the zip telling me that this hell is contained for another day. Just one more tick till saturday comes. Here it comes, like the long lost hug of a mothers love but suspended in an eternity between tick and tock. My freedom hangs in the balance, she finds an hour in this suspension to hand our homework. Planned so well that the fine tock could almost be the sound of a funeral funeral procession the teacher steals some pressure time from my release to hold me captive in my room in hours that should have been mine. To stare at letters pretending to be numbers. Though now I am free to not care as the bells thunder is drowned by the stampede of fleeing children.

Like I said, I am not the bets writer in the world, but the two examples show clear difference. Be the story, i guess. Don't just tell it.

[Taylor H.]

that was still very good :)

[Mark Anthony Games (Human Voice)]

Taylor H what was still good, what I wrote above or the piece Crazybeast wrote, as I never said it was not good, I really enjoyed it lol.

[Taylor H.]

what you wrote lol

[Mark Anthony Games (Human Voice)]

Ha ha, well then thank you, not bad for off the top of my head, massive spelling issues. 'Fine tock' should have been 'final tock', 'Pressure' should have been 'precious'...... LMAO, The lesson is read back what you write, Nice to meet you both by the way.

[Taylor H.]

hahah you too :)

[Taylor H.]

I felt like this was very "I am steven, I have a disorder, I went inside, it was fun." No offense to you. I like the idea of the story but I think it could be written better. Try making your sentences longer, read them out loud and make sure they aren't stale sentences.

[craybeast]

I will try. I am trying to get my ideas written down right now but I am going to go back over them and try to add more depth. and is stevie. She is a girl.

[craybeast]

I just changed the story. thanks for your help. I have even more ideas now.

[Taylor H.]

Youre welcome. I knew that lol no idea why i said steven. Brain fart. And thats fine to do. Just let us know so we dont review it so harshly

[craybeast]

i just changed it

[Taylor H.]

the chapter?

[craybeast]

yes I changed most of the chapter

[Taylor H.]

oh ok. :)

[craybeast]

it went from Hi, my name is stevie to a whole new beginning scene.

[Taylor H.]

I agree. I like this new one better

[craybeast]

thanks. I might change it some more later when I finish the whole book.

[Taylor H.]

sounds good :)