*5*

I stare at the computer screen, my eyes tired from hours of staring at the bright screen. I’ve spent hours trying to understand what was going on. On one hand, the doctor told me one thing but my memories and the clothing told me another. It didn’t make sense and that terrified me. I’m afraid I might be going crazy. Seriously, what my mind is telling me that happened Monday was that I was attacked by a creature that obviously doesn’t exist.

Besides my clothing, there is no proof I was ever harmed, just the opposite. I was taken to a hospital and examined. I was found healthy except for the high levels of caffeine in my system. Curious, I googled to see if there are any connections between caffeine and hallucinations because that’s what it had to be – a hallucination. Monsters don’t exist.

On Google, there are several listing for pages discussing the possible connection between caffeine and hallucinations. I had a lot of red bulls and five-hour energy shots in the twenty-four hours before that night. That would explain why I thought I saw a monster but it didn’t explain my clothing. The only viable solution I saw was mental illness. I possibly made the damage myself to make it look like an attack to fit my delusion?

Before I make a mountain of a molehill I need to do this correctly. I thought of how professionals like Freud and Pavlov did their research. I needed to take an empirical approach and record my observations and experiences while attempting to maintain objectivity as much as might be possible considering the circumstances. I get up from my chair and into my bedroom.

Every fall I always bulk up on supplies I know I’m going to need through the year and I keep it in my bedroom closet. I reach up, pulling down a heavy blue box that stores all my blank notebooks. I take the top one and go back to my computer. Grabbing the first pen I find, I open the spiral notebook and pause, wondering just how one begins to write about something like this. I guess like anything else, you had to start from the beginning.

—Dear reader, whoever you may be: my future self, a government scientist, or in the most likely scenario my prescribed mental health caretaker. “God, that sounds so pathetic even to my ears,” I complain in a groan as I stare at the words. “Suck it up, Willows. Let’s just get it down,” I say and start to write again. My name is Oliva Willows, I was born August sixth in nineteen ninety-four.

I grew up in a little town in Missouri, not far from the Missouri-Kansas border. I had what I guess was a normal childhood. My father worked in a car factory for most of his life until he hurt himself in o’ nine. He had such a severe carpal tunnel that his left hand was almost useless. Mom worked in warehouses around the area. She’d work for a while in one place, sometimes a couple of years or a couple of months, until as she would say, the bullshit just got too much.

She’d quit and move on. Right now she's been working in this sports supply warehouse for almost a year but I don’t think it'll last much longer though. I have a brother and a sister. My brother is much older, twenty-nine, and in a few months he and Andrea, his wife, will have a little girl. My sister, Tiffany is four years younger and thinks that seventeen means she knows everything there is to know about the world.

We don't exactly see eye to eye. She's the cheerful outgoing cool kid and I was always the book savvy nerd. We were never rich but we managed to make it through pretty well. So yes, I’d say our childhood was normal. No spiteful siblings, no abusive parents, no excessive bullying at school. The point I’m trying to convey here is I was a normal, average, and mentally healthy person until that night. — I lift my pen and think of Monday night.

I want to take my time, write down every detail I can remember with as much clarity as possible: leaving the library, driving home, the monstrous creature, and how it attacked me. I lean in my chair to think about what my next step should be. It suddenly dawned on me. Oh, course, like any illness you look at the symptoms first. What exactly are my symptoms though? I took up the pen and started to write once more.

—My possible symptoms: Hallucinations, possible blackout, voices.—

During the point of driving home, I possibly lost touch with reality. While having this possible blackout I crashed my car and damaged my clothing to look like an attack. I said voices because of what happened yesterday. The fact I kept thinking I heard people talking. No one seemed to notice it but me. Now to look for what these three symptoms could possibly mean.

I type in the search bar: What if I'm having Hallucinations, possible blackout, and hearing voices. The page filled up with results, the first was for symptoms of schizophrenia, another dealing with possible causes for hallucinations, and another for something called Depersonalization. Those three pages sound like a good place to start. A chill ran through me as I read through the websites.

I already had experienced some symptoms of schizophrenia and Psychosis. I decided to write them down so I could have a sort of checklist for the current and possibly oncoming symptoms. Schizophrenia is broken down into three categories: Positive symptoms and Negative and Cognitive. This breakdown was categorized by how well the symptom reacted to drug therapy.

—Positive Symptoms: Delusions (Erroneous ideas or beliefs that seem absolutely reasonable despite being contradicted by reality) Hallucinations (seeing, feeling, hearing, or smelling what isn’t there), Thought Disorders (confusion, inability to speak correctly), Hearing Voices, and psychomotor difficulties (clumsiness, repetitive actions, extended periods of rigid motionless).

Negative Symptoms: Apathy, Isolation, and withdrawal from social interaction, Inability to enjoy or find pleasure with life. Cognitive Symptoms are difficulties in attention, memory, ability to plan or organize to complete a goal.—

Again, a chill runs through me. I can check off Delusions. My mind is telling me that I was attacked by something, even though there is no evidence of it. The doctor’s examination is a contradiction of it even. Hallucinations are another one I can check off. I feel as if I saw that monster. I can remember it easily with all five senses and it seemed so real that in the hospital I was sure I was injured.

I believe I can check off hearing voices too. All through class yesterday I swore I could hear people talking as if they were right beside me yet either people around me were only whispering or not talking at all.

There also weren’t nearly enough people to account for the number of voices I thought I heard. However thought disorders and psychomotor difficulties I don’t believe I’m expressing any of these symptoms. I believe that would go against most of the cognitive symptoms as well. Just being able to organize this list I believe is proof of that. I don’t think I’m suffering much of the negative symptoms either.

I’m not apathetic, I do feel emotions and I haven’t withdrawn from my friends, family, or activities. I don’t believe I’m lacking the ability to enjoy life either. However, I’m in the right age group for schizophrenia to appear –sixteen to thirty it says. Next are Psychosis and its symptoms. It shares many of its symptoms with schizophrenia. Withdraw from social interaction, strange thoughts or beliefs, delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, difficulty concentrating, paranoia, etc.

So I can go ahead and check off many of these symptoms as well. Symptoms I’ve yet to manifest though are sleep changes, I’ve experienced this slightly but nothing I would say that’s alarming. Depression which I don’t feel yet. Thoughts of suicide or self-harm, thank goodness this hasn’t entered into my mind either.  I write it all down in the notebook and I can’t help but feel a little sick.

I don’t think having this many symptoms is a good sign especially the big D and H, delusions, and hallucinations. But maybe I’m overthinking things. Like those people that have a cold but put in their symptoms with WebMD and think they’ve got Lupus or something like that. Besides feeling that the attack was real, I haven’t had any more episodes as they call them. Maybe it was really just too much caffeine topped with I was stressing about finals and, bam, I suffer a psychotic episode but it won’t be a reoccurring theme.

It might be wrong but I cling to that silver lining of hope. I’m willing to wait and see what happens. If I have no more episodes then this will just be something I laugh about fifty years from now. Plus it’s not like I’m a danger to people. I’m not violent or wanting to hurt myself so I should be good. I don’t want to ruin my life because I had too much coffee one night and there is no mistake if I get branded as psychotic, even if it’s just a passing thing, my life is over.

There will be no way I’ll be able to get into a doctorate program, no way could I get a decent job, and not talk about how Kirk, my friends, and my family would react and treat me. Would Kirk still want to date a girl that hears voices? Would Kristen and Michelle want to be friends with a person who believes in monsters? Would my family ever trust me fully again or would they simply ask themselves: Is she going crazy again?