It Lives in the Psychiatric Hospital

My father once told me no matter how hard you try to stay blind to the truth, it will always be there, waiting for you to open your eyes. To this day I don’t understand why he thought that would get me to open my eyes when I knew the only thing waiting was a room full of monsters ready to eat me. I was so scared that night. I thought the monsters would get me. I thought I would never leave my room again. 
Looking back though, I have to admit it’s pretty sage advice. Especially coming as it did from the burnt out husk of a man who couldn’t get away fast enough. I wish his little nugget of wisdom was my last real memory of him. I wish his philosophical reflection on life had the lasting impression I would have liked it to have. But as it turns out, his cold, dead eyes, staring through me on my 8th birthday as the front door closed behind him, will be seared into my memory until the day I die. Couldn’t even be bothered to wave goodbye as he walked out of my life forever. 
Now as selfish and cruel as abandoning your child is, I honestly never blamed him. Even in the darkest moments the coming years would bring, having him in my life, having him… be there for me… it wouldn’t have made a difference. My mother was the definition of a mess. When she wasn’t making a living out of spending money she didn’t have on things she didn’t need, she was rooted to the couch, knocked out by whatever hangover, relapse or comedown had her mind in the clouds. I think those were the only times she was ever really happy, flying high in those unreachable places where she could take a pass on having to raise me. I guess I should cut her some slack; the little work she did made sure we wouldn’t end up starving in the streets. But for someone like me, that was never going to be enough. 
Without putting too fine a point on it, my mental health is fucked, and not in the glamorized way that social media influencers use to fish for sympathy. Call me a doomer if you want. Call me a nihilist if you want. Call me a loser, a psycho, an asshole. Call me whatever you want; I guarantee I’ve heard worse. For as long as I could remember, the thoughts that made a home in my mind always echoed the same thing. 
I didn’t belong. 
It never mattered what I tried. It never mattered how much I pushed myself. It never mattered how many days I hid away from the world clawing at my head, begging the abyss I stared into to have a light at the end. There was nothing I could do to show people how wrong I felt. How much it hurt holding everything inside. Not the counselors, not the children I shared classrooms with, and certainly not the heartless harpy tasked with being my mother. That night when I was 4 years old, trapped in the darkness of my room, I remember being so scared. I remember thinking I would never leave that room again. And when I think back on that night, curled up beneath my covers, crying out for help from a world that had disappeared around me, I see, that in a way, I never did. I tried to take my own life for the first time when I was 12. Those whispers that echoed from the depths of my mind had beaten me. They told me the wounds of my mind would never heal. They told me I would never have peace in this pain. They told me every awful thing the darkness made me feel was all I would ever know. And I believed it. I believed it when I walked down the hallway lit by the distant, orange glow of streetlamps. I believed it as I flipped on the bathroom light, the humming florescent bulb joining the chorus of voices as they guided me to the medicine cabinet. I believed it as I looked up to the sky, and the mouthful of pills on my tongue found their way down my throat. As I laid on the cold tile floor, closing my eyes, waiting for the nothingness that would set me free, I believed it. 
And then the darkness took me. 
The swirling shapes behind my eyelids faded, and in their place a void of pitch black opened below me, deeper and darker than anything I had ever seen. I was falling, nothing below to help me find my footing, and nothing around me to reach for. All at once I was back in my room, quivering in the face of that darkness as it once again swept the world out from under my feet. But as I cried now, the fear of what lie in wait overtaking me, the pain began. I still wake in the middle of the night when I think about it. 
It started as an ache, emerging from the pit of fear forming in my gut. It started as nothing more than a flutter, but it spread through my body quickly. It coursed through me as blood coursing through my veins, finding its way from the knot in my stomach to the tips of my fingers and toes. Every part of my body felt as though a hundred wild animals had latched onto me, pulling me in a hundred different directions at once, a thousand teeth sunk deep into my flesh. But the pain would not stop there. Much like the teeth of a wild beast, the pain sunk deeper with every second, and soon everything from the hairs on the back of my neck to the spine beneath them were alight with a pain worse than anything I could imagine. I could now feel each and every one of the countless cells in my body. I could feel as each one of them were set ablaze. The flames that scorched them grew hotter the further they spread, and though it was a pain with no end, I could feel every part of my being reduced to ash by the inferno. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t breathe. That moment, where I felt pure pain for the first time, was the first time in my life I felt truly, completely helpless. Its something I wouldn’t wish on anyone. 
As I drifted through that void, with every part of me being burning away to nothing, I found myself reliving everything that had brought me to this terrible place. Every time I had been pushed aside by those I looked up to. Every insult thrown at me by the ones I sought companionship with. Every hateful look, cursing me for having the nerve to stain the world with my existence. And now after all that suffering, this lightless abyss, this endless agony, was all my life was worth. And I welcomed it. 
“No matter what you do--” 
A voice echoed from beyond, and for no more than a second my thoughts were drawn away from the pain that had become my everything. 
“To stay blind to the truth—”
I knew that voice. And as it echoed in my ear, I stopped feeling the pain, even as my body continued to be torn apart. I listened carefully. I needed to hear what it would say next. 
“It will also be there waiting--” 
It was my father. He was here with me. He had come to the most terrible place that had ever existed and he had done it for me. He wanted to help me. I had to let him help me. 
“Open your eyes.” 
So, I did.
I opened my eyes to a light so bright that it wiped the memory of darkness from my mind. I was greeted by the sight of a room with curtains for walls and the shapes of medical gowns and surgical masks lording over me with professional indifference. I had returned to life, but the pain of death followed me. I had woken up in the hospital, my stomach being pumped of the pills. Though nothing will ever compare to the pain I felt when the void took my life, having a tube forced down my throat and my insides sucked out while I struggled to breathe, was easily a bottom 10 moment for me. 
Despite having brought me back from the brink though, my father was nowhere to be seen. 
That moment changed me. After what I had seen, knowing what was waiting for me when I crossed to the other side, something in my mind shifted. And with that new state of mind, I made a promise that my new life would start today. I promised that from that day forward, I would never give up. And as I sit here, typing this out for you after all these years, I’m still not sure if that choice was for the better. Though my newfound resolve filled the emptiness in my heart for a day, it had already begun to fade by the time we pulled out of the hospital parking lot. I ran away from home about a year after my incident. Just shoved what I could into a backpack and walked out. I figured I wouldn’t get very far. I was convinced that when they tracked me down, I would be dragged kicking and screaming back to the prison my life was becoming. But no one came. No police cruisers, no PSAs, no signs taped to lamp posts. Nothing. I guess mom liked having the place to herself. I would spend the next few years drifting between foster care, juvey and living on the streets. I could never believe I deserved to be a part of anything. So, I never stayed in one place for long. I lived in some utterly horrible places during that time. Places I was sure I would never make it out of alive; sometimes I can’t help wondering how I did. The only reason I could come up with was that the people I wronged wrote me off, thinking they’d wasted enough time on me already. 
The day I turned 18 was the day I checked myself into a psychiatric hospital. Having somehow made it to adulthood, I had become my own master. With the freedom to legally take care of myself, that’s exactly what I set off to do. I decided to get help. Even if I couldn’t be fixed, it would be better to be somewhere out of the way, being watched over in a place where the world wouldn’t come looking for me. Even if that meant being locked in a padded cell and monitored like some human pet. I figured it was better that way. For the world, and for me. 
For those of you that don’t already know, padded cells and mad doctors are not how mental health care works. Not anymore at least. I won’t bore you with the details of my intake, save to let you know how annoying it is to sign up for something without a single piece of ID to your name. I’m still surprised they didn’t just turn me away. I was admitted under a 2-week treatment plan, but after less than a week I was asked about extending my stay for up to 2 months. They explained to me that my conditions (yes conditions plural) were far more acute than they had realized. Given my lack of a support network in the outside world, they wanted to administer a more involved treatment plan, so I would be “sufficiently stable” when I returned to normal life. I wasn’t about to argue; I was there for help, and I would take what I could get. 
Now that I’ve bored you with my life story, you might be wondering what happened at that place, and why I will never return. Maybe you’re awaiting a story of how I fought off a gang of deranged psychopaths dressed in straitjackets. Or maybe you’ve imagined a cabal of mad doctors stripping me of my humanity through experiments and torture. Or maybe you’re hoping for some hushed exposé about a government operation, a haunting of Native American spirits, an encounter with Pagan gods brought to life by nuclear radiation, or some other comically bizarre rambling. 
Let me give it to you straight. None of that shit happened. I don’t think I need to tell you this, but those kinds of stories are more insane than the people they claim to represent. 
I can’t speak for every psych hospital, but the doctors and staff who looked after me were nothing but good to me, and while there were a few patients that made me nervous, most of them were decent people just trying to get help for themselves. Nine times out of ten, you were more likely to die of boredom than at the hands of some rogue element. 
If I’m completely honest, I’m not entirely sure what happened. Ever since that night, I have been left to question everything that happened there. And that is the reason I can never go back to such a place.
My first two weeks were the ones I remember most fondly. It became clear to me very early just how mind-numbing this process would be, adjusting to the regimen of meals, medication, therapy sessions, and finding ways to kill free time. I suppose it wasn’t all easy. I still recall my visit with my psychiatrist, frozen in place as I was left utterly overwhelmed by their diagnosis. After learning how these conditions impacted the lives of those who suffered from them, I was all but convinced that mine was as good as over. But I was not alone. My psychiatrist was supportive, caring for me in such a way that I almost saw them as the parent I should have had. All the supporting staff were equally kind, and I really can’t put into words how much I owe to each and every one of them. Because of them, I now knew what ailed me. I understood on a physical, psychological, and emotional level how my conditions affected my thoughts. The people of that hospital gave me the tools to decipher what I felt, breaking down and understanding the things I could not control as the progression of a biological process. In doing that, they helped loosen the grip my demons held over my life. They helped me realize that even at my worst, I was better than any label, or whisper in my ear, would have me believe. Their support would also prove crucial in guiding me through the revolving door of medications I consumed, and the joys of the side effects that came with them. I don’t think I need to explain to any of you how much fun that was. If you don’t know, count yourself lucky. 
Group therapy sessions were the biggest surprise for me. The way patients would speak of their afflictions, openly sharing their worst moments with strangers as if they had known them all their life, then seeing them embraced by those strangers in the same way was truly awe inspiring. These people gave me insight into my own experiences that I never had before, and for the first time in my entire life, I didn’t feel alone. My entire life up until then had unfolded like a long, unending nightmare. For those two short weeks, I felt like I had finally awoken from it. I was full of life, and a burning desire to live it. In that hospital, with near endless choices of activities to take part in, I began to explore myself. I took up reading. Be it psychological case studies, the works of Charles Dickens, or even the dictionary, I read everything I could front to back, absorbing everything that every page had to offer. I took up the pen myself in that time. I can honestly say I never felt more free when I had a journal or a sketchbook in front of me. Nothing else could compare to that feeling of release when the thoughts and images tumbling about my mind were given form on the page. Though the burden I carried was one I would never be rid of, every page I filled was a weight lifted. These new methods of expression, these avenues towards finding peace; they helped me in ways I never thought possible. 
If that had been all I had to say about my time in there, if the memories I made and the beauty of life were all I had to talk about, then there would be nothing left to say. I truly wish that was all I had to say. 
But here we are.
It started small. Slight movements appeared in the corner of my eye, disappearing as quickly as they came. They were often so faint and fleeting that I would only barely notice them. I didn’t know what to make of them, so I simply shrugged them off as a sign of boredom or medication messing with me. But before long, these transitory blurs took form. Like the floating squiggles that pop up in your vision every so often, these shapes would appear to me, coming and going without warning. It was when this started that I became a bit unnerved. But it wasn’t the presence of these shapes that got to me. The thing that put me on edge, the thing that set these floating forms apart from the rest, was that they were completely dark. Not like shadows either. When you looked at them, it seemed like a piece of the world had been deleted. It was like looking at a picture where some of the pixels were missing. The days came and went, and those flashes of darkness, coming and going as fast as you can blink, started taking more time to go, hanging in my vision for several seconds at a time. Seconds became minutes. And uneasiness turned to worry. I told my psychiatrist of the occurrence once it became clear that it showed no signs of stopping. Much to my frustration, they didn’t seem to have an answer for what I was seeing. They theorized everything from medication side effects to a subconscious reaction to lack of stimuli to remembrance of deep-seated traumatic memories. I spoke of it with some of the patients, hoping there might be a more salt of the earth understanding of it that the doctors couldn’t provide. To my surprise, none of them had experienced what I described, and to my dismay, they had nothing to say about how to handle it. Minor as it might have been, I had been burdened with something only I could feel, just as I had been for my entire life. And just like I had been for so many years before, I was on my own again. 
The dark spots would only continue, never staying long, always seeming distant and removed from reality. Before long, they would start… behaving differently. I would see them hovering now, appearing at random on various objects and surfaces that crossed my sight, coming and going as they always had. But now they wouldn’t move. Now when I saw one, it appeared as a fixed point, sticking to the thing it had appeared on. It was clear to me now that these were more than a psychological stress response. Whatever they were, they wanted to be seen. I started doing everything I could think of to get them off my mind. I spent more time jogging, exercising, exploring the grounds, hoping activity would fill that place in my mind. I devoted all the time I could into reading, writing and sketching, hoping that fueling my mind might cleanse it of this affliction. I devoted myself to these activities with fervor and devotion that appeared manic to my doctors and fellow patients. But those damn dark spots were always there, no matter where I went, no matter what I did. I started losing sleep over them. I withdrew from the activities I had devoted my passion to. I became distant and irritable. Before long, the few connections I had with the other patients crumbled. They kept their distance from me, a look of worry and discomfort plastered on their faces every time they saw me. My medication doses increased in response to my behavioral changes. My thoughts became slow, my body became sluggish. I would be completely drained doing something as simple as walking across a room. I lost my sense of self in a thick impenetrable mind fog. A fog I had made for myself. 
After a week of increased medication, I informed my psychiatrist that I no longer saw the spots. Would have been nice if that were true, but I was more worried now about escaping my funk than some shadowy glitch in the matrix that swallowed the world wherever it appeared. The slow, aimless slog my life had become was too much to endure; I needed my mind back, broken as it might be. I hadn’t been entirely dishonest though. Sure, I still saw the spots, and at this point they had only become larger and darker than before, but they were appearing less often. For a time, I worried that reducing my dose would allow them to return in force. I was thrilled when after a few days off the meds, nothing had changed. Maybe my mind had finally adjusted to them. Maybe they were just part of the scenery now. Try as I might, I was unable to mend the rift that now kept me from those people I might have called friends one day. With no other options for connection in that place, I set off to find new ways to occupy myself. I tapped into as many resources as the hospital could provide, spending hours a day flipping through booklets, writing down phone numbers, memorizing job descriptions, using every privilege I could muster to reach out in the hopes of making connections in the real world. When I had exhausted myself in my search, I would sit in on group sessions, listening intently to the tales and memories of some while ignoring the ramblings and insults of others. Though I knew a broken mind would not be healed by simply being occupied, having something to work towards would keep it from falling into further disrepair.
I remember that day in late August, the exact halfway point of my term, for how serene I felt. I strode up and down the brightly lit halls, flitting through job postings, fantasizing about the invigorating life on the move as an administrative assistant. Laugh all you want at that; my dreams are my own. I stopped by a window overlooking the courtyard, feeling the sun on my cheeks, letting a smile find my face as I recalled a story told by Melissa. A 34-year-old mother of 3 with all gray hair, she told us how she once spent 2 weeks living in her attic without telling anyone, moving everything she needed up there in the middle of the night, then shutting the hatch behind her. I chuckled as she described the faces of the missing person’s search party that found her there, living off boiler plate spam and playing Smash on GameCube like nothing in the whole wide world was wrong. I leaned on the window, wheezing as the laughter overtook me, wiping tears from my eyes as I took in the view of the courtyard below. Right below me was old miss Eunice, hobbling along the courtyard’s winding trail, squirting her hydration pack on flowers and weeds as she went. Fifty feet up the trail from her was Diego, a Mexican immigrant a couple years older than me, sprawled out on the grass, eyes vacantly fixed on the clouds as they passed by. In the far-left corner of the yard, was none other than Melissa, examining a broken branch from an old willow tree. She wove the branch’s wispy ends around herself like a wand, twirling and dancing in a way that brought Cinderella and her magical transformation to mind. I couldn’t help but smile as my eyes drifted to the far-right corner of the courtyard, where I saw a dark blob floating by a pine tree. I rolled my eyes at the sight. My old nemesis made themselves known once more, doing their level best to scare me with a vaguely human form hidden within the brambles. I continued on laughing, amused at the thought of this darkness feeling the need to hide from me. 
And then it moved. 
Now I don’t mean it drifted across my eye the way the blurry spots did before. I mean it fucking moved in a way that looked like it was taking a step. I saw with perfect clarity as this blur of dark emptiness took four steps from behind that tree and stopped. And now I saw its form with that same perfect, terrible clarity. Two growths resembling legs. Two tendrils resembling arms. And atop all of that, the sculpted protrusion in the shape of a head. I looked on at distant features manifesting with sharp detail, unmistakable even from a 4th story window. I now saw in this impossible thing a growing display of consciousness that should never have been possible. I froze as its newfound awareness took form, focusing, observing, searching. All of it focused on me.
My skin went cold. My breathe left my body. The fog surrounding my mind closed in on me, and I lost myself in complete terror. This shouldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be happening. I was getting better! Hadn’t I had enough?! Why was this happening to me?! 
The brochure crackled, balling up inside my tightening fist. Cold sweat soaked my face. My eyes froze open, locked on where this shadow’s eyes were meant to be. I felt myself drawn to it, feeling my mind untether from my body as it was drawn in by the shadow. 
“No matter what you do…” 
The voice of my father echoed in my mind as the shadow’s form features became clear. That same voice that had echoed that same phrase for most of my life. 
“It will always be there...” 
Did I really need to fucking hear this right now? The being was now all I could see. And as its head enveloped my gaze, I saw inside the abysmal maw of that creature’s head. I saw the outline of a face. My father’s face. 
“Open your eyes!” 
No. This wasn’t happening. Whatever this was, it wasn’t fucking happening. I jammed my eyes shut, holding them closed so tightly that my eyelids burned from the force. I felt those eyes bore through my soul, and I winced as the voice of my father echoed and intensified, his old, tired lesson ringing louder in my mind than all the world around me. But I didn’t listen. I kept my eyes shut, and I focused everything I had on that and only that. And as tears welled behind my eyes, screaming out at the pain within my face, with the curse of distant memory bringing my mind to the brink of ruin, the voice went silent. 
I sat for what felt like forever, not daring to let a sliver of light enter my sight. But before long, I opened my eyes again. The shadow was gone. I let the tears flow freely now. I remember the brochures tumbling from my hands as I covered my face. I remember falling to the floor in a heap as I cried. I cried, no longer able to ignore how helpless I was. I cried, because I knew there would be no road to recovery from this. No chance of living that normal boring life that called to me from so far away. I cried, because more than anything else, I knew that thing was right. I knew that everywhere I went, this darkness, that had haunted me my whole life, would follow. 
On that day, it seemed a light switch in my mind flipped off, and it got worse all over again. 
The darkness closed in relentlessly, no longer bothering to keep its distance. Those eerily humanoid forms followed me without pause, lurking behind common room pillars, at the ends of hallways, and behind frosted glass doors everywhere I went. But this would not be the full extent of the torment. They took other forms as well. To this day those nightmarish abominations are beyond my ability to describe, but they will haunt my mind for the rest of my life all the same. The terror they induced in me was nearly unequalled, towering above me, plunging entire rooms into blackness wherever they revealed their horrible form. Nearly unequalled. But not completely.
I was suffering. I no longer slept at night. I could barely eat, and when I did, it would come right back up. I spent what free time I had running. But now I ran in hopes of getting away. In hopes of finding a place to hide from those shadows, even if it was only for a second. The strength of my medication skyrocketed, and before long I was nearly immobile, left to the devices of my unwanted visitors, lording over me as I was helpless to stop them. My psychiatrist hardly spoke to me. Though our sessions would contain the usual back and forth, I could see in their face that I was no longer considered a human being. To them, I was a shell, only allowed to exist at the mercy of a mind broken beyond repair. I knew an extension to my term was inevitable. The way the staff spoke in hushed tones, hoping I wouldn’t hear what they had to say, was proof positive of that. And yet I couldn’t tell them. I couldn’t show them what had caused me such torment. I couldn’t show them that by keeping me here, by protecting me from myself, they were throwing me right into its open arms. I thought I would never leave that place. 
I remember the day it happened better than any other before or since. The two-month anniversary of my stay was on its way. My body had begun rejecting my medication. Violently. I had spent the entire previous night dry heaving into the toilet. I was all but comatose until the following afternoon, practically being spoon fed by my attending nurse. At least the malformed shadow of a half mantis half squid on the ceiling was there to keep me company. I woke up exhausted. It felt as though my brain was falling through quicksand. The only thing I could register was that every so often, the window on my room’s door would go completely dark, blotting out what little light came into that room. But despite being one sneeze away from a trip to the morgue, I took it upon myself to get out of bed and sit in on one of the group therapy sessions. Sometimes the need for distraction is more overpowering than any crippling ailment. 
I sat outside of the speaking circle, trying not to be noticed while I fought to keep myself from sliding out of my chair. I could barely register the thick Jamaican drawl of Leland, regaling us with his days as a trucker, or more specifically, a run in he had with a band of car jackers. I wished I could be part of what he had to say; Leland was the best storyteller in that place. The man could make a trip to the grocery store seem like the most riveting story you’ve ever heard. No matter how hard I tried to focus on him though, he was distant and faint, like he was trying to speak to me underwater. I could do nothing but surrender to the dull, empty ringing in my ears, counting the dots on the ceiling tiles, absorbing what little I could of his story. 
“ – you think they was happy throwing me out of my rig to sleep with the gators? Naw man! Ain’t no way! You know what made em happy? What made em happy was locking me in my damn trailah! But that wasn’t it! They decide best thing they can do with their new rig is to joyride her up and down the highway with me still in it! I’ll tell ya, when the popo found me slumped ‘gainst the door in a puddle of my own dinner they – “
“Pffah! Why you even complain?” 
The voice of Jovan. The old Serbian, with his pot belly spilling out of his shirt, and his pockmarked face coupled with the absent look in his eyes, always reminded me of a cockroach. Every time you lay eyes on him, the only thing you can think about him is if he will just fuck off and make himself someone else’s problem. I told that to my psychiatrist once after I nearly threw myself at him in one of our group sessions; they told me in no uncertain terms that that is one of the worst things I could possibly say to another human being. But Jovan wasn’t human. Not anymore. He was a veteran of the Bosnian War, a fact he was quick to share with anyone who would listen. From what little I’ve come to understand about that war, it sounds like he was on the wrong side of it. His service was defined by the part he played in overseeing the most morbid and horrifying acts of violence I’ve ever heard come out of another person’s mouth. And the worst part of it all was that everything I learned about him had all come from his own mouth. He spoke openly of his ‘achievements’ and wore them on his sleeve like a badge of honor. So, apologies to my former overseer, but I don’t have any sympathy for that walking, talking cockroach. Who could? 
“Put clothes ‘pon yuh argument bumbaclot.” I still have no idea what that phrase is supposed to mean, but I remember the way Leland said it made me very nervous. Leland was a laidback guy, almost stereotypically chill considering his background. But he was also built like a brick shithouse, barely able to fit through the doors of any room he found himself in. Usually, he acknowledged Jovan’s outbursts with an eye roll if he bothered to at all. But this time, Jovan struck a nerve. As much as I wanted to watch him steamroll the old Serb, I knew there wouldn’t be anything left of him if he did. 
“If you were robbed by me, you would be outside, pushing truck up the road til your legs break off!” 
“Bro. Nobody asked.” 
Diego. Another patient who was usually so laidback that you would think he was on a permanent high. And now he was speaking up. I really hoped the meeting attendants were paying attention. 
“Soft! All of you! None of you ever try in life! Try fighting for your life! No food, no water, fighting not to die by everyone you meet! Wouldn’t last a day!”
“I wonder how well you would do if you spent time in one of those camps you worked at. Maybe then you would know what its like to fight for your life.” Even in my absent-minded state, the venom in Melissa’s voice was unmistakable. I was honestly surprised that’s all she had done. 
And just like that, this session, this sanctuary of safety and compassion had been spoiled in less than a second. All so this asshole could satisfy his need to be the toughest roach in the room. Everyone’s eyes were on Jovan now. Spittle flew from their lips, and voices raised higher and higher with every word spoken. The din of voices reached a fever pitch, with the vitriol in their words drowned out by the overwhelming number of voices speaking out against him. Sweat beaded upon my brow as the heat of anger rose. The attendants fanned out across the room, trying and failing to calm the crowd as more and more rose from their seats in defiance of the old hack. All the while, Jovan’s mouth just kept fucking moving, his one finger salute raised to meet the mass of angry patients, feeding their blind fury as though he himself were feeding off it. 
But I no longer cared for their spiral into chaos. 
The darkness had returned. It was in the worst form I had ever seen it take. Because it was no form at all. It swelled and bubbled up from beneath cracks and seams of walls and floors. It came from above and below in every direction I looked. It consumed all that it touched, and in less than a heartbeat, the world beyond faded away into nothingness. What had once been a homely place of safety and reassurance lost every shred of warmth it ever had. It had all been taken by this endless abyss of nothingness, cloying at everything it touched until the insatiable dark was all that remained. But even with all the world swallowed whole around us, the patients continued to spew their ire, the attendants offering consolation, and Jovan sat upon his plastic throne, smirking at the chaos as if nothing else mattered. As if we all weren’t about to be taken into this darkness from which we would never return. 
I was 4 years old all over again. Trapped by this abyss that only showed itself to me. I felt the scream rise in my throat, the tears in my eyes. The surety that my life would soon be over had taken me, and there was nothing I could do to save myself. But my scream never came. Though my eyes had been drawn to the endless dark in that moment, they were now drawn elsewhere. They now fell on Jovan. Around his chair, a small circle had formed. The darkness stayed far from the rest of the circle, never nearer than arms length. But Jovan. Jovan, it seemed, gave the darkness cause. Cause to draw nearer. Cause to trap him within a circle of his own. Cause to ebb and flow beneath, lapping at his slippers while the circle grew around him. 
For so long I had believed this darkness was mine. I had believed with certainty that I alone was the one it sought. But now... now it sought someone new. And it wanted him just as badly as it did me. As I watched the shadows creep up his feet, posing now to drag him into the void beyond, I was taken by a single thought.
“Why do the shadows want you?” 
The darkness evaporated in an instant. I threw my hands up, shielding my eyes from the return of the light. I sat there covering my eyes, rubbing them hard as the shapes and motions of blindness swirled behind my eyelids. Once the muddled mess faded from my eyes, I pulled my hands from my face, my eyes readjusting to the room around me. 
Every single person was looking at me. They had all frozen in place as if someone had paused time. They didn’t move. They didn’t breathe. They didn’t even blink. All they would do was stare me down, anxiety and worry etched on their faces as if I had pulled out a gun. My ears began to ring, trying in a panic to fill the silence that had settled on that room. And that ringing was all I would hear. No one asked if I was ok. No one asked me to repeat myself. Hell, no one even asked what the hell was wrong with me. Why wouldn’t anyone say anything? 
I ran from that room, practically tripping over myself in my fugue state. My hands found my face once more, hiding it away from the sea of eyes as I bolted for the door. 
I gasped for breath as I wandered up and down the halls of that hospital. I could barely see through the tears forming in my eyes, running through several staff as I went. I ignored their hollers as I ran deeper and deeper into the building. Every room I looked in, every hallway I peered through and every window I glanced out of had been taken by the shadow. Sometimes they looked human, sometimes like monsters, sometimes blotting out everything that had once been there. But the one thing all these apparitions shared was how they moved. Flowing wisps and strands now filled the emptiness, bringing it some terrible form of life that it had never had before. 
Why was this happening? Why was it happening to me? What did this fucking thing want from me? 
The next thing I remembered was being back in my bed, face down in my pillow. I don’t remember when or how I got there. All I could do was sink into the pillow and let it all out. I cried. I cried like every ounce of happiness I had ever felt had been ripped out of my body. I cried the way I cried when my dad walked out of my life. I just cried until my eyes were raw, and then cried some more.
I would not move from that bed again until the sunset faded from the evening sky. And there was something about those last rays of light that gave me cause to rise. I shuffled out of bed and into the hallway to take in the day’s last light. A canvas of purples, oranges, and golds appeared on the walls from beyond the outside window. I moved closer to the rays of light, appearing now to have tangible form in their last moments of the day. As I drew closer, feeling the light begin to wash away all that had plagued me that day, I became aware that someone else was there with me. 
Jovan stood at the end of the hall. In the fading light giving way to night, he appeared to be a totally different man. Where he was once doubled over, nearly hunchbacked when he walked, he was stood straight as an arrow, towering above me. His flabby, sunken potbelly, spilling out of his robe and almost always consuming his belt, had been redistributed with his newfound posture. His bulk, which only added to this imposing stature, reminded me of a bear stood on its hind legs. This was no longer the flabby geriatric who tripped over his own fat. Here now was a hardened man. A beast in human skin who could break tree trunks like toothpicks. His eyes, the sickly, crusted over slits of one who lived a sick slovenly life, were now wide and bright like full moons. But his pupils swallowed all the light they found, darker even than the shadows that had driven me to the edge of madness. They set upon me with lucid focus, studying me, probing me. They bore the look of a predator, poised and ready to strike. And as his animal eyes found mine, I knew without a doubt in my mind, that I was the prey. 
“How do you know about the shadows?” 
Such dread I felt staring into the eyes of this thing pretending to be Jovan that I hadn’t realized he had spoken. But as he stepped forward, the ground rumbling beneath his feet, he spoke again. I heard what he said then. Even from across the hall, I heard him as clearly, as I would hear a voice in my own head. 
“How do you know about the shadows?”
Every thought running through my mind crumbled to dust. I just stood there as if I had died on my feet, staring blankly at the monster of a man as he came closer and closer to me. 
“Do you see them?” 
As I stared into those dark cavernous pits of a man without a soul, my mind splintered in a thousand directions. Was he seeing them too? Did he think I was working with the shadows? Did he just want to share what he had to say about them? Was this just some cruel trick he was playing to fuck with me? Or had his mind left him the same way mine was trying to leave me? Why was he even talking to me? I searched his eyes for answers, doing my best not to give away any of my own. But after an intense bout of soul searching, there was only one thing I could be certain of. Whatever he was thinking about doing, he was intent on doing it. He was focused. He was aware. Regardless of what fabrications or delusions addled his mind, he knew what words left his lips as he said them. 
“You see them.” 
My guts were now boiling over with fear. Every shred of consciousness in my mind screamed at me at once, pleading with me to get out of there as the towering frame of the old Serbian brute closed the gap between us. But I was trapped. Lost inside the dark, empty voids of the eyes that would see me to my death. Because within the void behind this man’s eyes, I was cast into a void all of my own. One that had haunted every step I ever took through my broken life. 
“You helped them find me!” 
The animalistic scream rattled through my brain. My brain was jolted back to life, pulling me back into the hallway. Jovan now bounded across the hall towards me, arms outstretched as his burly frame completely filled my vision.
I spun on heel, breaking out into a sprint. I bounded across the floor, each stride growing longer and longer until I thought I might take flight. The rage radiated off Jovan like gale force winds, hitting me from behind with force. My foot slipped, nearly throwing me down to the floor. I didn’t let it stop me. I threw everything I had into getting away. I came up to the end of the hallway, close enough for me to touch, but it only seemed to get further away from my reach. No matter how hard I pushed it just didn’t seem to be enough. 
It wouldn’t be enough. 
The full weight of the old man collided with my spine. I stumbled, fighting to regain my feet, but it was too little too late. In the blink of an eye I was face down on the floor tiles. A crunch rang out behind my ears. My face exploded with pain, and my vision darkened as the fire erupting in my nose began spreading to the rest of my face. The brute grabbed hold of me then, throwing me onto my back. My eyes once again met his. The animal fury within him now struck me harder than the tile floor had.
“You bring them to me! You fucking kill me!” 
I didn’t respond. Pain was the only thing my mind let me feel. I wanted to scream until my lungs gave out, but the blood pooling at the back of my throat made sure I wouldn’t. My eyes filled with tears and the hulking form of Jovan blurred as he thrust me into the floor. I felt the cold tiles collide with the back of my head, and the pain in my face was now joined by a whole new pain, as I felt coarse, fat fingers tighten around my throat. 
“You follow them here! You don’t need me! Take them!”
My blurry world became dark. The pain that shot through my face and throat now spread through the rest of my body. I kicked and lashed and flailed, but the monster held me firm. I tried to scream, only for everything to go darker as air fled my lungs, being replaced with blood that now flowed through my mouth like water. That old terrible pain I felt on my mother’s bathroom floor so long ago had come back. My vision went completely dark. My body submitted to the unrelenting pain. And as I began to fall, back though that void that had taught me what real pain was, I felt a smile on my face. Once more that pain had become my everything. And I welcomed it once more.
Everything faded away to nothing. The pain that had taken me left my body as though it had been a memory. It then returned in full concentrated force. I felt pure agony within my nose. It felt then like it had been torn right off my body. My vision returned, and now I screamed freely. My hand shot towards my face, shooting away just as quickly as touching it sent even more pain of through me like a lightning bolt. A hand loomed above me, sending me shooting backwards, my hands outstretched, steeling myself for yet another blow. But there would be none. As my mind cooled, and my eyes readjusted to my surroundings, I was able to discern who sat in front of me. 
It was one of the nurses. They had been the one to return me to my room after what had happened with Jovan. They had also been the one to reset my broken nose, and snap me out of my little vacation to the afterlife. Several nurses heard Jovan’s shouting from across the wing, arriving bleary eyed and placing bets on what his problem was now, only to be greeted by him choking me to within an inch of my life. It had taken 4 of the biggest, strongest men in the hospital to get him off, and they apparently had to drag him all the way back to his room, with him screaming like a dying animal the whole way there. Having been brought up to speed, and now coming down from my incredibly rude awakening, the nurse left me with a box of Kleenex, and a promise to keep an eye on my would-be killer. Or maybe they were just excusing themselves after seeing how pissed off I was at having my nose rebroken. 
After everything that happened to me, I wasn’t about to get any sleep, even if I wasn’t occupied with draining and cleaning my bloody nose. I took to distracting myself by taking stock of my surroundings. I made a mental inventory of everything I saw in the room. Then I looked everything up and down again and rewrote my mental inventory. After falling so far down that mental drain that I had memorized the number of lines in the wood grain of my door, my mind turned to the world outside. Beyond the walls of the world, I had come to call my own.
I was met with the most captivating night sky I had ever seen in my life. On that night, the moon had crept up from behind the horizon, the crescent sliver shining bright upon the earth. On that night, an ocean of distant, twinkling stars all shone as one, shining clearer now than ever before, shining as if they sought to light the Earth as our Sun did. On that night, the constellations of new and old found life, their tales unweaving upon a perfect canvas of ink black. And among all those wonders, the light of the galaxy had revealed its splendor. Distant wisps of the ether served as the pale centerpiece of the light that would give us light when our star could not.
It was the clearest, greatest memory I have of any night sky, and it will never leave my mind because in the moments that followed, it would be gone. 
Darkness crept in around the edges of the window, obscuring the light show in a wreath of empty blackness. The stars were consumed one by one, my room growing ever darker as they vanished. I thought my eyes were failing me. I thought after witnessing a sight so perfect, I would be taken, kept from ever seeing such beauty ever again. Before long, the darkness found the moon, and as the last of the night’s light was taken, the darkness in my room became absolute. 
I felt that old, terrible dread that had been with me all my life return in force. 
I would not let it take me. I threw myself around my room, gripping and clawing at everything I touched, hoping the next thing I grabbed would be my way out. The darkness alone could have held me in place, but there was more to it this time. This time, there was something in it. Something I could not see or hear or name. But I felt it all the same. It caused the darkness around me to move. To close in around me. Constricting me. Suffocating me. I quickened my stride. Pain shot through my body as I collided with a hundred unseen things that had set out to stop me from finding the light. None of that mattered. I barreled headfirst through all of it, never minding the bumps and scrapes that found me as I searched for that door handle. And just as the darkness had closed in, so close that I could feel it on my skin, I found it. I grabbed hold, pulling back so hard I nearly threw the door off its hinges. I tumbled into the faded light of the hallway, falling face first towards the tile floor. As my body hit the floor, and I felt my face upon the tiles yet again, the most horrible cry ever I had heard in my entire life rang out. 
But this time, it did not come from me. 
A scream echoed deep from the bowels of the hospital, tearing the silence of my empty hallway apart. This held no resemblance to the groans and cries of the addled and distraught that I had grown used to. It shared no similarity to the footfalls and sighs of patrolling staff fighting against stress and exhaustion. This scream held no humanity in it. The sound was far too deep, as though each inflection were been drawn out. Like it had been made to fill the ear for as long as it possibly could. Yet despite how distorted it was, the cries it let out, cries so full of torment, misery, and agony were unmistakable. Those cries still held in them the kind of fear that only came in the worst moments of a person’s life. A fear you only feel when a piece of your soul is taken from you. I have heard such screams very little in my time on Earth. And I would give every earthly thing I own to never hear again. 
The distorted attempt at human imitation took hold of me, filling my mind until there was no room left for my own thoughts. They paralyzed my mind, overtaking every thought, every instinct, fixing me in place. And I just lied there, letting myself be hypnotized by the terrible melody of this disembodied choir. From above and below, they came, drawing ever closer to the dim hall in which I now lied. They converged as one beyond the end of the hallway, their voices crashing into my eardrums with hurricane force, so near now they could just as easily have been next to me, screaming straight into my ear. And at the end of the hall, where the noise overtook all other things, it lied waiting. The darkness. Now creeping across the edges of the doorframe, across the threshold of the hallway, and down that tile floor towards me. 
My mind finally found itself. I scrambled back to the chasm of darkness I had just fought so hard to escape. Throwing myself back into my room like a child learning how to crawl, my legs became mush, and I could do little more than dive through the open door. I clambered for a hold of the door, throwing it shut hard enough to shake the frame. I then clawed at my bedsheets, trying with shaking hands to pull myself up from the floor. But the blankets were not there to protect me. They slipped from their place on the bed, crumbling in my hands as they fell to the floor. The screams now sounded off like gunfire, hovering in wait beyond the door’s window insert, the florescent hall lights fading as they drew near. 
I was alone all. Every connection I ever made, every moment of company I ever enjoyed. It all amounted to nothing in that moment, with the cold floor on which I wept now my only companion in the world, and the thin pane of laminated wood and frosted glass my only protector. 
As the last light faded, as the chorus of terror reached a fever pitch, and as every fiber of my being went numb, one final thought entered my mind. One final, silly gesture to save myself when my mind and senses had failed me. I shut my eyes. I covered them as tightly as I could. It had to be the most childish, naïve thing I could have possibly done. But there was nothing else I could do. 
No matter what happened next, I would at least make sure that I wouldn’t see it happen. 
As my world went black by my own hand, the screams, and the terror that raged within my mind, stopped. A low ring emanated through my room as silence met my ears. The fever of panic that had all but consumed me broke, giving way to a chill of dread. I trembled on that floor, holding my hands tight against my face, not daring to even breath. My head spun. The floor gave way beneath me. My body leaned into its phantom fall, and every sensation from the chill of the tiles on my legs to the ache of the bedframe in my back abandoned me. Though I was now falling through the world, I would not be allowed to leave that room. So I sat there. Listening. Waiting. Praying for the end. 
The door creaked open. 
My hands pushed deeper into my face. Pain shot through my nose, setting fire to my cheeks and my eye sockets. I didn’t dare make a sound. I held still as stone, even as the fire raged through my skull. The darkness entered the room. I listened closely to how it moved, how it now drew towards me. From around me, above me, and behind me. A sound like rolling waves filled my room. The air in front of me clasped hands moved. Coming and going with rhythm. It was in front of me, and what I was now feeling was its breath on my face. Goosebumps found every inch of my skin. Every hair on my body stood on end. My hands shook upon my face. I tightened every muscle in my body, trying with all the will I had to keep still. Pain continued to tear through my body. Tears formed behind my eyelids. But I would not open them. I would not move. The only thing I knew, the only thing I believed in that moment, was that keeping my closed eyes would keep me safe. 
And then it spoke. 
“No matter what you do to stay blind to the truth, it will always be there. Waiting for you.” 
A chorus of a thousand voices spoke as one. With their warped countenance they spoke to me as the voices of my childhood did. Bubbling up from the deepest recesses of my mind. 
“What can you see with your eyes open?”
The echo rose through me, louder than any thought my own mind had ever had. I heard in that mass of sound, voices that I knew. Voices from across my life. My psychiatrists, the hospital patients, and everyone from every foster home, detention center and den of crime I had ever lived under. My childhood tormentors. My mother. My father. All of them were here. All of them, as one voice, spoke to me. 
“Do you believe what you run to will bring solace from what you run from?” 
Tears flowed from beneath my shielded eyes. I wanted to jam my fingers through my ears so no more terrible words could be imparted onto my memory. I wanted to reach through my eyelids and tear out my eyes so I would never look upon the world and all the terrible things waiting for me in it. I wanted to scream until my throat crumbled to dust, so I would never have to speak with another voice seeking to make its home in my mind. But I didn’t move. They wouldn’t get what they wanted from me. I wouldn’t let them have me. 
“How can a mind that believes only lies hope to understand the truth?” 
For a split second I wavered. For a second cracks began to form on my hands as my fingers parted. For the briefest of moments, I felt cracks begin to form in my mind. Were they not right to say that? Was it not true that I had spent my life playing a bad hand, commanded by a will that wasn’t mine? Had I not already made my home in the darkness I had fought so hard to escape? 
Maybe I had. Maybe all I had ever known was all I ever would know. But today would be different. It didn’t matter what they said. I would keep holding on no matter what came. I would not give up. 
“Open your eyes. See what awaits you.” 
My hands were at last steady. The pain left me, and the darkness behind my eyelids grew still. My eyes were all my own. My mind was all my own. And I would see what I chose to see. 
The room returned to silence. The unbearable weight of the presence that awaited me had lifted. But I did not move. My hands remained pressed against my eyes. The tears soaked through my palms, flowing between my fingers. It all hit me at once. No matter what I did, that darkness, that thing I had thrown everything I had into escaping, would always be there. It would always find me. It would never leave me. 
I don’t know how long I sat there before I felt the hand on my shoulder, frightening me back to the room I had hidden myself from. It was one of the nurses. They stood in the doorway, gently pulling me to my feet, motioning for me to follow. She told me I was okay, and that everything would be fine. But when she said it, there was a crack in her voice. As I looked into her eyes, they told a different story, bloodshot and wide, with her own thoughts seeming one wrong word away from breaking down as she took me by the arm. 
Life had returned to that hallway beyond my room, now radiant with the light of the Sun. But the light’s return would be no consolation. The hallway was now packed to overflow with doctors, nurses and other staff. They ran every which way, pushing through each other with panic etched on every single one of their faces. It became hard to breath as the nurse dragged me through them, pushing so as not to be swallowed whole. Every door in that hallway had been opened. Every room was filled beyond capacity by the mob of staff as they crowded into each one of them enmasse. Yet for how much life shifted and bustled through that corridor, each and every one of them were silent. Those who were not running would not move unless they were made to. None of them seemed to accept what they were seeing, staring vacantly at the rooms and at each other, no purpose or method to their actions. I stared into every set of eyes in that hallway as we went. Not a single one of them blinked. But as I was rushed along, taken from hallway to hallway to go God knows where, I could not see what had unfolded in any of the patients’ rooms. 
I was held in observation for over a week. A revolving door of doctors occupied my every waking hour. I would answer more questions there than in the entire 2 months I had been there. Their questions were always strange. They asked me who I had had contact with since entering the hospital, if I was prone to hallucinations, asking me in depth about every transient thought that crossed my mind when my conditions were at their worst. These were all more or less questions I had answered before, but they were somehow different. It seemed they would linger on my answers for a little bit longer than they should have. They doted on me with the greatest compassion, hanging on my every word, feeding me every reassurance they could, catering to my every request like I was royalty. This actually frightened me. Looking back on it, I knew they wanted answers. They wanted to find out if I knew something they didn’t. If I knew what happened that night. But what could I tell them? Whatever they wanted to know was something I didn’t. Every so often I would snatch a glimpse from behind the door as they exited. Every doctor who saw me would be met by a dozen other doctors, waiting with anxious expectation. Towards the end, the doctors stopped coming. In their place were men and women clad in suits, ties, and expressions more grave than a funeral. Despite the sternness in their voice and the intensity of their look, the routine was the same. They asked. I answered. They left. More frustrated than when they arrived, but the aggravation had also become routine by then. I remember the last one to visit me opened that door, only to be greeted by the unmistakable silhouette of a uniformed cop. 
After all the stomach churning, nerve-wracking days having all eyes on me, I was discharged from the hospital. By the end of it all, I was sure my next visitor would be leading me away in handcuffs. Instead, the desk clerk handed me a backpack full of what few belongings I had, along with a folder full of medical records and phone numbers. Then she sent me away with an empty wish for all the best. 
After all the time I spent there, after having warmth and safety for the first time in my life, I was out on my own again, with only the clothes on my back and the name on a birth certificate I didn’t even have. I spent the next month burning through every resource I could. I made my bed in every stop in shelter and care facility that would take me, making myself a regular at every job fair I could find. I begged, borrowed and stole everything from phone calls and suit jackets to showers and coffee creamers in my quest to start again. Even now, I’m still not really sure how I’m going to do that. Honestly, more than anything, the one thing I wanted most was to be done with the sleepless nights alone with my thoughts, and all the pain they brought. But even more than that, I wanted to forget about that one night. That one night curled up on the cold tile floor, hiding myself away from the darkness as it swallowed me whole and spat me out into a brand-new nightmare. 
Eventually, I caught a break. I got a job as a construction hand. I had to move 300 miles away for it, but it was still exactly what I needed. I spent a week gathering what little supplies I could at the drop ins and Salvation Army’s. I then got my hands on a junk car that nobody would miss before I was on the road to my new life. But as my hotwiring did its work, and the old Camry’s engine roared to life in the backlot of the used car dealership, my mind wandered. Back to the hospital. That night. 
I knew there was little chance of finding answers now. I had little hope I would make it to the door before I was sent away. But the thought had lodged itself in my mind and burrowed in deep. I had to put it to rest so I might leave that moment of my life behind. On my way out of town I made a pit stop outside of the psychiatric hospital. The place that had been my home for the best 2 months of my life. It had been abandoned. I had returned to a fenced off shell of a building in the early stages of demolition, the lot now being prepared for a brand new apartment complex. I was floored. It had barely been a month since my departure, and now this haven, this beacon to those in need, had simply ceased to exist. And with the foundations of this place now reduced to rubble, so too was my chance of finding the truth. And with that, I was on my way. 
It's been nearly two years. I’m still surprised I didn’t die on the road to my new job, the beater car I had "borrowed" rattling and shaking and literally falling apart under my feet. For 4 painful hours I was sure that I would be reduced to a hundred-yard smear on the pavement. By some miracle, I made it to my first day of work, alive and on time, and I’ve been going steady with them ever since. The job is hard, both on body and mind. Long, unending days seem to be the norm, just as it seems normal for me to feel worn down to the bone at the end of them. None of this is helped by my boss, an insufferable prick that is somehow only happy when he’s angry. But the job keeps me occupied; the voices that haunted my mind since childhood no longer have much say. I spent over a month living out of that car, parking and essentially living at our job sites, with only cold ramen packs and scratchy wool blankets to keep me warm at night. Thankfully, I was taken in by a coworker. Man must enjoy our arrangement; in exchange for a dark, dingy spare room in his basement, my paycheck goes straight to his bank account. What little free time I have has largely gone towards documenting myself back into existence. The joys of recreating legal documentation, opening a bank account, and all the mundane tasks of being a proper adult, all while trying, and trying and trying to find ways to get myself medicated. To his credit my landlord/coworker has actually been helping me sort a lot of these things out. On top of looking out for me on the job, he’s as good a guy as you could hope to know, treating me with dignity and respect, even when he would be right not to. I still feel that urge to run, just as I did before, fearing the day where I would let everyone down in a way I couldn’t fix. But I’m trying not to think about that anymore. 
I know that I’ll never be ok, but I am managing. And I think that’s all I can really ask for. 
I know that I am doomed to do battle with my thoughts every day until my last day. But of all the thoughts running through my mind, whether they are mine or not, there is one I accept with certainty. I will never go to another psychiatric hospital. I don’t care who tells me what about how difficult yet rewarding recovery is. I don’t care if the place is home to the best shrinks who have ever lived. I cannot put myself in a place where that darkness will have me for its own. Maybe what I saw and felt that day was my mind coming to terms with itself. Maybe I was close to really changing things for myself in a way that I could only have dreamed of. Maybe if I just listened to the voice that night, I would be the supreme leader of the free world right now. What I do know is that sometimes, in the quiet moments I spend alone in the darkness of my bedroom, I feel something there, looking back at me. 
I’m sure there’s some beautifully eloquent and rational thesis that would explain all this away. I’m sure someone who was at that hospital is still out there, and that I could find out everything I wanted to know with a lunch meeting or a phone call. Hell, I’m sure if I asked nicely, some of the people here would take it upon themselves to go questing for answers, sifting through every scrap of information ever conceived about that place to uncover all there was to know about it. But I can’t do it. I can’t face the truth about how that night changed the hospital so much that it would close its doors forever. I can’t accept that what might have happened to all those poor patients and doctors that I will never see again might very well be my fault. But more than anything, I can’t return to the life I lived before. I can’t relive the memories of a life so full of pain that I tried to end it. No amount of peace of mind is worth it for me. 
I’m sorry if this isn’t the story you hoped it would be. I’m sorry if you click off this feeling like your time was wasted. But sometimes you don’t get what you hope for. Sometimes you end up right back where you started, facing down the very thing you wanted to leave behind. Sometimes, no matter how wise the words that guide you are, no matter how much you believe that the truth will set you free, you will find yourself running from it, pushing it away, refusing to see it for what it is. Even when its right there by your side, waiting for you to open your eyes.  
Category:Beings
Category:Mental Illness
Category:Hospitals