Redemption

Two weeks of therapy had done absolutely nothing for me. The voices kept coming and they wouldn’t stop. My parents took to daily session with a psychiatrist, pumped me full of drugs and had me participate in self-help groups. Nothing worked. I’d still hear them anywhere and everywhere I went. Sometimes they were talking to me; sometimes they were talking about the most random things. Sometimes they would sound like the voices of people I knew, some I had never heard before. I would have vivid nightmares about the weirdest things and wake up screaming. I didn’t care about the things I cared about before. My room became a mess and so did my appearance. No longer did I spend hours coming my hair or fixing my clothes. It was most likely one of the darkest times of my life. Everyone avoided me like the plague. A couple of the kids were nice enough to keep talking to me, but no one really wanted a loon for a friend. My mother, however, had strangely become the one person I could depend on. She would stay up with me during the nights and stroke my hair like she did when I was a kid. She’d talk to me and tell me that everything would be ok. For some reason whenever I was with her, I felt calm, as if I knew everything was going to be ok. I also got the feeling that she knew more than she appeared to. I don’t know why I felt like that. It was just a feeling. I would sometimes get crazy ideas that she had somehow caused all of this, but they were baseless thoughts. During that time, she was my only solace.
Two weeks after my first episode, I sat waiting in my home room, waiting for class to start. The doctors had diagnosed me with paranoid schizophrenia and said that if I didn’t show any improvement over the next week, that I would need to be transferred to an institution, a nice name for a nut house. I went to school early these days. For some reason, I didn’t hear any of the voices at this time. I sat wondering if crazy people knew that they were crazy. I know, it was a weird thought, but so were all my thoughts these days. My thoughts wandered and settled on Alex for some reason. I hadn’t seen him since I had gone to the hospital. I kept thinking of his goofy grin, the look he’d get in his eyes when he was day dreaming during class, the lame jokes that he’d make. Only then I realized how much I missed him.

Just then, I heard the door to the class room open. I looked up and saw, ironically Alex. I wondered for a second if I had summoned him here with my mind. “Wow.” I thought. “I must really be crazy.” I looked at him, and went back to my wandering thoughts. Alex gave me a weird look over. It was to be expected. Everyone looked at me like that these days. “Hey,” he said slowly, “you might want to fix that tie.” I looked down at my tie and adjusted it to suit before wandering off again. Alex sat down and waved his hand in front of my face. “Hey Allison, is everything okay?” he asked. I looked at him for a second. Then I remembered that he hadn’t been here for a while. I thought that this may be the one opportunity to talk to someone who was unbiased.

I looked at him and said, “It’s quiet here, isn’t it?”He gave me a shocked look. I didn’t blame him. I would give me a shocked look. I don’t know what I expected to tell him, but it definitely wasn’t that. Those words kinda just jumped out. “Yeah,” he replied, “It’s pretty quiet here.”

“When I’m here, I don’t hear them.” I continued. Again with the crazy talk. I was creeping myself out.

“Hear what?”

“The voices.” I replied, “The voices in my head.”

Alex raised his eyebrow and gave me a look. So it wasn’t aspirin in that bottle after all. I looked up. The voices were back! Maybe talking about them made them come back.

“Do you hear that?” I asked him, “It’s one of them. It’s saying something about painkillers.” Looking back on it now, I’d have to give Alex credit for not getting up and running out of that class room.

“Well, I think Allison has finally lost it.”

“There it goes again. It just said that I lost it.”

All of a sudden, Alex got a weird look on his face. Not like if he thought I was crazy. It was something else that I couldn’t put my finger on it. Allison if you can hear this, look directly at Alex.” I looked up slowly. The voices had never told me to do something before. Maybe now I was officially wacked. I looked up at Alex. What else could I do but listen to it? The people on TV always did what the voices told them. “Now I want you to raise your right hand.” Raise my right hand? I wondered if it was going to make me strangle Alex. “Come on Allison. You can do it.” I raised my hand. “Now, put it down and raise the other one.” I went along. “Allison,” it said, “It’s me, Alex.” Whaa? I looked at him. Alex was one of the voices? What the heck was going on? “Allison, you’re not hearing voices. You’re hearing my thoughts.” Suddenly, all came crashing down on me. These weren’t arbitrary voices. These were peoples’ thoughts. Drake, Erica, Annie, Mr. Victor. It all made sense now. I stared at Alex for a while and then broke down in tears. I cried my heart out. I wasn’t crazy. I definitely wasn’t crazy. Alex sat there while I cried, waiting for me to finish. “You have no idea how good I feel to know that I’m not crazy.” I said to him, drying my eyes.
He chuckled. “I can only imagine.” He said sarcastically
Everyone in school thinks I am.” I said. Then a thought struck me “How did you know that I was hearing thoughts? Why didn’t you think that I was crazy like everyone else did?”

“I didn’t.” he replied. “I just guessed.”

Guessed? “Why would you guess something so incredibly far-fetched?” I questioned, feeling my enthusiasm coming back

“Because, I had quite a few incredibly far-fetched things happen to me over the past two months.” He said. He removed a bottle of water from his satchel. “Look at this.” He poured the water over his hand. It froze before it hit the ground. I could feel my eyes open wide in shock. “I’m actually quite incredibly far-fetched myself.” He replaced the bottle. “We have special abilities Allison.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I really don’t know,” he answered, “but you have no idea how good I feel knowing that I’m not alone.” I gave him a small smile, one of the very few smiles that I’ve smiled in a while.

“I’m going to the café. Do you want to come along?” he asked. I nodded
“You know, you’re being awfully trusting of me.” I could feel my old confidence. Allison was back! “What if I go and tell everyone what I just saw?”

He smiled, “It doesn’t matter. They already think you’re crazy.”

“Two of them.”

I looked at Alex. “Two of what?”

“Huh?”

“You just said, I mean, thought ‘Two of them’. Two of what?”

“I didn’t think anything.” Alex suddenly got this guarded look and glanced around the room.

“What’s wrong?” I asked

“Nothing.” he replied. “Let’s go.” We walked out the classroom. Any normal person would be completely freaked that they could read peoples thoughts, but I would deal with that later. Right now, I was just glad that I wasn’t crazy.