After Lights Out

DAY ONE | 3:22pm

D A Y   O N E | 3:22pm

There are two considerable reasons as to why cars were the very bane of my existence.

One; I, unmistakably, suffered from grievous motion sickness. If I was moving and my legs weren't the product of this, then there was a high possibility that I would throw up, or pass out. However, for some inexplicable reason, my travel sickness was always at the peak of its torture when I was sat in a car.

Two; They were awkward, it's as simple as that. In any other mode of transport, you didn't feel as if you needed to talk to anyone. Buses, trains, boats, you could just sit in silence and it would be deemed acceptable. But in a car? Oh no, it wasn't that simple. It's like there was an unwritten law saying that it's mandatory to communicate with the other person in the car otherwise it's just going to get more awkward than it originally was.

"We all make choices, but in the end, it's our choices that make us." However, on this particular occasion, I would have preferred to suffer the awkward silence than listen to another one of David's life quotes. For the whole two and a half hours of that car journey I had to, not only try and keep my stomach's contents down, but also stop myself from snapping with every cringe-worthy life quote David threw in my face. "You've made the right choice, A.J, and now that choice will sculpture you into the person you dream to become."

I replied in a string of groans and other various strangled noises, unable to muster the strength to respond like a normal person would. I was too busy keep all that was left layering my stomach actually in my stomach.

"There's nothing wrong with this decision, you know," He continued, like he was on automatic. I was beginning to believe it was more for him than it was for me, like he was trying to justify his and my mother's actions for sticking me in a looney bin. "They will give you the help you need, don't you want that? To get rid of the voices and to stop seeing things that aren't real. You can be normal, Addison, you can go back to college and try again." I didn't reply, but that time it was more because I didn't want to.

I was well informed that I was, in fact, far from normal. You could see it whenever someone in my family came round, they would be on edge like they expect me to grab a meat cleaver and hack them to death. I was Schizophrenic, not a psychopath. But telling them would just be a waste of oxygen, no matter how much I acted like a normal twenty year old, I would forever be the niece or cousin that could hear and see things that weren't there.

This is where David Simmons comes into the picture. He was my therapist before he became my step-dad, it was an odd love affair to say at the least. He was a middle aged, sagacious child psychiatrist with an unhealthy obsession for cheesy life quotes. My mother had me see him when I was thirteen for my motion sickness, to see if he could ease the queasiness I always felt. But then, when I was fourteen, I made the regrettable choice to talk to my hallucination and David caught me. Various tests later, I was diagnosed with psychosis at the ripe old age of fifteen. David then took it upon himself to try and 'cure' me from it, but the only thing he ended up succeeding in was my mother's heart. I could have gone to a thousand meetings with him, taken a whole pharmacy of pills, but it was all to no avail. No matter how strong my meds were, I still saw him. I still saw Joel.

"... And not to mention that Animus Valley has the best results in the whole of the US. All you've got to do is comply to whatever treatment they give you and try to ignore the voices." I didn't even realize David was still talking, nor did I really care. It was more for his own peace of mind than it was about comforting me. He and my mom didn't want to send me off to some funny farm, it was actually my Aunt Lisa's decision. She droned on about this one place, Animus Valley, which was situated up in the mountains, miles away from civilization, she claimed that they could even replenish those who had been touched by the Devil— meaning me. She was adamant that I had been 'touched' by the Devil and the voice I heard belonged to him... and she has the audacity to call me crazy. My mother was the one that suggested it might be a good idea, to let me go to this place and see if they could help me.