If you’ve never been hospitalized for a mental disorder you could never understand what it’s like. Being trapped in a cage, cold metal bars at your back, fear and confusion in front of you. Everyone knows there’s no escape, nowhere to go when you’re trapped in your own head. Your only choice is to do what is asked and never rebel, never question, never defy, for fear of getting lost in your own insanity.

The buildings are all blistering white and sickening tan. In the early hours of the morning, when the medication is starting to wear off, you are filled with a desperate need to smear the perfect walls. You imagine your blood or someone else’s splattered across the confining barriers. The next morning, you forget you ever had the thoughts at all.

Why am I here? Wandering the halls full of expressionless faces and souls too far gone to ever live again? It all started nine years ago when I was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder, more commonly referred to as Multiple Personality Disorder. I can’t remember most of my life, the empty holes in my memory growing and drowning my sanity with each and every passing day.

I just turned 17 last month. But here it doesn’t matter. When your eyes and face show no light or spark of intelligence, no sign of thought or heart, it doesn’t matter who you are. Your gender, your age, your looks, none of it matters. An elderly grandfather leaning on a cane, and a beautiful young girl stand side by side, casting the same shadow.

As a child I never knew why people snapped or lost it, killing for no other reason than to prove themselves. Now I understand. When that moment passes and you want to shoot, maim, kill, do anything to break the horrible pattern you live day in and out. You are willing to whatever it takes to prove you are nothing like the other cracked and shattered souls that walk these halls. Before you can act, the moment passes and you are left with a feeling of defeat and submission. Your own soul cracking like glass.

The medication is the worst part. Anti-depressants for the horrible feelings that are brought on by missing most of your life. Anti-anxiety medication to calm the nervousness and anxiety caused by the anti-depressants. Tranquilizers for the mental confusion caused by the other two medications. The constant drugs leaves you tired and dazed, allowing for only the most basic of thoughts. When the little buzzer rings informing you that it’s time to swallow the next dose you inevitably hold off as long as you can. Telling yourself you can live and survive without them, that the addiction is all in your head.

Then the feelings hit. The anger, the confusion, the fear, the lack of understanding. It doesn’t take much anymore to grab the three little orange containers, the contents rattling as you select one of the small pills. Your hands shake from the overflow of emotions and you down the small colored ovals without even any water. It’s easier to give up than to live. Easier to forget when it’s impossible to remember. Easier to just lose yourself.

It’s easier to walk down the hall like everyone else. Never talking, never looking, never living. I enter the cafeteria barely realizing there are other people there. I sit down where I do every day, sharing a table with two other people. I can faintly remember that when I first arrived they were the old man, wrinkled with time and age, and the young girl to much of a child to have even finished growing. I can’t even tell which one is which anymore. Who has lived a life, and who still has many years to go. It’s easier to just not care. It’s easier to just give up.

Someday I’ll get out of this place. My wings will be repaired and healed and I’ll take my first flight, soaring out of the confining halls and into the world. I’ll enter the world again, marveling at the time past and the pieces fixed. I’ll pass the buildings I once knew to be clean and new to stare at the broken windows and chipped paint.

Everything will be new. It will be starting over, stepping into the same light, but seeing it through new eyes. Family, friends, places, life, will have passed with time. I will remain the same. Unable to age and change in a world that has left me behind long ago.

I won’t remain free for long. I am an addict. My soul has already been shattered and soon the pieces so haphazardly glued back together will come lose once more. I will return to these halls and reclaim my seat with the man and girl, giving into the insanity once more.

There’s no escaping it. I’m addicted. Someday I’ll snap and the girl, the old man, someone will become the second victim of my insanity. I’ll smash their head into the table. I’ll be able to think calmly for the first time in the few moments before I’m restrained and dragged away from the pooling blood. I’ll scream to the heavens, having finally let go of the last thread of understanding.

I won’t be dead. I died long ago, somewhere in these empty halls I passed into the void. I may have finally snapped but I won’t be any different. I’ll be the same, just finally having fallen of the edge I’ve been balancing on for so long.

Why is it that they make places like this? Why won’t they just let us die? Why do they consider it a success every day that we continue living? Why do they consider the young girl, eyes that long lost the light of life staring at nothing but the floor, a success? I don’t see anything in her. I see a future me.

Maybe they can break the curse on her. Open the doors and let her out, she’ll be normal. She’ll have been cleared and prepared to live a life as a successful business owner. I don’t think I’d go. I don’t think I’d let you repair the cracks in my life. I’m addicted to this world. I’m addicted to not having to understand. I’m addicted to the insanity.

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A/N: Hope you liked it. Please review.