She had not been about the formalities of civilization. No, as they had seemed almost like the forlorn passages in a strange fairytale. She was avoided, and while they avoided her much as if she were a postcard to some voyager at sea, she avoided them as if they were the facades of hypocrites. It was a dead end, there was nowhere else in sight. The twitter of birds came with the dawn as if nothing had changed, as if life were the same robust thing it had started out as long ago.

The creature in her had a disease, a remarkable one. Schizophrenia. It was a thing that caused her to step back and survey her surroundings in a childlike fog, as the minutes passed nothing could ever be arranged in the right way. The days mingled with the air, but something was lost within them. It had never been arranged, it had happened the same as one stubs their toe or was caught like a cold on a wintry day. Then it had come and ruined her childhood and everything else became a fable.

Then, she met a woman who told her that she could leave the life she had lived, "Greedy pharmaceutical companies, they're all the same, and they're evil you see! They're the ones who put pesticides in our food" a woman had approached her at the store where she had gone for no reason in particular although the woman who owned the store had said it was meant to be.

"You were born on January 13th? That's the same birthday as my daughter's. This was meant to be. I can free you of these demons if you want me to. That's what I do. I am a healer."

She had wanted to do what the woman had said, pray to the Arch Angels to free her of these demons. She was not to dabble with witchcraft. But it was not that easy, and yet something in that conversation had struck a nerve or had punctured vein, and her blood began to seethe. It was not natural, this disease, nor could it be cured. Later that evening she devised a plan, she would leave home or join a convent, and find God again.

Things could not get any worse. She was twenty one and had no job to speak of. She was living at home with her parents and not in school like all the good people around her would be. She had failed, dropped out of high school and lost her mind. There was no way to reconcile her failure. There was no way around this....she was trapped.

The worst of it was that she knew she didn't want to be in college, she didn't want a job, a car, a boyfriend. She just wanted something...a semblance of what reality was. She wanted to analyze the pieces of this creature and see the parts she had long forgotten. But there was no possible way to do it, not without leaving everything she had known.

That all happened before she met Collin. Then the two had decided to run away together to Canada. She waited till the house was empty and packed her suitcase, then she remembered that she would need to take her medication and there was hardly enough to last her for long. But she took all she could and then left with him in his beat up Honda.

When they were traveling, she tried to pretend she was in a scene of a famous movie, they were movie stars or adventurers. But the night was so black and cold. They would not catch them yet and she had no reason to worry. When they were stopped by an officer, she knew it had to be the end. But it wasn't. It had to be the Neverending Story, they would be in Fantasia and nothing would ever be the same.

The house was beautiful, it was resting deep in the woods where no one would suspect them. Collin had a friend living up here, and here they escaped for over three months or until she could no longer stand it and feared for her sanity. She had run out of her medication and she was probably pregnant. She called her father, and he cried over the phone. He asked her why she had left and that he was worried he would never have seen her again. He said that he was dying and had been diagnosed with cancer...then she choked on her heart through her tears. No, it wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for her leaving. He was sick because he had been scared. It was her fault, this she could not bear.


Her love had not been Collin, because he would no longer be by her side. She waited for him to take her back, but he refused to go and so she waited for her father to find them. When she was face to face with someone changed and somewhat bewildered, she knew where she had failed. How he had cared about her too much and she too little. When she was home her surroundings felt familiar yet alien, and she knelt on the floor and wept. She would lose another piece of herself, this time it was permanent. She wished she would have listened to the lady at the shop, found peace, freed herself of her demons. But there was no demon, just a young woman who tried to hard to find what was already there....home.

Copyright April 30, 2009 Sweet Madness

You may not plagerize this.