I want to tell you that I can stay here forever. That I’m happy in this place. That I dont hate everything around me.

But that would be a lie.

I do want to leave. In fact I’m itching to leave. I can’t wait to leave. Leave this house. This family. This school. This place. Because I know I can’t stay. Not with these memories.

And people ask me sometimes, when I make the slightest mention of leaving this ‘perfect town’ and going off on my own, if I’m crazy. I just answer with a solid “maybe.” I might be crazy after all, but not for the reasons that they see, the reasons they come up with, the reasons I tell them. It’s my past that makes me insane. My wild and messed up past. That is what makes me want to get out of this place. Everywhere I look I see a lost face, a bad decision, an old friend, now lost with time. And it’s killing me, killing my happiness, killing my brain.

But maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe I should just go insane. That just might be enough to me out of here. Wherever ‘here’ is. I can’t explain why here doesn’t seem like here at all, it almost seems like it’s a different place completely. The ‘counselors’ I’ve seen have all told me this place doesn’t exist. Tell me all my problems are in my mind. That’s nice and all but nothing they do helps. That’s not to say that i don’t wish it was on my mind. It would explain so much about the situation. About the hauntings.

Those terrible hauntings. The ones that keep me up at night, sweating, crying, screaming. Panicking. Sitting up in the middle of my bed, my scarred thighs pulled close to my body, my face buried in my knees, sobbing. The nights that I look around my dark, empty chamber and see her face again. Bright as Hell’s fire, burning the image into my mind. The painful and frightening memories, spinning around me as if they were projected onto the walls, for the world to see. But it’s only me. Only I can see these projections of horror. Only I can make sense of them, and what they mean. And I let these things, these ghosts, infect me with my own memories, let them steal my sleep, and let them drain my sanity. But maybe I’m not. Maybe I’m not insane. Maybe I am. Maybe I am everything the doctors say I am. Psychopathic. Schizophrenic. Paranoid. Insane. And Crazy.

Crazy. Now we are getting deep. To think that I am crazy?!? NO! It’s them. They are crazy. They don’t know me. They don’t know my life, my past, my thoughts; my story. They have no idea. They just assume. They guess. Just so they can bring these thoughts up later. All those hauntings I have to relive with a so-called ‘psychiatric doctor’ who just augments the tormenting thoughts in my mind. I know I’m not insane. I tell the others I’m not too, and they agree. They all know. But these doctors don’t, they still pry and pry until it hurts, Until my mind bleeds out the thoughts that I kept back.

I can feel the tears flowing down my cheeks, but I’m happy. I’m happy. I think. But am I? Or are these tears real? And if these tears are real then what else of my life is fake? What else have I imagined, besides just my feelings? Are these firm hands holding my arms to my sides real? Or that prick of the needle in my arm? Or is that all fake? Are these walls, this furniture, the fuzziness around my eyes, is it all…in….my….

“mind?” Her last and only word before she left the room, transcended into the darkness of sedation. Before she got her wish. Before they let her leave. But in the darkness were faint images, ones that were familiar, but darker. Like a shadow had been cast over the room, the house she had lived in for so long. The people she saw, the voices she heard daily, now had a much darker aura to them. She then knew that she was dreaming, or maybe she was living. She pondered the fact that this dream was exactly her daily life, just darkened by the medication. Her mind started to race as she realized this was the only place she had seen these walls, heard these voices, been with these people. In her mind. She was right. And she finally realized that she wasn’t happy. That those were tears. That you don’t exist. The walls she avoided from collision all these years never existed. There was only one room she was ever in. Those classic, yellow-padded walls, the dim lights, the small camera, constantly watching, checking in. She was in an asylum, for years of her life. But only now she open her brain and realized it. And she was ok with being insane. She was finally content.