A State of Mind- A State of Fear

Athena





I'm getting a roommate today. I've spent most of the day listening and watching for them to bring her in. Someone is going to come in here and invade my personal space. This may seem like a good thing to the other patients here, but for me it’s just another reason for a panic attack.

My solitude has been one of the most defining aspects of who I am. I've been alone in this room for the past ten years of my life. I'm waiting for someone to come along and erase me. This is what is really happening today.

Most of the patients are excited about having roommates. This single event is probably the highlight of many of their lives. Most of us have been alone in our rooms for years. We're only allowed to interact with each other during meal times or the five minutes we’re allowed every day for a shower. I could hear the anticipation in their voices today, but I didn’t jump into the conversation. I never do. I‘ve never been adept in the art of socializing so instead, I listen. I've become fantastic at fading into the background and observing. I‘m too frightened to participate. I feel much safer pretending I don’t exist, that the other patients can’t see me. It’s started to feel like a reality over the years because now no one attempts to talk to me. They used to, but I was never able to respond. I’d get so terrified of saying something wrong or stupid that I’d seize up, unable to utter a sound.

I’ve gotten a lot better since I’ve been taking the right medications, but even so, I’m still afraid, and I still avoid speaking with people.

The other patients are hungry for a connection and while I understand this desire I can't bring myself to feel the same as they do. The thought of having a connection has always terrified me. Connecting with anyone else would be taking a risk. After you’ve formed a relationship and have given parts of yourself away, you become vulnerable. Connections are tenuous things that can easily be severed. I've been severed enough already. So much that I'm not sure I'm even half of a person anymore. While the other patients whisper excitedly and discuss how they’re going to rearrange their space to accommodate their new roommate, I feel like hiding. I want to burrow beneath my mat, or somehow flatten my body under the length of the bench. I don't want to be found today.

I look for the nurses to walk by in their black pencil skirts and their stockings and high heels. I listen for the sound of a new patient lamenting the loss of their freedom. Sometimes I can hear them crying. Other times they remain silent and stoic, or simply stunned that this could possibly be happening to them, that they could be Unstable. Personally, I cried. I was only seven years old, however, and children of that age tend to cry when they don‘t get their way.. All I wanted was to not be here. Ten years later I haven't moved an inch and I never will. The Doctor is working on a cure for Instability, but while we wait to be cured we remain within the facilities in our rooms of brick and concrete and iron.

I hear my new roommate coming before I see her. There's the distinctive sound of heavy, reluctant feet being dragged across the floor. She was probably given a light sedative. My door is opened so softly the bars barely clang against the wall. A nurse drags a girl- probably around my age- into my space. As soon as I see her I scurry into the farthest corner of my room, like some kind of rodent or insect. Something spineless. I'm allowing her to claim the rest of my room. What used to be mine.

“Subject 412,” the nurse says. This is supposed to be a question to which we are always to respond with an affirmative answer, but the nurses and doctors tend to make statements, expecting us to respond. There's a specific tone of voice I believe they all strive for and this nurse hits that monotonous octave with ease.

“Yes,” I say. I'm sitting on the floor, hugging my knees.

"This is Subject 1003, Emily Baker. She will be your roommate until the construction of the new Facility has been completed," the nurse says while leading Emily to a mat. There was another mat brought in here earlier this morning, but Emily is sitting on mine. It doesn't matter. It's already hers. Nothing belongs to me anymore. Not that it ever really has. I only have one actual possession.

The nurse leaves. Emily and I are alone but forced to be together. I feel like the repellant side of a magnet. I'm still cradling my knees and I've started shaking. I attempt a subtle glance over at Emily. She's staring at me. I can see her eyes through the dense locks of blond hair that hang over her face in clumps. I'm unsettled by her gaze, but I don't know what to say to her to make her stop looking at me like this. I sit, fixed in my position in the corner of the room while Emily's glare bores holes into me from the other side of it.

"What's your name?" Emily asks. I'm relieved she's the first one to speak.

"Athena," I say. Emily's head is tilted slightly downward so that she almost has to peer up at me. She hasn't moved an inch since she was brought here. I don't think I've even witnessed her blink yet.

"Oh that's rich. Was that on purpose?" she asks.

"Was what on purpose?"

"Uh, your name. What that on purpose?" Emily's lips have turned upward a little. She's chuckling to herself over my name, but I don't understand why.

"I think so. Yes," I say.

"Well, that's just adorable! Whatcha in for?" she asks, her eyes still fixed upon me, unblinking like something dead.

"Um...what?" I say. I'm not familiar with the way she's speaking to me. I think I know what she's getting at. I've read similar manners of dialogue in books, but I’ve never personally encountered them, so I feel safer asking her to clarify rather than make myself look stupid by answering incorrectly.

"What's wrong with you? You're Unstable, right?"

"Oh. Yes. I have anxiety. And depression," I say.

"Me too. And some other stuff," Emily says. I don't respond. I wonder why my medication isn't doing what it‘s supposed to be doing. My throat feels clenched and my heart is racing.

"Don't you want to know what it is?" Emily says. I just shake my head.

"Why not?"

"It's probably pretty personal. You don't have to talk about it," I say.

"It's fine. It's not like it's some huge secret that I'm insane, right? I've got Borderline Personality Disorder. I've also got Dissociative Identity Disorder," she tells me.

"Oh," I say. What does she expect? What am I supposed to say to that?

"And Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. And they said last time I was tested that I was probably a little bit schizophrenic, too," Emily says. I don't know how a person can be just 'a little bit' schizophrenic, but I have the feeling that if I ask her she'll think I'm being sarcastic. We don't know each other yet, so I should watch what I say to avoid offending her.

Emily gets up and staggers across the room. She goes to the door and hangs her arms through the bars, leaning against them for support. I watch as she attempts to yell at the nurses passing by and they ignore her. I guess she's already bored of me.

When no one pays attention to her she becomes increasingly irritated. She starts wailing and banging her palms against the bars. Her cries are completely unintelligible.

"What's wrong?" I ask.

"What's wrong? This place fucking sucks, that's what's wrong. You guys just sit in these rooms all day and do nothing? I was at a first-tier Facility in Indianapolis for a while. They get to do shit there," she says. She's been here a whole twenty minutes and while she's mostly right about our lifestyle, she's been quick to make her assumptions. I almost tell her that we do get to watch television or a movie once a week, but I have the distinct feeling she'll only laugh at me if I do. My bones hurt.

"Yeah it's boring sometimes. But if you scream a lot they're going to tranquillize you," I say, offering her the chance to calm down, to avoid being sucked into a black hole of nothingness. She continues screaming. I watch as she wanders over to my painting. My stomach clenches. I feel like I'll be sick. I don't want her anywhere near my painting. I jump up and walk over to her just as she starts running her fingers along the oils. She turns and grins at me.

"Is this yours?" she asks, and her smile makes my heart thrum in my chest.

"Please don't touch it. Your finger prints could ruin the oils," I say and I know I've said the wrong thing. She opens her hand and presses her whole palm into my picture, the one thing I've managed to keep with me my whole life. The only thing that is even capable of bringing me comfort anymore. I grab her wrist, desperately trying to be gentle.

"Emily, please," I say.

"Emily, please," she mocks me. Her voice is high and whiny. Like a rubber band stretched too thin and then plucked. I don't say any more because I know what her game is and I'm not in the mood to play it. I go to my mat and lie down. I hear a sinister laugh creeping out of her and it beats against my eardrums. I cover my ears and roll over, hoping she's decided to leave my painting alone for now. I hear her laughter growing in size and depth until it's so loud the entire ward is consumed by it and the other patients have stopped their excited chatter.

The door to the room opens again and the nurse is back. She's got a syringe in her hand and after she approaches and restrains Emily, the laughter is abruptly ceased. I feel my hands covering my eyes, not even knowing I've put them there. I peek out from between the thick blackness of my fingers and see Emily being laid down on the other mat. She's unconscious now but the smile still lingers on her lips as a reminder that she'll be back. I'm not looking forward to it. I knew I wouldn't deal well with a roommate and I doubt I can ask for her to be transferred to another room. This is what I get for being Unstable. This is what I deserve.



I enjoy the time Emily is not awake. When I can no longer see light filtered through the small window of my room I begin to watch for the new nurse who has been bringing me books. I watch the legs of all the nurses as they stroll by and I think of how different their strides are; how different their legs are. Some are big and in the stockings appear similar to meat products stuffed into skins. Others are small and stick-like. The small ones tend to walk like I imagine deer would, with caution and calculation. Their steps are short and tentative instead of clunky and forceful. Some of them barely make a sound as they stroll through the halls of the Facility. I know the exact sound I’m waiting for. This nurse isn’t used to high hells like the rest of them are. I can tell by the way she teeters in them as if she is walking a balance beam. Her feet drag, signifying her inexperience in heels, and this is the sound I’m waiting for.

When I hear her I carefully step over Emily’s hibernating body and reach through the second bar in my door. I wait until the nurse is five steps away before I do this. It gives her time to take the book from her hiding place and hand it to me without being seen by the other nurses or the cameras. Once I feel the matte cover of the book in my hand I quickly pull it into my room. Often my other hand will have another book for her, the one that she’d stolen from me before this one, but I read the last one so quickly she didn’t have time to find me a replacement until tonight.

I flip through the pages of the book, relishing the smell of the ink on the pages. I’ve always loved the combination of scents present in any given book. They’re distinct but always different.

This one is obviously very old. Most of the books I read are at least thirty years old because there haven’t been any new books since the end of the war. The cover is worn and a corner has been torn from the top. There isn’t any artwork on the cover of this one, so it may be even older than thirty. I’ve read books that are hundreds of years old before, and most of them resemble this one.

My life has been molded by reading. I love to read more than anything. It provides the perfect escape. I’ve been able to see what the world is like through reading, even if it’s fiction. They all tell me something about what it’s like outside. I’ve never come across a book that I haven’t devoured, that I haven’t loved and savored every word of. The worlds created by these people are my reality, my life. I keep a dictionary in my room at all times to reference when I stumble across a new word. Reading has taught me everything I know.

I haven’t learned a single thing from a classroom, or a teacher- well, not anything worth learning. At the facility we’re made to attend courses which a doctor instructs. I’ve learned how to behave properly when I’m in the presence of Society members. The patients here are all given a copy of the Unstable Manual of Mental Illness (we call it UMM), which we are required to read. I’ve read it more times than I can count, so I’ve learned all about the Unstable and why we’re such a threat to Society, to ourselves. I’ve learned why we are safer inside the Facilities than out. I know I’m safer in here, and Society is safer because I’m in here.

I’ve also learned of the punishments for interacting with someone from Society, especially someone of the opposite sex. Or the same sex, if you’re being romantic with them. It’s the same punishment given for anything; a week or more in Isolation, which is practically like being thrown into the pit of hell itself. I was there once, when I was a little girl. The thought of going back scares me, but I still have to interact with the nurses. I must endanger their jobs as well as myself so that I can have a world, a life. If I think about what I’m really doing, my heart will sink into my stomach. I need these books just as much as I need oxygen.

I spend the entire night reading the new book, completely absorbed in the words and stories within. The characters become real entities with whom I can relate. They become a part of my world with their flaws and their conflicts. This is what companionship should feel like, and it’s the opposite of whatever Emily is.



As the days pass I see that Emily spends most of her time in a sedated slumber, which suits me perfectly. She’s only awake for about five hours a day during which she invariably throws the most childish fits and is stabbed with needles, sometimes more than once, before she calms down. Nurses fly in and out of our room to sedate her. I’m sure the nurses must flip coins or draw straws to determine which of them will be dealing with Subject 1003.

Emily has a number of different personalities- or ’alters’- that she exhibits. My favorite one, which of course is the least common, is a mute ninety year old woman. She sways herself back and forth on the bench, teetering so much she occasionally falls over. She’s sitting in a rocking chair. That’s why shy sways and bobs so much. The only thing I dislike about Ethel is that when she falls, I’m the only one she likes to help her back up, so occasionally I have to put my book down to lift an eighteen year old, ninety year old woman off the floor where she’s fallen from her invisible crocheting chair. Ethel can’t speak so she spends most of her time rocking and crocheting me a sweater. It’s almost ready, apparently. She told me all this with body language. It was like playing charades, and it was actually somewhat fun.

The worst alter is Emily. I don’t know if she’s even real. I believe the real Emily may be another one of her alters, Rhonda. Rhonda is more withdrawn and seems reluctant to engage in conversation. She’s forgetful, never recalling what happened the last time she was here. I don’t know what makes me believe that Rhonda is the primary identity. It just seems to fit with her body, her eyes, her movements.

Emily is a malcontent toddler-like individual who seeks only to destroy and to inflict suffering upon anyone she is able to. She bellows like a child when she doesn’t get whatever it is all of her incomprehensible wailing is over, and for twenty minutes to an hour I suffer through this until a nurse comes along to silence her.

I try to refer to all of her alters as ‘Emily,’ simply because it’s overwhelming to keep track of them all. Only Emily responds to that name, however, so if I want to talk to someone else, I have to address them by their name, which can lead to a lot of confusion for both of us because only a few of Emily’s alters are aware of each other.

When Emily’s awake I wait with trepidation for her to stir. I can tell who she’ll be before she even speaks. Something changes in her posture, or her facial expressions. I have to be wary at all times. Every time this girl opens her eyes she is someone else. And I’m jealous of her.