Hallucinations

What makes an otherwise normal human being see things coming out from the walls. Is she mad, deranged from all normal function? Or can she see what others can't open their minds to?

Tonight I watched Psi-factor on cable. Reality and evil tinted fiction invaded the subject's life and he drowned in apparent psychosis.

I was psychotic - why didn't I drown?

My first psychotic experience consisted of beliefs that I perceived as rational. The embryo inside me grew into an alien - merging into me, my tissues .. my blood. There was nothing left to separate me from the entity within. I pulled my out my hair. Strand by strand. Examining each follicle in turn, knowing that it was part of the alien inside. Thinking (or hoping, even) that, by this, I could prevent it taking me over.

Of course I couldn't tell anyone about this. I was evil - tainted. What was I to do? And so I did nothing, nothing but continue pulling it out and relishing the diminishing control of the alien. With each strand I was becoming free - free like I had never been - though I never made it. Not in that way.

Next came the blood, the tarnished spirit. Inside of me, flowing into each of my organs, the alien's stronghold. It polluted everything - I had to get it out. How? An autopsy, if they performed an autopsy they would see it. They would believe me then; understand what it is that I fear. Instead they locked me away inside The Ward. When the aliens came for me, to finish what they had started, I hid in 'seclusion' with nurses that told me I was hallucinating. Creating everything I knew and could see from an overactive - dopamine fuelled - imagination. Once again I was to blame. I knew better.

The spiders. I watched the wall of my room from which they emerged. Multiplying, growing in numbers, they began to cover the ceiling - moving inexorably towards me. I could see them. They were real. Terrified, I began to pace the corridor - trying to ground myself in reality. They remained. My key nurse, on watch at the time, put his hand into the heart of the nest. I huddled, frightened, on the bed trying to digest what he was saying - that if they were really there he wouldn't be able to go near them, he would be afraid. I closed my eyes and tried to believe him, to trust his judgment, but they were still there. The evidence before my eyes was compelling, I could see them moving, how can you discount that? At some point my mum and sister arrived. I felt guilty and tried to rationalize - but I just couldn't stay in my room. I couldn't stay anywhere.

I thought that if I kept moving, my feet making regular contact with solid ground, I could keep a hold on my sanity. I knew it wasn't real, yet I couldn't refute what I saw. I couldn't ignore it. And so I paced, accompanied by my mother (a soothing presence) and the nurse who's job it was to watch me. From one end of the corridor to the other, back and forth, I walked and walked. Even now I can remember the sheer physical effort in trying to control my fear. I felt physically and emotionally drained, courtesy of the situation or the sedatives they gave me? I don't know. With all my strength I tried to look to the floor, averting my eyes from where my nightmare was most intense. The contact with the floor was, somehow, reassuring. I knew that if I could just keep walking I wouldn't be lost.

As time moved on the spiders became a haunting memory. I had survived. But the alien - that was something not yet consigned to the past, something I had yet to survive.