EPISODE 1: PART 2
I had an assignment to be done, so the next day I decided I would go into university. My family agreed that it might be best for me to just do some university work and get my mind off things. I had messaged Tiana (my best friend who had given the speech at my 21st birthday) and asked her if she would like to catch up. She immediately agreed, and we decided to get dumplings near my university the next day. My brother in law had told me, during our family intervention, the night before, that if I ever felt scared, I should just pull up a photo of the family and this would give me strength. I had to do this multiple times the next morning while I was completing my assignment, which was taking me a lot longer than usual to grasp and complete, for some reason. I felt like my mind was slowing down. I felt lethargic and like I couldn’t concentrate on one thing for a long time. When midday came around, I left university and started walking towards the dumplings place I had told Tiana I would meet her at for lunch. I was halfway there when Tiana called me, and my phone began playing up. Her voice was all muffled, and she sounded different. I had to end the call because I couldn’t hear her, but I started to think that somebody had her phone and was talking through it but had used some sort of technology to auto tune their voice into Tiana’s. I became so scared for Tiana’s safety, and brisk-walked to the dumplings place, but there Tiana was. I let out a huge sigh of relief. Tiana and I ordered food, and began talking. She told me that her dad was working in the city, and I took this to mean that he was on standby to protect us because we were in danger. I hadn’t yet told Tiana about Rohan, and by this point I was extremely scared. To top it off, I looked down at my phone, and the reception bar read “SOS”. I quickly told Tiana about Rohan and that I feared for our safety then and there.
Tiana knows me so well, and knew I would never lie about anything or make stuff up, so she started asking me whether I wanted her to call the police. I said I was unsure, but that I did not want her to leave me. She explained to me that she had class soon, as I had taken a couple of hours to explain the situation to her. She offered for me to come with her to her university, and suggested that I call my dad to pick me up, as he taught at a school close by. I called my dad and explained the situation. He was quiet for a while, and then said, “don’t worry at all, I will be there to pick you up as soon as I can”.
As we walked to the bus stop, there was a countdown for the bus to arrive. I became alarmed, as I thought it was the universe counting down seconds until Rohan would jump of the bus with a weapon to kill us both. However, I could see that Tiana was becoming more and more uncomfortable with the situation, and I did not want to frighten her further. I was so relieved when we got on the bus and Rohan was not on that bus. I cannot even begin to explain how relieved I was. However, I kept thinking he was going to pop up when I was least expecting it, and I was so extremely scared. As we got off the bus and began walking through the university gardens, my heart began racing as I thought back to when Rohan had told me he would love to learn how to garden, and my brain somehow extrapolated this to thinking that he would love to learn how to kill and bury someone with a shovel in a garden. I thought he would jump out at any given moment, and I was almost in tears. Tiana was silent all this time. When I saw my dad’s car, I literally ran to it in tears, because I was so scared that Rohan would come out of somewhere and hurt me. It was illogical, but I was convinced. It was at this point that dad began to see that I was actually scared and did not feel safe. When we got home, my family decided it was best if I stay home with someone, and got into contact with doctors and psychiatrists. The psychiatrist recommended to us by a doctor family-friend had a waiting list and could not see me for at least a few weeks.
By this time, my mind was in a jumble. At first I thought somebody had just hacked into everyone’s messenger accounts, but when I realised that the people correlated to each account were actually sending the messages, I started thinking that a single evil entity had hacked into the body of everyone I knew. Everyone’s eyes looked glassy and emotionless to me, and I was at one of the lowest points in my life. I was terrified and felt like I would do anything for the sheer fear to come to an end. That night, my sister prescribed me with Olanzapine (an antipsychotic medication) because I was unable to get in with a psychiatrist. Although she was hesitant to prescribe for a family member, she believed that this was the best course of action in the given circumstances. At the pharmacy, I believed she was using her “power” as a general practitioner over me and prescribing me with something that I didn’t need. My mum came with us, and I started trying to crack the “code” of why my sister had prescribed me with this medication. I looked into my sister’s eyes, and said, “Who are you? You’re not my sister”, as I actually believed that something had possessed her body. Her eyes welled up with tears, but I felt like they were fake. Her eyes still looked glassy to me. “What do you mean?” she asked. I just walked off in the other direction.
When I got back into the car (my dad was driving) and my brother in law was sitting in the passenger seat, I felt like running off, but I got into the car with my mum and sister. We went to my auntie’s house who lived just around the corner. I was about to jump out of the car, I was that afraid of my family. When we got to my auntie’s house, my mum took out the medications and told me to take one. I opened the packet and removed one of the pills from the foil packaging. On the tablet was written “Lily”. My heart sunk. My brain had instantly decoded that to mean that the medications were contraceptive pills, as those pills usually had female names such as “Yasmine” printed on them. I started to think that everyone was involved in the puzzle, and that my mum was trying to protect me, like Lily had done (for a certain pop-culture famous teen wizard who you may or may not know of), however, the way in which she was protecting me was that she knew someone was going to assault me, but that she would give me some contraceptive pills so that I did not get pregnant when this happened. Tears immediately fell down my face. I took the pill, thinking that maybe this is what I had to go through to save the world. On hindsight, as disturbing and illogical as it is in a sane person’s mind, I asked if I could stay at my auntie’s house because I felt as though the evil entity might have possessed my dad or my brother in law, and that they might try to harm me in my sleep. My family was devastated that I was actually scared enough of them to ask to stay at my aunt’s place. Nonetheless, they reminded me that nothing bad would happen and took me home. My mum started sleeping with me, and I was scared that even she would hurt me, so I slept with a little Ganesha (Hindu god) figurine under my pillow. We were just laying there one night when I asked her, “Mum, you wouldn’t ever try to hurt me, would you?” “No bubba” she replied. “I carried you in my belly for 9 months and endured so much pain in giving birth to you. I love you. Why would I want to hurt you? Go to sleep, bubba. Goodnight”, to which I replied, “What’s good about the night?”. I was almost at breaking point. My mum says those words still sometimes haunt her to this day.
The next night, I was lying in bed, when I heard a gunshot-like noise. It must have been a car collision or an exhaust or fireworks, but I honestly believed it was a gunshot. My mind immediately raced to decode what this meant, and what it came up with was that once my sister Minnie had told me that she would take a bullet for me. My eyes welled up. Had someone shot Minnie? Because I hadn’t decoded things fast enough? I had let her down and now she was gone. I let out a yelp, and tried to call her. She didn’t pick up. I just cried myself to sleep. The next morning, Minnie called me back and said she was sorry, but she had fallen asleep and that’s why she hadn’t answered my calls. I was so extremely relieved, but remember thinking that I was so tired. Tired of being scared, of thinking I was going to be killed, or that someone else that I loved was going to be killed.
Each day got worse and worse. As the days went on, I got suspicious of more and more people who were closer to me. Even in the shower, I believed that I was being watched. I would try not to cry, because I wanted to show the people who I thought were watching me that they could not phase me. Everything became a code, and I was trying to figure it all out. I felt as if the quicker I could decipher the “codes” and solve the mystery, the quicker I would save the world and stop being frightened of everyone. In my mind, I wasn’t trying to save the world for power, glory or fame, but rather, was trying to quietly defend the world because I believed that I had been chosen by a higher power to do so. I started thinking that everything could be read three ways: good, evil or neutral. Everything that everyone said, everything that I read or took in could be read in one of these three ways, and I started to believe that the key to saving the world was by reading everything neutrally. After all, there was good and bad in everything, so being neutral seemed like the most logical pathway. That was my train of thought. I believed that the key to saving the world was in the decisions I made…the movies I watched and their endings (the fate of the characters in the movies would be similar to my own fate), stopping my family and friends from wanting to kill or hurt me or other vulnerable people, and in essence, transforming the world from evil to good. However, I felt as though if I made one little mistake, I could be brutally harmed or murdered. I couldn’t sleep, as I was decoding conversations that I had had with everyone, things I had read, and things I had seen on television or heard on the radio nonstop. I felt as though if I slept, I would be killed in my sleep, or wouldn’t have spent enough time decoding clues to solve them.
Perceived: Losing and Finding my Mind 