He stares out of the window watching the birds play in the bath because it’s his only comfort. He wishes that he could fly away with them. Friends have abandoned him over the years and his family has too. He wonders if the birds would be loyal to his supernatural ability.
A woman in a white coat approaches and hands him a pink tablet. “Take your medicine” she says as he growls at the thought of being drugged for most of the day. “It’ll help you think clearly” she reassured. But he knows different. It will only satisfy the staff and the others that call him crazy. He will sleep most of the day and feel groggy during the rest. His body once full of energy now drained because experimental medicines work against his natural self.
His life turned upside down when voices inside his head told him things that no one else could understand. For instance, one day a voice told him to pull the fire alarm in his building because the kitchen was going to catch fire. Rather than being a hero for preventing such a devastation, he was scorned because no one understood why he’d do such a thing. No one predicted the fire but him.
Shortly after, he barred the windows in his parent’s home because a voice told him that someone would break in otherwise. Although they tried their hardest not to believe that their child had gone insane, they couldn’t help but label him delusional and paranoid.
Other occurrences of the voices getting him in to trouble were sporadic but enough to scare his friends in to isolation. Soon he accepted the fact that he just might be crazy. His last episode landed him in this treatment center. He beat up a man because the voices told him that the guy was a rapist. The judge found him mentally insane and ordered that he seek treatment. To this day, he doesn’t understand how the rapist turned into a victim.
Treatment doesn’t help – no matter what they have you to believe. The idea of being drugged and sleeping most of your life away is no way for a man to live. He might as well be among the walking dead.
“Especially since they don’t understand me,” he whispers before he swallows the pink pill to satisfy the lady in white standing in front of him.
As dawn turns to night, he doesn’t move from his spot. Dozing in and out of pointless naps and embracing the voices within his head he sobs. He doesn’t understand why he’s made out to be such a crazy fool when the voices are just as real as you and I. “I’m not crazy.” He reassured himself and the voices seem to reassure him too.
The next day a preacher walked in to pray with him, just as he’d done every week for the past three months. This time the man looked up at the preacher and asked “do you think I’m crazy?” The preacher looked down at him and said “I pray for your mental health.”
Irritated, the guy asked again, “Do you think I’m crazy for hearing these voices that no one else hears?”
The preacher reassured, “God didn’t create you this way.”
The man snarled because he knew the preacher was not being straight forward with him. He had to become smarter in his approach.
“Do you talk to God?” He asks.
“Well, of course” the preacher responds.
“Then why aren’t you a patient in this hospital with me?” The man quickly replies.
Stumped the preacher looks around the room. “What do you mean?”
The man filled with emotion stands in front of the preacher, “If you hear God speaking to you, and no one else can hear him speak to you, then why am I the only one labeled as crazy between us two?”
With no answer, the preacher looks down at his bible. He’s not shaken or afraid, but for once in his life he realized that he didn’t have a justification for such crazy talk.
“Is it because you label your voices God, and mine are just voices? Or is it because my voices foresee things that no one sees?” The man exclaimed.
In a silly sort of way the preacher knew the man had a point. There was no mistaking that the voice of God was real, but he figured he shouldn’t doubt the man’s voices either. Especially if he were living to not judge him.
Hmmm. I guess “crazy” is only in the eye of the beholder uh?
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