In the unfamiliar house, the walls are lined with demons. A locked closet is a sure sign of death to come. “Kill the dog! Kill the dog! Kill the dog!” Two men holding a puppy in a framed photograph in my temporary bedroom, the one on the right has red-eye (something about film photography, my darkroom days. Sometimes I am still a person.) and he is a demon watching me. I imagine information bouncing off the walls, and my hands are a key part of this exchange, only they’re trembling and scarred from picking at my own skin. Sand pouring through fingers. Benzodiazapine-induced sleeps, the best sleep I’ve gotten this month. I hope my roommate remembers to feed my cat. “Kill the dog… Kill the dog… Kill the dog.

***

Mental illness doesn’t take a break for the holidays. I’ve known this from my own experiences for about nine years now. My family knows this. I’m incredibly blessed to have an extremely supportive family, and they don’t give me a hard time if I have to hide in my old bedroom during celebrations, or if I choose journaling by myself over watching A Christmas Story for the forty thousandth time with them.

Still, there’s that nagging idea in the back of my mind that if I even so much as waver during the holidays, then I’ll have singlehandedly ruined them. I put so much pressure on myself to be perfect (all the time, but especially now), that I invariably end up doing something “wrong,” and feeling like a failure.

I’m with my parents visiting my brother in South Carolina for Christmas as I write this. I don’t like to travel. It makes me extremely paranoid and anxious to be away from home. None of these fears are reality-based. It’s not like I’m afraid that I left the oven on before leaving, or forgot to change my cat’s litter box.

My mom found a vacation rental-by-owner in Columbia where we’re staying. There is a locked closet in my bedroom, a vintage photo of two men holding an old dog, and some books about Jesus (among other things). Ordinary items.

***

The one person who might actually have any insight into this mind isn’t answering my messages. He’s dead and it’s my fault. The demons got him. He hates me and never wants to speak to me again. He never even existed in the first place.

“Kill the dog.”

Six years old in the Winne-the-Pooh nightgown. (Don’t think about it.) He took what wasn’t his to take. (Don’t think about it.) “He told me not to tell.” (Shut up!)

Selfish. Self-centered. Narcissistic of you, really. Thinking about yourself when there are little girls being raped by the Bad Men.

It’s my fault.
It’s my fault.
It’s my fault.

(Don’t think about it.)

You can save them.
You can save them.
You can save them.

Powerless.

It hurts too much to think about.

***

Somewhere in the back of my mind there are things called “coping skills,” things I’m supposed to do in times of distress to soothe or distract myself. When I really need them, I can’t think of a single one. It seems like there’s nothing to do but ride these awful waves of paranoia out to the bitter end. The more I indulge my own delusions, the more elaborate they become until I can’t differentiate between reality and fiction.

I wanted to write something beautiful and haunting about being away from home during the holidays with psychosis, but I’m spent. In past years, I’ve obsessed about calories and clothing sizes, as most holidays center around food. My eating disorder isn’t completely in remission, but it’s gotten a lot better. Sometimes I feel like I’m playing a macabre game of whack-a-mole with my mental illnesses. One gets better, and another gets significantly worse. I can’t win.

When I was initially diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, I looked at it as a death sentence. I will probably be on medication for the rest of my life. Unless there is a major medical breakthrough and a cure for schizophrenic spectrum disorders is found, I will probably always have some degree of disconnect from reality, always hear voices from time to time, always at least partially believe my delusions, always have episodes of paranoia, always see things that aren’t there.

I’m not going to say that these things “make me who I am,” or “keep life interesting.” They make my life hell. They inhibit my ability to do basic things like work and go to school. They make me distrustful of others and of myself. There is no resolution to this illness. Just periods of remission and stability followed by extreme lows.

***

Snake inside your body snake inside your body snake inside your body.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Save the children. You have to save the children. Children are dying because of you. Little girls are being raped because you’re evil and filthy, and if you set yourself on fire, all the pain will stop, everyone will be safe. They’ll all be safe. You can save them.

(I couldn’t save myself when I was small. Nobody could. And now I have a snake inside my body who hates me because I didn’t want to run away from a treatment center and eat a dead deer in 2014.)

Someday, I will find a resolution. I may not be able to save every child, but someday, I will be a mother and a teacher, and I can touch the lives of a few children. Maybe I already have.