The Voices
Since the day the voices came, this secret notebook has kept me more
sane than the diary I write for their benefit. I hide that one, too,
but not well. I slip it under my bed at night. The next morning,
it’s still there, but just a few more tiles further than where I left
it. It would be enough to drive me crazy, if I weren’t already there.
They take it, read it, think I don’t know.
I write what they want to see. Sometimes angry words, sometimes
contrite, but always about how I’m getting better. Believable lies.
But today, I will write the same thing I write here: I am feeling
better, optimistic for the first time in seven years. Maybe there’s a
chance of a normal life for me, for friends and school and movies and
laughter, somewhere outside these walls.
And family. Grandma Carter is the only one left, but she loves me, I
think, despite everything that’s happened. My mom and dad loved me.
How many people can say that at Moorehead? I don’t think even the
doctors can, so they poke at my brain, trying to convince me there was
no love, so they can nod knowingly to each other afterwards. They
don’t believe me when I describe the big red balloons at my fourth
birthday party. Or the way my dad used to pick me up in his arms and
I’d feel the stubble of his beard against my cheek. So I stopped
telling them, telling them what a loving family is like. I can’t solve
their past for them. I can’t even solve mine.
-cc
