Afraid • S. Stilinski

2.

You know those people who just know who they are in the world?

Those people who already know exactly what they're doing with their lives and where they're going to be in twenty years, and all that shit.

Isabelle Corey was not one of those people.

She couldn't even picture where she was going to be in twenty minutes, let alone twenty years.

A part of that- a very big part- was her dreams.

Not dreams dreams. Not the kind that were goals. Isabelle didn't want to be an actress or a singer or a writer.

The dreams that were the problem were the dreams Isabelle got when she was asleep. Those kind of dreams.

More specifically, telling apart dreams from reality.

Isabelle couldn't tell when she was asleep or when she was awake. The lines between dreams and reality, for her, are blurred; in fact, so blurred that she can't even see them.

It's called psychosis, which means 'disconnected from reality'.

Isabelle Coley was defiantly disconnected from reality.

The doctors didn't know what could be causing it, or how to stop it. They gave her some meds for schizophrenia, saying that was the best they could do and that they'd keep looking, but the doctors didn't contact Isabelle and her family again, and the meds didn't do anything.

Her family coudln't afford a specialist, so Isabelle had to try and deal with it and hope against hope that it would go away as she grew older.

Isabelle didn't really hold out much hope for a medical miracle, or for her condition to go away naturally as she grew.

So she dealt with it. She took the meds that her mother refused to stop buying, went to school and pretended to be normal, and researched how to tell apart dreams from reality online.

It isn't so bad, she told herself as she lay in the dark, not able to tell if she was awake or if she was just stuck in another dream. It isn't so bad.

After all, she had never been physically hurt by her dreams. Emotionally, sure.

But physically, she was in the best of health.

I am fine, Isabelle told herself, and hoped that saying it enough would mean she believed it.

Well, this was short but hopefully sweet. It was an introduction to the next chapter, because I'm trying to keep chapters around 500-ish words and if I combined this chapter and the next they would be too long.

I hope you enjoyed!

xx Suki