Don't Be Afraid

Chapter Two

Edited ;)

Chapter Two

The car ride home is silent as usual. My mom and I aren’t really close at all. In fact we are total strangers. The only thing that she knows about me is that I was going crazy. My family is screwed up, well at least in my point a view. I have a younger brother named Miles; he’s fourteen and now getting to the stage of puberty where his emotions and hormones are all screwed up. He hates me; he hated me ever since I started to show signs of schizophrenia. Since I started to have signs of my sanity fading away.

My lovely mother was not close to me. I think she’s not close to me because she thinks I am insane—or more like knows that I’m insane. The worried glances she gives me when we are out in public I think are an act. I always embarrass her when I break down. I think she hates me too and wishes she didn’t have a daughter that was only years away from going legally insane.

My father doesn’t live with us. He lives in the great home called Johannes Mental Institute. He was diagnosed with severe schizophrenia twelve years ago, when I was four. Whenever I visit him he seems normal, he doesn’t show any signs of any mental illness. I’ve always wonder if the doctors diagnosed him wrong. My mom told me that he’s in there because a little after I was born he started to have these moments where he would freak out.  He would break down and ramble about how demons are after him. He would speak in different languages.

My father is where I would get my mental illness from. Beside him from being crazy he was the only family member that actually loves me. Who actually accepted me for who I am. He is one of the few people in the world who would understand me. He was my best friend beside Kyle.

Once upon I time in grade school and the beginning of middle school I had more than one friend. I was actually kind of popular, the kind of popular you would be in elementary school. But halfway through middle school I started to see ‘dead people’ more often. And I would freak out more often. So my ‘friends’ all left me because I was a freak to them. All of them accept for one, Kyle.

Kyle didn’t judge me, ask me questions that I didn’t have answers to; he didn’t treat me like a freak, he just listens. He is my only friend and I mean my only. The people that were once called ‘friends’ don’t even treat me human. I’m not like one of those lucky nerds who are invisible, who the popular crowd are totally oblivious to. No, everyone at Ridge Public High School know me, I’m the infamous Athena or as the people at school like to say ‘the freak who has no friends’. I’m called hateful names by everyone in the school, looked at dirtily and glared at by the whole student body, even the teachers hate me.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Since I was down on the popularity scale, Kyle must be equally as bad. Ha! No, Kyle was the ‘bad boy’ of our school. He has plenty of friends, plenty of girls lining up, so why would he want to hang out with someone like me? I honestly don’t know. It’s like the question of the universe.

Throughout the years he did his best to protect me from the mean people. But people still manage to get to me. Burning down my self-esteem and hitting all my insecurities. But I manage to build a wall around my emotions so now there words don’t hurt me as much.

That was a lie. All their words hurt me like knives but I don’t show my vulnerability to anyone. Not even Kyle. Not even my dad. It’s a sign of weakness and weakness is not accepted in my mind.

I really didn’t care what people thought of me, honestly. Even though their words hurt. And that was the truth. No matter what people call me I can’t change their impression on me. The only thing that get to me are the ghosts. Not even Kyle can protect me from that. No one can.