Heroine leaves horror flick to star in real life

by Sandra Yuen Mackay

I was stumped at the general malaise of the scientific community. I was fighting a war and they were stalemated. The scientific community, before 1980, was weak because the pharmaceutical drugs they invented to give me were addictive and had side effects,

Sure, I took them, but only to survive, to live in the community, to stay out of hospital, to stay out of hell. My war was on and no one really understood.

The drugs were keeping me alive but my quality of life was at 35%. Not even a C+.

I'd sit in my room. Outside there'd be a serene mist but the buzz started early and didn't end until I went to sleep. It was all over me in the shower. The cameras, the spies from school, the cheap comments.

When you are young and you're fighting a war, not everyone listens. My parents especially. My former friends ignored me because, face it, I was a little off.

So when I took the bus, I'd hear my oppressors hanging on the back but I always lost them by the time I reached the Yoghurty's downtown.

School was tough for me. The material wasn't hard but it was all the distractions, isolation, and whispers. The P.A. system was somehow hooked up to the ventilation system and it blew words and static in my ear all through social studies. I was so ashamed to even show up because of peer pressure.

Do you like raw eggs? I have eaten them on occasion but I dislike them because I remember them cracking and sliding down my window, thrown by jeering classmates. When I woke up in the morning, they were gone and no eggs, shells or evidence existed. I cried so much I awakened to tear-soaked pillow. Please don't get me wrong. I realize now these hallucinations weren't real but I still think they're stealing my mail.

At that time, I was adrift on a raft on an endless ocean journey to oblivion. People that cross the bridge to wellness are heroes. But some people fall off the bridge before they make it to the other end. Today I think I'm past the Dark Ages and into a new era of Reason.

When people are talking I can actually see them. I know when someone's outside the door because they actually knock. I'm no longer enduring a prison sentence. During a "jailbreak", a gradual revelation of insight, I got out. Through a process of maturity and insight, I got out. The blindfold is off and I'm entering the mirror, the reflection of my former self, a little weatherworn but starting in a new direction. I see things closer to how they really are. I exist in real time. I'm not starring in a horror flick anymore. I see land. Now I am a heroine too.