Life is full of regular teens going about their pretty dull, normal lives. Except Imogen is not one of them.
Recently diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, her hallucinations are so vivid that she's armed herself with a take-no-shit attitude and h...
Picture a three-year-old Imogen hopscotching her way down Stratton Rose Garden park's path wallpapered with tall trees and an extravagant variety of flowering plants.
She'd stop mid-jump to burst minty bubbles coming from the seraphim's bow over by the fountain. They'd pop—to her delight—in a mint-scented shower of smoke, causing her to wriggle her nose and clap her palms for more of them to come.
"What are you doing, Imogen? Little rascal, get over here. You'll ruin your Sunday dress." Mom never understood the importance of staying still, without pestering Mr. Seraphim with his magic, rusted bow. He gave me bubbles if I was a good girl. He'd give me more if I was super-duper good.
I'd tried so hard to be still, but Mom had ruined all my efforts with her squawking and gesturing.
Fast forward a few more years. A younger me checking under my bed for monsters so ferocious they'd torn off my soft flesh with one stroke of their deadly, cadaveric fingers. I would scream in panic whenever Mom turned off the lights. Didn't she know monsters fed on darkness? Turns out my delusions worsened with it too.
After several visits to the optician—she thought something was wrong with my eyes—and some more visits to the otorhinolaryngologist, a head and neck surgeon, they cleared me from glaucoma and ear infection. No complaints about my neck either.
Turns out schizophrenia isn't supposed to manifest until you are a teenager, so until I turned fifteen, it was all a matter of finding the right child therapist to 'fix' my night terrors and meddle whenever my daydreams became oddly vivid.
It all collapsed on my fourteenth's birthday, when I verbally attacked a waiter for poisoning my pizza just like it happened to Michael Jordan the night before Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals.
Only my situation was worse. This was no ordinary food poisoning theory but full on death conspiracy. Apple seeds contain amygdalin—a substance that releases cyanide into the bloodstream when chewed and digested. My melted mozzarella topping had bits of that. Mom swore those dark bits were black olives. After a heated argument, we agreed to disagree.
A week after that, someone in a white lab coat diagnosed me with paranoid schizophrenia.
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Coming out of the doctor's office with not one but two two plastic orange containers of meds dangling in my pockets wasn't my idea of a mother-daughter getaway.
As we make our way out of the office and into the impersonal foyer, they clash inside my black, oversized hoodie. It's cringeworthy. Turns out, I also needed something for my depression—no kidding. We blanket the ride back home under a heavy coat of silenced and repressed thoughts.
Mom tries cheering me up with her famous banana pancakes, and as she rummages the kitchen cabinets for the ingredients, all I can think about is how these stupid roundish lids mock me with farting sounds when I open them.
