I Swear I'm Not Crazy

Prologue

Song: Freak Show -Skillet

"El, try these on," Sam, my eleven year old big brother, says, passing me our great-great-grandfather's cracked glasses. "You can't see anything through them!"

"Ok," I reply cheerfully, giggling. I'm only seven.

I take the glasses and put them on, laughing and holding my hands out in front of me as I walk forward. I bump into the coffee table and instinctively back pedal, my feet becoming entangled in a blanket.

Yelping, I fall back, landing on the hard floor. In slow motion, I see something tiny and silver fall from the glass over my left eye. I try to close my lids, but not in time. It hurts as the speck lands in my eye, and an electrical current seems to flow throughout my body, and I scream until the pain dies down. I shake uncontrollably as shapes start flying around my line of vision.

"El?" I hear Sam calling, but he sounds distant. "El, what's wrong?"

I hear my mom and dad yelling my name, yelling to call an ambulance, that I must be having a seizure.

"I see something," I manage to mumble.

"What do you see?" Sam asks, but his voice seems waterlogged.

I shake my head a little, and Sam seems to understand that I can't describe it. He hands me a piece of paper, asking if I can draw it. I take the paper and a crayon and begin drawing out the symbols until I can see straight again. I've used two sheets of paper, front and back.

"What is that?" Mom asks, and I can hear her voice clearly.

"That's what I saw, after that thing fell in my eye," I announce, proud of my drawing skills.

Mom and Dad share a look that I've never seen on either of them before. A look that worries me. I later realize that it's because my left eye is suddenly a bright, fluorescent blue, while the right is still it's average brown.

That day is the first time I went to a psychologist, psychiatrist, and a hospital all in the same day. That day is the day I was described as possibly schizophrenic. It wasn't until a month or so later that they decided to make it an official diagnosis and start me on the medications.