I don’t know how long I can keep holding on. That abhorrent sickening voice never leaves me. I continuously rock back and forth on the hard wooden floor of my room, gripping my brown hair into my hands wanting to pull it all out. In my head it just sounded like a bedlam was occurring, always talking and screaming, it was never ending. That isn’t the worst part though. This voice has a vessel, and it’s constantly gazing at me. I don’t know how to describe “it” because I don’t know what it is. It resembles a grotesque silhouette of a person, but that’s all it is. No human features, no signs of anything, just a black silhouette with distorted white eyes and no expression.

The voice had first started off as a low ringing a few months back. I didn’t really take any note of it because I thought it was normal. Everyone is accounted to have heard ringing from time to time, it was only heard in the back of my mind, so I could easily ignore it. Then it started to get worse. It was becoming a lot more frequent and louder. I started to notice it more and I got easily distracted. Focusing in school became a lot harder and my grades started to slowly drop. As time passed, the ringing started to happen almost every day. It became unbearable as it got louder and louder until it was the only thing I could hear. Then unexpectedly it stopped, just completely stopped. I was relieved that I could hear again, but the worst was yet to come. Soon after the voice started, but only as inaudible whispers. I couldn’t understand what they were saying which put me on edge. I then started to think I was going insane. No one believed me when I told them I heard whispering. They always said stuff like, “I don’t hear anything,” or, “You’re delusional.”  I didn’t understand, nobody could hear it but me. The voice had caused me to lose so much sleep as it intended to keep me up all night. I would have dreams where I would be put in the middle of room with no doors or windows. I would just be sitting, listening to the voice that filled my ears.

After about a week of no sleep I had enough. I went to my mom with tears in my eyes and said, “These whispers aren’t going away Mom. They’re constantly there and I can’t understand what they are saying. Mom…please. Help me…”

My voice slowly faded away as I dropped to my knees shaking. I started to cry hysterically and my shaking got worse. The room had become completely silent and all you could hear was my sharp intakes of breaths as I choked on my own sobs. I felt my mom start to rub circles into my back which allowed me to calm down. I went to look at my mom hoping to see some type of sympathy or concern in her eyes, but what I saw wasn’t that, it was fear. Was she scared of me?

“You don’t think I’m crazy, right?” I asked her.

I don’t think she knew that I saw the fear in her eyes as she widened them, but she quickly covered them up with fake concerning ones.

“Oh. O-of course not sweetie, I don’t think your crazy,” she replied with an obvious fake smile.

I knew she was lying, but I still believed her. I guess a part of me just wanted to believe her because maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t alone. That feeling of belief went away when my mom told me that she had signed me up for a psychiatrist a few days later. She tried to explain to me that I needed help and that this will help me get better, but I didn’t listen. I became extremely angry at my mom as my last light of my hope shattered. I screamed at her and told her that she was a liar and that she should just die. Tears streamed down my face as my blood began to boil.  My actions had started to become bestial, grabbing the nearest thing and hurling it at the wall. The smashing of glass sounded like music to my ears as the animosity for my mother grew. Eventually, I calmed taking in the realization that me acting like this wasn’t helping my case in the slightest.

The first few meetings with my psychiatrist were a living nightmare. Hours and hours would pass in complete silence as I refused to speak. The silence had soon become unbearable as the voice continued to get louder as time went on. I then started to answer their questions to provide myself a distraction from the voice, but to my surprise things got better. I actually heard the voice less frequently the more I went to my psychiatrist. Soon enough the voice had become a distant memory to me. After four months of seeing my psychiatrist I was finally able to stop seeing them. On the last meeting with them I had been given a prescription to take twice a day, just to make sure that I would never hear the “voice” again. I did what I was instructed to do and I took the medication twice a day hoping to get positive results. What I got wasn’t positive; I got the complete opposite of that. The voice came back, but this time I could hear what they were saying. It kept on repeating the same phrase over and over like a broken record. I slowly felt like I was losing my mind as I listened to the voice more and more, telling me to do as it instructed. After weeks of hearing its demands, I snapped. I had done what the voice had wanted me to with not a feeling of regret in my body. My mother’s limp body laid on the floor as the knife I used rested in my hand, blood dripping from the tip. The voice had silenced itself as the task had become inclusive, the death of my mother. The “vessel” for the voice, or “it," appeared a couple days after my mother’s funeral, but this time with a new demand.

All of this happened about nine months ago. As I said before, I don’t know how long I can keep holding on. I had come to a realization on what I have to do, to finally end this. “It” continues to stare at me, waiting for me to make my first move. I started to crack under pressure as its stare becomes more stern and cold. “Do it,” I hear, “come on. I know you can do it.” I shakily let out a sigh as I realize that I have nothing left. Everything starts to impede as I get up from my spot, and walk slowly to a noose hanging from the ceiling.