Reality did not exist. Everything was black, except for a few fuzzy shapes that I could sense more than see. Nothing was right. I couldn’t control my brain. I was trapped inside my own head.

I was young, probably eight or nine. I had gotten sick, and I had stayed home from school. I had had a fever all day, but not that high of one. My mom had the usual list of things to make me feel better: drink a lot of water, try to eat, rest and try to take a nap. Everything was the same as it normally was when I got sick. That night I went to bed. I always got worse at night when I was sick. I was hoping that I wouldn’t wake up and have to throw up or something. But I soon realized that throwing up was the least of my problems.

I don’t know where the dreams ended and the hallucination began. All I know was that somewhere along the line I was sitting up in bed crying. My world had gone black. I couldn’t see, hear, or feel anything. All I could sense was what was going on inside my head, and my head was going haywire. I could sense two people in the corners of my room. I use sense because I couldn’t actually see them; I just knew they were there. The floating heads were arguing with each other. They were arguing very softly. Then they got louder and louder, until they were yelling and I thought my head was going to explode with sound. This whole time I had been crying, and none of it was happening as clearly as I am explaining it now. The world, or at that time the hallucination, was fuzzy and squashed, like a very badly put together dream that you laugh at the next day because it didn’t make any sense. My dream was not that funny, though.

My dad eventually heard me crying. I don’t know if this was after an hour or five minutes. He came in to see what was going on, and realized what was happening. He had had the same thing happen to him when he was little. He tried to comfort me and calm me down so we could get my temperature under control. I didn’t know who he was or what he was doing. When he first came in, I couldn’t even feel him hugging me and trying to comfort me. When I started to come back to the real world, I fought him. It was as if you were in a dark room with ear plugs in and someone suddenly grabs you. You wouldn’t be able to hear them tell you who they are or what they’re doing, and you wouldn’t be able to see them. Eventually I got calmed down, though.

My temperature was 104.5 when my dad got me calm enough to take it. He put cold wet washcloths on my neck and forehead, and he had me take Tylenol to get my fever down. Even after all I had been through that night, I remember I didn’t want to take it because it was the grape flavored chewy ones and I hated those. I finally took the Tylenol and we got my temperature down to a reasonable level.

Thinking back to that time, my perspective on life changes. That was by far my most terrifying moment, and I got through that without too much trouble. Other things in life shouldn’t bother me, because I went through being trapped in side my head. I don’t worry about little things as much, because they don’t scare me like the hallucinations did. They aren’t worth worrying about. If I can get through having hallucinations, I can get through speeches, tests, performances and all the other normally terrifying events. So don’t worrying about the little things, because there is always something truly frightening that could be happening.