There have been moments throughout my entire life where I have felt like I was walking through a mist. Sometimes these moments pass within an instant, sometimes they stretch for hours. I think everyone has trouble keeping their grip on reality at some point or another, but it is my belief that my hand is particularly greasy.

I have always had an active imagination. Even the teachers who thought very little of me expressed how creative when I was young. It is not considered strange for a child to pretend they are of another world, often times this sort of game is actually encouraged. The problem with me was that I not only truly believed I was not native to this world, but I still have trouble grasping the concept of this reality from time to time.

When I was about 9 or 10, the auditory hallucinations started. I will never forget the first time it happened. I was in the shower when suddenly I heard a deep, demonic laugh. Panic immediately struck me and I ran, shrieking, out of the bathroom completely nude save for a towel. Looking back, it's more humorous than it is scary or sad. In addition to the fact that I have never been graceful, I was tall for my age and very skinny so I imagine I looked more like something created by Jim Henson than a girl in need of counseling.

Before that incident I had only heard things in my mind. It was easy to distinguish the faint whispers as being in my own head, but this event had opened Pandora's box. This laugh was heard in my ears, not my mind. I had no idea what this meant and begged my mother to send me to a psychiatrist. She was alarmed at the time, of course, but quickly brushed it off as something I would grow out of. I feel no resentment towards her for this, she was scared and did not know how to handle the situation. My mother is an amazing woman who did the best she could, this was just not something she was prepared for.

So I was told to ignore it, that it would go away on it's own. It was rare for me to have actual hallucination, usually I would just be skittish and on edge. The paranoia was nothing new, I honestly can't remember a time I wasn't horribly afraid of everything. At that age, however, my fears were so intense I developed slightly obsessive behaviors. Every night before I slept, I would build an elaborate barrier of stuffed animals to protect me. This took about 20 minutes if rushed and about an hour if I took my time (not to mention time spent adjusting them if I saw a "weak" spot in the barrier). I was convinced that if I did not do this every single evening, something terrible would happen. As incredibly embarrassing as it is for me to admit, this continued until I was about 13.

From wikipedia's definition of magical thinking: "In clinical psychology, magical thinking is a condition that causes the patient to experience irrational fear of performing certain acts or having certain thoughts because they assume a correlation with their acts and threatening calamities."

Magical thinking is something I have been doing all my life and to this day continue to do. My friends always comment on how uncharacteristically quiet I am as a passenger during car/bus rides. That is because I am focusing on the vehicle not getting into a horrible collision. Obviously, I am sick because I did not dispel the negativity in my body and not because I have a poor immune system. Everyone practices magical thinking to some extent, perhaps even as much as I do. I do this sort of thing significantly less now than when I was young and I can usually disillusion myself through reasoning .

Paranoia, obsessive magical thinking, questioning my own existence...these things will keep you up at night. So it's really no surprise I hardly slept. Not sleeping nearly enough, being considered "weird" by most people my age, being scared of everything, all mixed in with fluctuating hormones was pretty much the breaking point in my early teens. I became extremely depressed (not that uncommon for a 15 year old, I realize) and in turn started experiencing hallucinations I could not ignore. They were increasingly frequent and much clearer than they ever had been, this time around my mother knew it wasn't just a phase.

It was autumn, there were crisp, orange leaves on the ground. We drove in relative silence, I was so nervous my body began to shake and didn't stop doing so for hours. When we arrived at the therapist's office the shaking was so bad I had to at least marginally calm myself to prevent from vomiting. My therapist was a tiny, pixie looking woman named Natalie (changed for her privacy). She possessed large, brown eyes that you could not help but be soothed by and delicate features you could not help but admire. The sound of her voice would often leave me in a trance like state, feeling totally at ease. I've heard plenty of horrors stories about tactless, uncaring therapists and I will forever be thankful I ended up Natalie as my own.

I quickly became comfortable with the idea of going to therapy and made immediate progress. She taught me how to control my fears and block out the hallucinations. I'll go more into detail about that and my diagnosis another entry, as this is getting long winded, but I would like to say that I have not had a hallucination in years thanks to therapy.

The reason I decided to write all this is because I want to prove that people truly can be happy. I've struggled through my own bouts of depression, I've hurt myself and wished for death. Despite my past, I now hardly ever really feel depressed. I may feel empathy for others and occasionally get downtrodden but about 75% of the time, I am legitimately happy. 75% of the time I smile and laugh and feel joy, the other 25% of the time I am learning how to better myself. Money is of little interest to me, looking attractive and impressing others is just another worthless thing to obsess over, and success is relative. I live for joy and love. I am content with myself and those I care for. If I am not content with those in my life, I don't blame them for my dissatisfaction and play victim, I simply stop associating with them in the most polite manner possible.

The past few days have been unusually tough for me, I've been sleeping to the point of hibernation out of boredom and loneliness. But today I looked outside to see snow falling to the tune of my bathroom faucet's slow drip and I remembered joy.