By Winnie Deng

They put me in here, into a chamber identical to so many others, where the walls are rigid with their pale broken colour and the cold, cement floor. The chamber is small containing nothing but a single bed placed in the corner, with no more than white sheets and a small flat pillow. I wonder to myself how did I end up here. I had thought that no one cared and sank to my depression, but I honestly did not think that people cared so less to such an extent that they treat me by shoving me into an insane asylum like they would with garbage.

My head is burning with the millions of echoes that fill my mind and I long to escape their grasp on me. Inside I could almost see the swarming ghosts that tug at me and steal whatever is left of me, while I remain still and watch, powerless to stop the excruciating pain. I am surprised that I still retain the ability to think, to realize that I there is no hope of getting better for me if I am forever locked inside these walls. I want to scream, I want to die. I am willing to throw myself into the jaws of death as anything, even annihilation is better than this perpetual madness that occurs within me.

The only signs of life I see are the masked faces that come in here every so often, probe me and then move away to their merry lives again. Have these people no compassion? Is it not enough that the neglect I felt from my so-called family is so overwhelming that I have been labelled insane, but must I suffer these taunting thoughts inside me that strive to bring me down, until I’m merely flesh and body without a soul or mind?

I feel trapped in this cold, damp place. I feel like I have been trapped for an eternity. I have been deprived of my freedom, my life, and I am reduced to merely stalking the lonely halls of this mental institution and looking back at the same familiar faces of other victims, which only reflect the same sorrow, the same pain, and the same surrender to this prison, as mine.

And so I continue to undergo the daily monotony of pacing around my chamber, walking the lengths of the halls of the asylum, and eventually sidling up in the dank, coldness of my room and solidify, immerse myself in a world where I am targeted and beaten by the ghosts that haunt me, until I am completely and utterly defeated.