I Can See Can You?

By Christina Gomes

Have you ever wondered what it is like in the mind of a person with schizophrenia? How can one survive day after day of being unable to distinguish between one’s inner nightmares and the everyday realities that most of us take for granted? Mental disorder is devastating, especially when it seizes a ten-year-old just beginning her life.

This story is about a young girl named Allison Clarke battling a rare case of childhood schizophrenia. Alli was a girl with short curly black hair and dark-brown eyes. She was stick thin and a little pale. Her face was angular and slim, and she had a honeyed voice. She lived with her parents and younger brother.

Allison was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of ten. It all started with muttering to herself and was then followed with a supernatural encounter. She began to believe no one would understand her. And no one did. This led to secluding herself more and more, withdrawing deeper into inanimate objects. She had a life inside her head, and an outside world was not needed anymore. She believed and knew deep down in her heart that miracles do take place. She didn’t give up, at least not in the world she grew up in . . .

Thank you Ms. Amala Antony for your beautiful artwork illustrations. May God bless You and have a bright future ahead.

Amala Antony

Graphic Designer

www.amalaantony.com

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Singapore
• Release date: Jun 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543752113

Christina Gomes

Christina Veronica Gomes was born and raised in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. She graduated from Heriot Watt University, Dubai, in 2013. Two years ago she watched a documentary and witnessed young children descent into madness in real life. This led her to explore and write down the interesting and mesmerizing glimpse of a beautiful mind. She has a passion for storytelling and writing. Her ambition is to publish more stories.

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 Christina Veronica Gomes. All rights reserved.

ISBN

978-1-5437-5210-6 (sc)

978-1-5437-5212-0 (hc)

978-1-5437-5211-3 (e)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

www.partridgepublishing.com/singapore

06/24/2019

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CONTENTS

Early Diagnoses

All I see is not all there is

A home away from home

New Friends at the Hospital

Surprise at the doorstep

Flowers for Dakota

Friends or Foe?

Goodbye Rose Haven

Christmas Eve

Blue Fairy

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to thank all the people who have inspired and educated me throughout my journey. Without your guidance, support and challenge I would not have found any purpose to write this book.

I would like to thank my parents – my mother Florence Bina Gomes, for her love and support. My father Hillary Manuel Dilip Gomes for his support and encouragement. And my sister, Valantine Maria Gomes for her co-operation whenever I needed it.

I would like to thank Ms. Amala Antony for her beautiful artwork illustrations and also Ms. Kathy Lorenzo, Publishing Service Associate from Partridge Publication who helped me turn all of my thoughts into the book you have in your hands today.

DISCLAIMER

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

PROLOGUE

My name is Allison Clarke. I first started to hear a voice in my head when I was ten years old. It was a young girl’s voice and I thought it was an angel sent from above and I believed that everyone had this voice and we would not talk about it. A couple of months later I told my friend Chloe about it and I expected her to tell me that she hears this voice as well. But she didn’t believe me at first and thought I was just messing around. I was so convinced that we were all walking around with the voice in our head and it was not an angel. Later, the voices started to torment me. I really got involved in this fantasy until it became a reality for me until I thought people in my life were not real.

I was diagnosed with Schizo-affective disorder when I was thirteen, which is a combination of schizophrenia and depression. Apart from that, I am probably not that much different. I breathe the same air as you and you probably love chocolates just like me. Our brains might work a bit differently. But really I am just like you. Having a mental illness does not define who I am. I have a strong personality, something which I have discovered along my teen years and only after being diagnosed with the disorder. This is my story.

CHAPTER 1

EARLY DIAGNOSES

Living with a mental illness is never easy. It has just been one big roller coaster after the other. It all started on a cold January day, a month after my thirteenth birthday. I was living a normal life like any other children. I had good friends and a very loving family. However, I slowly started to lose my appetite. I was not eating well enough. The food I ate tasted funny. I would not even eat candies my parents bought or would even reject McDonalds and Pizzas. I often smell things that I cannot identify or an odd rotting smell. At times I would smell a chemical smell that lasts from one day to weeks at a time, I could smell it with every breath, which would also lead to migraines. I literally felt sick in my stomach and began throwing up. I started losing weight. It was so odd. My parents took me to a general doctor who did a series of tests, which also included drug tests, however, all the reports had come out negative. The doctor’s words were She is only thirteen years old. She is bright and young. She’s going through a phase. I’m not really a fan of doctors or being sick in general. When I had gone for the checkup the doctor had given me a suspicious look, well maybe which explains why he wanted me to take the drug tests. But I was not like that, I was raised in a well-cultured family. I am well behaved and an obedient child. My parents had taught me to do everything right. In the evening, the teenagers in my neighborhood would gather together and smoke a joint, and do other drugs. But I was not like the other kids, even in my youngest years, I would spend most of my time playing in the backyard with the neighbors of my own age.

Subsequently, when all the reports had come out negative, it got my family in believing that I had a bad stomach or I was going through a hormonal link. A week later, I was facing difficulty in falling sleep at night as well. I would be tossing and turning around in bed, unable to fall asleep. Fortunately, even if I did fall asleep, I would wake up in the middle of the night feeling peculiar. Due to lack of proper sleep, I would feel tired throughout the day. Ever since then I started daydreaming a lot. I had stopped playing with my neighbors. I had become very quiet and shy and started feeling depressed. I was transcending to a higher state of consciousness able to hear voices that at first, I thought were friends talking to me. As years passed by, the voices that were once alright started to torment me. I hear my teachers and friends calling out my name when they do not, so when they actually call out my name, I never listen. I never did any tasks that were given to me in school, even at home. I was not like this before, I was able to complete any given tasks but now those simple tasks have just gotten harder for me. I had a very happy life and a healthy upbringing. I had many friends in my neighborhood, we would play every weekend or after school hours. However, suddenly I started experiencing an onset of delusions, unannounced and uninvited. My life had changed. Gradually I started to zone out for a long period of time, I would not even blink often or I would excessively stare at something constantly and my facial expression would change. I would mutter a lot to myself. Although my sense of perception was unaffected, my delusions had spiraled quickly to mental illness and psychotic episode. If the hallucinations did not make me insane, it is often the thoughts which will shortly follow. My family and I had limited knowledge about my illness at that point in time.

Family background

My dad, Albert Clarke was a lay minister of a sixty-year-old church located five miles away from our home. The church was within walking distance. He also had his own manufacturing business which worked pretty well in a small town. On the contrary, my mother Katherine Clarke has a career in staging homes for sale. In short, she brings home appliances, to create a beautiful looking home for the potential buyers. When I was eight