What I find disturbs me. According to one site, psychosis is a loss of contact with reality that usually includes: false beliefs about what is taking place or who one is, which are referred to as delusions; seeing or hearing things that aren’t there, which are referred to as hallucinations. It’s the second one that gets me more than the first—seeing or hearing things that aren’t there. I spend the rest of the weekend processing, curled up in an Adirondack chair on our back deck, inhaling the briny sea air, reading Wuthering Heights, pausing occasionally to alternately recall or push away the things I have seen and heard over the past several weeks that nobody else can see or hear. Mom and Dad give me my space. Pete holes up in his room. And I find that as long as I stay outside, the heaviness is not so oppressive. I tell myself that my grandmother’s insanity means nothing, changes nothing. I start to look forward to Monday, when I will see my new friend and the mysterious boy next door.
