Is it any wonder that no one ever remembers my name but every knows who I am. The identity that has been harshly branded on me by society is that crazy guy. I was very young when they first held me still and put the hot metal to my face. I did struggle against the two men in white uniforms as they held me by the arms. I tried to snap at the doctor as he held his chose of branding equipment, a fountain pen. I would of done anything to stop him from pressing pen to paper, brand to my skin, writing that dreaded diagnoses that I hear about again and again. But at the time there was nothing I could do and even now I am powerless to that terrible word they use to describe me. Now the brand has been on me so long I am almost completely use to the way people treat me, yet I still hope for a change. Maybe that is a foolish thing for me to wish for, a change, but hope is all I have at this point.

I can hear their hurtful whispers that sting my ears like a thousand tinny bees. “That’s him! That the guy who hears voices!” they say and look at me as if I am an exhibit in a zoo. Unfortunately for me my exhibit never closes, it is always open to spectators. They don’t dare to come to close to me when they yell things at me because, as the crazy guy, they do fear me. Who knows what the crazy guy will do after all? I mean he is crazy, he could do anything!

This thought that others find me freighting makes me chuckle a little bit, on the inside at least. It only shows how little they know about me. I am not told to hurt other people, just to hurt me. So as I sit here now in the back of the classroom and start cutting my arm with a scalpel as I’ve been instructed to do, everyone looks at me in horror. But I am not a violent person, I’m only told to attack myself. Of course they do not know this, they would not get close enough to tell me this.
As they look on disgustedly I continue to dissect myself, I am far more complex and interesting than the frog before me. I try to see if behind the skin of my arm is the answer I seek to cure me. But I am disappointed to only be meet by my blood oozing out of my freshly opened wound. Deeper I am told so deeper the blade goes. Now the teacher has seen me, he demands the tool back. I am not a violent person, so I hand it over.

While I take this familiar walk to the office of the nurse I look at the empty halls that remind me of my empty heart. There is no one there for me to love. No one tries to get close enough for me to love them. Since my branding I have been left alone with my voices. They are the only people who have not abandoned me. Even my mother keeps her distance, and this only pains me more for I feared she would stop loving me. With each of my steps blood runs down my arm and onto the white floor of the school, staining their purity and destroying their perfection.

These white floor may in body lead to the nurse’s door but in mind I am taken away to another desolate place. This is where the men in white uniforms play with the doctors in white coats. It is turn that I still have them to talk to but they are not my friends. If I had not been for that devil in that clean white coat I wouldn’t be known as the crazy guy. I would still be crazy, but maybe I’d be able to hid it better if no one knew. If it were not for him and his forked tongue I could at least be invisible. But I would never do anything to hurt that demon back, I am not a violent person after all.

Those white uniforms and white coats and white floors and white walls all mock me. White is the color of insanity. It is just too perfect to not be messed up, just as I use to be when I was a little boy. Too perfect to be messed up, too happy to be sad. And now look how that has turned out for me, as I now walk to the office of a school nurse for the third time this week.

I have to sit on the cot as she wraps up my arm, she knows me better than anyone at this school but her hands still tremble when she is near me. Take them off, I begin to pull the bandages off my arm while the nurse calls my mother into the office yet again. As the bloody clothe hits the floor I sit and wait for my mother patiently as the nurse just sits and looks at me. There are no words that she or anyone else has to say to me.

Only my voices talk to me.