((Written in a very wobbly indistinct hand unlike the small neat handwriting of her other entries))

Dear Diary

I cannot sleep. I have tried so very hard. It is always the same. I am laying in a hospital beside my dear friend Laila who is sick, and I cannot even find the energy to sit up to write so I am sorry to say my handwriting is a little the worse for wear.

I have to move carefully otherwise the IV needle tugs quite uncomfortably.

Today I came to the end of my rope. I suppose I knew it was coming even if my body did not want to admit it. You can hardly keep yourself on the brink of starvation, utter sleep deprivation, and in a frantic mental state, such as my body tends towards, without something giving at some point sometime.

I suppose I did not expect it to happen just the way it did. I feel bad for the nice lady who carried me to the hospital … I don’t even know her name! I wonder what she must think of me. I suppose she like everyone else must think I am operating with a few screws loose and … I suppose I am.

But … there is an explanation for my madness I think and in these quiet pre-dawn hours when I cannot sleep I feel compelled to write down my thoughts. Because here, here in this little bit of my mind, I am still me. Still clear and collected me.

Here goes …

I have two voices.

No not like actual voices like those with schizophrenia sometimes have, or those with other mental ailments. These two voices are actually things that every other person on planet earth has too.

I suppose they are not actually voices but for simplicity sake that is what I shall call them.

The first voice is the part that lives outside of impulse. This is my or rather our (as it applies to the rest of the average human race) logical, clear thinking part. It is the part that is Us operating to some extent outside and apart from our bodies instincts.

For instance: Say you were to become paralysed. Suddenly your body signals are all wonky and messed up, but you are still in there. The thoughts, the desires and will, everything that makes up YOU is still there a part of, and yet separate from your body.

This is the first voice.

The second is also a natural part of the body. A normal part of being human. This is the instinct part of us. The subconscious, physical thing that was born within us to warn and help us through life.

This is the part that reacts to heat and makes you instinctively withdraw your hand, this is the part that senses danger and initiates the fight or flight response. Again .. it is a normal human thing and generally its very helpful.

The majority of us (humans I mean) have learned to live with these things and over time found a balance between the two voices. Instinct tells you when you are hungry or tired, when something is scary, or if something is hurting and the part that is You processes it and chooses how to react to these helpful little hints.

Let’s explore it in a more extreme setting … still a natural response … but a little more intense. Say you are walking thorough the woods and suddenly a bear starts chasing you. Immediately in kicks your fight or flight response. Your heartbeat increases, your breathing picks up, and you probably start running. Even after you are safe from the bear you are probably breathing hard and it takes a while for the adrenaline to cease pumping and everything to go back to normal. But, as sheer powerful as that reaction is, You are still You able to think relatively clearly and make generally logical decisions on how to act/react to the situation.

But then. Sometimes. The voices get broken.

This is when either one or both of the voices function outside the parameter for which it was designed. Take, for example, a soldier with PTSD. A car backfires out on the street, and suddenly a generally normally functioning human being is suddenly cowering on the floor, his heart racing, his mind in blind panic … the natural instinct has suddenly become so broken and so strong that it temporarily overpowers everything else. He is still in there, but suddenly he is a slave to his instinct until the episode passes. Or imagine a person with autism. They are still in there, sometimes they can type out entire conversations as clear and reasonable as any other person, but on the outside to look at them they might be spinning in circles, or flinching away from contact. They are still in there .. but the natural channels through which their bodies process the world, the instincts, if you will, are out of the “normal” parameters.

Now we are back to My two voices. I am writing now from the part of me that is Me. The first voice. Here on paper I am clear and logical in spite of my body being tired, and in spite of the fact that if someone were to walk up here and look at me I would likely cower away and act like a frightened animal rather then a lucid human young woman.

Somewhere along the way, as things happened to me, as sleep deprivation and malnutrition whittled down all of my defenses, my second voice got broken. Or both got broken .. or the connections between my first voice and my second voice .. regardless. Now my second voice is the source through which I process the world. My body is ruled by instincts and impulses often so far out of proportion to the situation at hand, and so powerful, and so loud, that all I can do … no matter how hard I try .. my first voice gets drowned out.

I am trapped in my own body. I am it’s slave.

But there is hope. That day when I overcame my second voice enough to help my friend Laila … that has given me hope that someday .. somehow I will be free.

Goodnight Dear Diary

OOC Note: All representations of mental illnesses/disabilities are entirely the reflections and speculations of a fictional character. They are in no way intended to be factual statements or observations of any malady and I hope they will be taken as such and not offend or anger any reader as that is entirely not my intent.