I'm not crazy, I just need help

[christoffer kyle mackenzie]

This story takes place in a very special place where several teens face their fears, their illnesses and become one as a very different society. Don't call them crazy. Don't tell them that they are ill, for they already know of this. They've been abandoned by the ones who were said to love them, to care about them. Their trust is no longer there and it is harder than ever to fall in love with someone who is here for the same reason as you. What will happen to the experiments that these people call patients? Will any of them get better? What is this place and how could someone leave you here. Here, you are not normal, no one is. Here, you're just another brother or sister. You are just like everyone else. You need help.

[christoffer kyle mackenzie]

Introduction
The bright lights shine down on you as if harshly judging your every move. You're never alone here. You might think you are, but there's always someone watching your every step, breath, flick of your hair. This place is called home and here you stay for a good part of your life. You find no peace here no matter how hard you pray, no matter how many times you wish, you're here and you daren't leave. You're surrounded by people you've seen a thousand times, by faces you don't care to see anymore. But you have to see them for two hours in the morning and three in the afternoon. You must persuade your mother that you're eating well, your father that you're getting better. But your brothers and sisters know better, for they are just like you. They don't want to get better. They're here for a reason. A reason different than your own, but you know it all must be connected in a way. You're all here, together. This is your life now. No running or hiding, keeping secrets or telling lies. You're here to get better and in time, you will. In time.

How much time? That all depends on you. Are you willing to give up your habits, your hopes, your fading dreams, body, mind and soul? Will you trade your lies for honesty, your hiding for the open? Air for food? Dark for light? Pain for pleasure? You have no choice, no will, no say. You're here now, and here's where you'll stay. Welcome to 'Time Changes Everything - rehabilitation facility and mental institution'.

[christoffer kyle mackenzie]

Chapter One - Christian

This place... Home. It's nothing. It has never been more to me than a cage that keeps us all here, like we're wild animals. Too dangerous to let loose on the normals, the ones who keep their problems secret. The ones who've sent us here. The Normals. That's what we call them here. To the brothers and sisters they aren't normal at all because they all have problems, just like us. We don't talk about the Normals a lot. It's just a reminder of why we're all here in the first place. We've been deemed not normal, unfit for society. A harm to oneself and the community alike. We have our own community now, and for that we must all be grateful. A caged society. Here, we must think like one, act like one, behave like one and, above all, we must all obey.

Rain again. Fifth day in a row already. Nothing will ever change in this place. I don't even know why I'm put here. Mom says it's because of me putting a gun to my head. Dad says it's because of my rebellious ways and the needle he found in my drawer. I can't deny the fact that the needle is mine and that a gun was put to my head willingly. I don't remember a lot of things, though. All I remember before being put here was being on the best high of my life, then on the lowest low. I started thinking way too much. I found my dad's gun and put it to my head. I remember pulling the trigger. The next thing I knew, I was awake in the hospital with an excruciating pain in my head. Apparently, I had tried to kill myself, and my father had tried to stop me. Mom and dad blame themselves for what I tried to do. It's not their fault. It was Tawny Parkinson's. She was the reason behind the trigger. Behind the drugs. Behind my tears. She still is. Every waking moment that I've spent here was thinking about her. Every dream that I've had was about her perfect brown hair and the way her blue eyes shone with such an intensity that it hurt to even look into them. But I never cared, I was always caught staring. Her smile, what a smile. So perfect, so bright, so happy. Everything that I wasn't.

That I'm not. Perfect, bright, happy. The three things that she stood for, the three things that I wanted so badly. I envied her, worshiped the ground that she walked on. And all for what? For being rejected in the most cruel and profane way. I've been through rejection before, don't get me wrong, but the way she looked at me when she said those two words was just something that I couldn't handle. That was my breaking point. After being rejected by the most beautiful girl in school, I had nothing going for me anymore. Sports weren't enough after I had started losing most of the games, disappointing not only the team and coach, but all of the fans that came to watch us play. I let all of those people down. I started hanging out with the wrong people. The people that were shunned from the community because they were the delinquents. The punk-rockers with the drugs and an unhealthy addiction to "art" as they called it. But where I'm from they call it graffiti, taggers. They were artists, trying to break free from the nasty people who thought wrongly of them. In my eyes, they were artists. They are artists. Being a part of their crew and finally feeling like I belonged somewhere, a place where I could be free to express how I felt was more amazing than my crazy dream to be with Tawny forever. Right then, at that moment, I felt more at home than I had in ages.

In the process of that, however, I was killing myself slowly. My mind was leaving me, I already had a child on the way and was hopped up on cocaine, meth and ecstasy. Most of these drugs would only give me a high for a few days and the crashes were terrible. When I would sleep for days on end, my parents were worried that I was in trouble and couldn't talk to them about it. They were right. I had no one to talk to. After my little stumble in life, they decided to bring me here to this hell hole. The one place that is suppose to save me, make me better. Make me normal. Make me like the others. But I'm already like them. We all are.