What drives a person crazy? What differentiates a crazy person from a sane one? I can't define it, but I see a thin line between insanity & consciousness, making it hard to distinguish at times. Even the "crazy" claim they're sane. Psychiatry labels psychiatric patients as sane but flawed due to brain function issues. Yet, I feel like a spectacle for those around me. I'm not crazy I'm just sick. I looked up from my notes to see whispers & glances directed at me. Dirk loves to philosophize, & while his ideas annoy me, I oddly agree with some. "How do they let this psycho exist in the university?!” I overheard. They view me as the odd one, Leo or as my father called me, the mental hospital's owner. I fled to engineering to escape the chaos. Ironically, I have dissociative identity disorder (DID), with seven personalities. Each has its voice & story, explaining their stares. My father keeps me out of the hospital, dosing me with sedatives to manage my personality. I hear them all, yet I don't know who the real me is. I mostly stay in control, except when Dirk's philosophy sneaks in or Jack shows up during bullying. As I approached my locker, I found a letter. I hesitated to open it until I saw the sender: Jana, my twin sister, in an asylum. Is insanity hereditary? I ponder our mother's dementia & my disorder. I finally opened the letter, only to find a piece of wood shaped like an X .tell me again how she sent it from the mental asylum. Then I heard the café news about a patient escaping: Jana Oris! This might explain her message. I'd never seen her as crazy; she was brilliant—until she became uncontrollably agitated & vanished for days. My father had tested her for mental issues, & that news hit hard. If she's crazy, can I trust anyone? At home, I examined the letter: “Cd Zkved Mrebm, Wsxrd, Nyxd doky Ieb Wonsmkdsyx.” The “X” was the key, representing ten. William, my analytical side, easily recognized it as Caesar's cipher. “The key tells how many letters to shift.” He explained the process, & I impatiently awaited the results. Soon, the message formed“St. Paul's Church, midnight, do not take your medication.” Why not take my meds? "idiot, there's another card!” William pointed out. I pulled it from the envelope, finding an old newspaper with headlines about hidden experiments & madness drugs. The date? 2004 I grabbed the letter again, trying to connect this newspaper with the encrypted message. Something felt off. Did Jana discover something dangerous, & Dad accused her of being crazy? Would he send her to an asylum for that reason? What about my medications? Is there something wrong with it? This is Illogical! Thoughts crashed in my mind. I placed the paper on the desk & noticed large writing on the back of the newspaper, which I initially thought was scribbles. My eyes widened at the sentence, “You were not sick.” I stepped away, breathing heavily. Is she honest? Not crazy? What if the medications caused my illness? Am I real, or just a personality created by the disease? Am I really sick? I sighed violently, feeling like crying for the first time since crying had left me. Everything will become clear tonight! When midnight arrived, I was in church until I heard her around from the corner. “I know you have questions,” she began. I shot back without sitting down, "What's the truth? You & my dad? Am I sick?! "Not your dad!" she sighed. I stared as she revealed a piece of paper. “We were adopted after our mother died in his hospital.” My features froze staring at the paper & my dad's signature. Your illness is not normal. It's from medications our father gave you for experiments.” Anger & shock surged inside me. “Do you have proof? That newspaper says there will be an investigation! How do I know this isn't another delusion?” Jana pulled out a stack of papers. “It's all here! I've searched for the truth.”The more I read, the more shocked I became. Details on the experiments & drugs made, the world collapse around me. Different personalities fought for control, all of them. Their voices clashed in my head, laughter mixed with screams, while I squatted, hugging my shoulders., begging to calm down, but Jana watched anxiously. As I trembled, she held me tight despite Jack's resistance. “Leo, I'm here. I won't leave you, everything will be ok! Don't be afraid!”I began to cry while she whispered reassurances. For the first time, I felt safe, knowing I wasn't alone. “I'm here for you, brother. We'll heal together. You're stronger than you think” Her words reignited hope within me. I felt the weight of my suffering lighten, replaced with determination to reclaim my life. With Jana by my side, we'll face what's coming. The road won't be easy, my dad, confronting him, informing the police. But together, piece by piece. As dawn broke, light crept through the church windows, illuminating our path. Embracing each other, we stepped out of the shadows, ready to face a hopeful but dangerous future.

~~Her eyes glance to the SonyPMW that glares a red LED light. She exaggerates a moan as her bottom lip tucks under her bite. 5-digit imprints begin to welt and ecchymosis starts to surface. He thrashes her body into the Kingsdown cushion.~~ My body hosts a habitat for not just one, but two. Beyond my classic blonde ringlets and wide blue eyes lurks a predator. I call her Vixen. She is a lecherous creature infested in my mind. I cannot rid her. We share the same body, but she deludes my cognition. She is the entity of our illness that resides in our ventral striatum. The conflict between us does not cease until I swallow the colored beads engraved with a systematic arrangement of numerical and alphabetical configurations and close my eyes. My mind disintegrates into a trance. Peace―finally, until REM generates its own unconscious version of Vixen, for Vixen has no regard for serenity. In fact, she preys on calmness. I have wild conversations and battles with voices in my head. The relationship among us is hardly fathomable. The only means I have to express the delusion and insanity that unfolds inside my cranium is through abstract metaphors. And even then, oftentimes I lose myself in the psychobabble and pronouns. There are too many identities. Is my nonsense merely a figment of my distorted reality, or is it true? I don't know. I am not her. She is not me. We drive the same car and run on the same fuel, but there is only one wheel. For some months she used her bondage to leave me tied and helpless in the trunk. Vixen drove me down unpaved roads and scuffed our tires. I persisted to plead for a break, but one of Vixen's chief qualities is her apathy. After months of intense therapy and rehab, I finally escaped the trunk. I shifted from the passenger and back seats, contingent on how much time could elapse before the car required a refuel. After innumerous efforts to achieve 30-day abstinence, Vixen took the passenger seat. I hesitated to touch the wheel―afraid I would wreck both of us. I had not forgotten how to drive, but I forgot the traffic rules. Simple guiding principles like stoplights were difficult to realign myself to conform to. The only light in Vixen's world signaled “go;” even red meant “keep going”. It seemed unnatural to stop and “yield” did not exist in Vixen's vocabulary. My folly was a recipe for relapse. Lest our psychosis lost you, allow me to elaborate. I am a recovering sex addict. In order to grasp a clue at who controls my behaviors, I compartmentalize. As such, I personified the part of my mind that is plagued with an illness. She, Vixen, is like an escape artist. She's mastered the skills to escape what is real and deny what is true. She abducts our body into her alternative universe and I return with black and blue and welted evidence of our travels. My unadulterated self is impaired with shame and disgust. I see Vixen's graffiti plastered on my body's canvas and it reminds me of her grueling obsessions and masochism. Not that I would ever desire to, but even if forced, I could never escape to the places Vixen is so familiar with. It is her realm, not mine. Thus, I struggle with dissonance and impulses on a daily basis. Dissonance is a frustrating state that devours my energy and cognition. Denial worms its way into my head despite my efforts to banish it. Rationalization, minimization, ritualization, manipulation and crazy-making are only a handful of potent enablers. The constant questions of “who” and “what” confuse even the simplest of ideas, hence the medication to keep me functional―if you would even call us that. Despite failures, I can now intellectualize my behaviors, but whether that belongs on my excuse list or my sobriety strategies: I do not know. But I do understand that ignoring Vixen only intensifies her outbursts, like the one I endured prior to my first lapse―the prerequisite to a relapse: Salty, fiery tears streamed down my cheeks and collected in a damp puddle underneath my bed. I clung onto the metal framework, hiding from voices that echoed off the innards of my skull. White noise screeched in the background like nails on a chalkboard. I am amazed that my neck did not snap while I tucked my head into myself like an isopod crustacean. I gasped for air as if I were being water-boarded by my own tears. I felt like an ant being tortured under a scorching microscopic light with malicious eyes watching its every movement. I could not help but wonder if death was the only escape. My fingers type anxiously as I complete this work. I have so many voices to speak for, but such little language to communicate with. Delusion skews my vision of reality. As I prepare to close my thoughts, Vixen insists to secure the last word, but no. Patrick Carnes' are the words I want to conclude my piece. “Addiction is an illness of escape….it cripples the core ability to know what is real because…rationalizations and delusions make it impossible to cope with details.”

It's a fact: you are the most intelligent species to walk the earth. Now, what if I told you that despite the magnitude of intelligence you possess, your brain is playing games with you every single day? What if I told you that you fall for it repeatedly without even realizing, and what if I said that it's not really your fault that you are so easily manipulated? If you have been a victim to your two brains, then you are indeed a human being, and I fall in your category. I say that science has heeded reasoning for why things happen, but simply studying it does not solve personal problems. Alas, I sometimes sit here with all the answers, but not enough strength to actually act and apply. That being said, I would like to discuss my brains: one has ruined my life as much as it has kept me alive, and the other is not there for me when I need it most. I want to tell you why we may be the most adept creatures on the planet, but truly, we have yet to persist in outsmarting our own brains. An afternoon in high school involved the tedious travel down clogged hallways to where my English class was held. Upon entering the class, insightful students, who were indeed intellectually intimidating at times, filled the seats. English has always been my favorite class and specialty: opinions are evaluated instead of judged, and the beauty of language is used to express various ideas and facts. What sends my nerves down a dark tunnel is the discussion period of English class. Everyone is to sit in a large circle as ideas, quotes, questions and opinions are thrown into conversation. Sounds simple, right? It does not make me anxious to speak and confront others, but I sat in that discussion circle holding my tongue, because I felt pulled back by something, and I was overthinking it. Put yourself in my mind for a moment: ideas are circulating, but they are not formulated correctly, so I must structure these ideas before I can project them out loud. I must then quickly script the order of how I will emit my scrambled words out into the open, and recite them in my head a few times beforehand. At this point I have no clue what carries on in the class conversation, so now I must listen in, and wait to add my contribution within the perfect moment. Then, the most tragic occurrence takes place within the dialogue in my mind. I wait for the opportune moment to speak, and in that time frame I decide this: my ideas aren't even important, and they were never good enough anyways. And I did not speak in that discussion. This happens daily, in conversational scenarios, in life changing steps, anything that requires an instinctual override and an emotional stability. Overthinking and excuses have stopped me at my limits, where I turn around, then walk back to the comfort zone. I face my limits every day, and yet I still turn back every time. We are right to blame ourselves in this feat, but we are wrong to wallow in doubt. To make this as simple as possible, our brain is made of two parts: primal instinct and complexity. This complexity is the best representation of ourselves. It's love and beliefs, emotions and morals, and it's what makes us the most different from any other species. It's what makes us diverse individuals. What disturbs this complexity is the other guy who does not sympathize with you at all: primal instinct. This part of the brain only cares to increase our rate of survival. When the two parts interact, it can get quite foggy, and disable us from making decisions that would benefit our lives. When I chose not to speak in the class discussion circle, my instinct brain made excuses for my complex brain: "Your ideas aren't good enough" really translates to "your comfort is being threatened". This primal part of our brain serves to help us survive, but it can really interfere with the goals we make as a progressive species, and that's why we must learn to outsmart our brains. We think to just change habits, right? No. Change them FAST, and I mean within five seconds fast. An instinct is an unlearned behaviour that happens quickly without any thought process. When I now have ideas, I simply say them without the extended process of overthinking. Repeating these actions creates habits, and there is no reason for the complex brain to make excuses. It's as easy as it sounds, but it takes quick determination and perseverance, and more importantly it makes us mentally stronger to withhold the instinctual brain. We are creatures of complexity and discovering our capacities to control and change our mental functions proves that we are rightful as the smartest organisms on earth. With two brains we are goal oriented. We are dreamers and doers with passions and plans. We are able and worthy of far more than we hold accountable for ourselves. I force myself to contradict the negative comfort tactics my brain can succumb to, and I find myself becoming more armored every day. With two brains, the limit is undefined.