The voices. They were back. Returning just to taunt me. I didn't want them here. They weren't welcome. They were telling me to do things – things I shouldn't do; things I couldn't do. I could hear them talking about me; saying it was my fault my mother and father left me. I clapped my hands over my ears, trying to shut them out but I could still hear them. The voices got louder, coming closer to me. They were shouting, chanting something.

Evil, they were saying. Evil, evil, evil. You're an evil girl, Mary. You don't deserve love. You don't deserve care. You deserve to rot in this hole. You deserve to die.

"Be quiet!" I screamed, lashing out at the voices, "Why won't you just be quiet?" I couldn't take it anymore. The constant derision and torment, everyday, was overwhelming. I couldn't think.

I pulled my knees up, hugging them close to my chest. Opening my eyes, I studied the room around me. As usual, there was no one around. Therefore, no one could have been talking to me. That's what Doctor Steinmann said. He says it's all in my head; that it needs to be purged from my system. He says I'm not right. He never listens to me.

The room – or cell, they had come to mean the same thing for me – was dark. The shaft of light that streamed in from the narrow slit of a window, high on the wall, was barely enough to light my surroundings. I had been in here so long though, as long as I could remember, that I was used to darkness. I felt safe in the dark. In the light everyone could see me. I didn't want to be seen. I wanted to hide. From everything.

Doctor Steinmann tells me I'm not normal. That I'm a freak. He reminds me of the voices. They're always telling me I'm a bad person. Sometimes they even sound like Doctor Steinmann.

I don't know how long I sat there, in the middle of my cell. Time had become meaningless to me. I didn't need to worry about time. I would be stuck here until I died. I didn't have to count the days until I could get out. The only thing I could look forward to was my death. Dying would mean I no longer had to suffer in this place.

The doctors called me suicidal. I knew that wasn't true. I had never tried to take my own life. At least, not that I can recall. Sometimes the voices would tell me the world would be a better place if I killed myself. I would scream at them until I lost consciousness. I'd wake up, unable to remember what had happened.

It would come back to me with the voices. I could never escape them. They'd always follow me. They were a part of me.

On several occasions I found myself strapped to a bed. Doctor Steinmann would say I had another one of my 'fits'. 'The Devil has possessed you,' he would say. I had always done something unusual in one of my instances, be it writing strange things on the walls, that no one, not even me, could understand, or scratching at the door until my fingers bled.

Doctor Steinmann has said I'm possessed so many times that I have come to believe it myself. Why else would these things be happening to me? Why would the voices tell me I was evil, if some sort of demon hadn't bewitched me?

I don't want to believe Doctor Steinmann though. He makes me think things that I shouldn't. He says I'm insane. He says people like me are what's wrong with the world. He doesn't help the other patients. I never see them, but I can hear them, screaming, yelling in pain. He only wants to make things worse. But I can't tell anyone. If I do, they'll only say I'm deluded. Maybe I am. I don't know what to believe anymore.

It's not a nice feeling, being trapped. I'm trapped in a cell, never allowed out. I'm trapped in an asylum, abandoned here by my parents. I don't have many memories of them. I don't really want to. They didn't want me, so I don't want them. What had I done for them to put me in here?

But worst of all, I'm trapped in my own head. No one else can hear what I hear, see what I see. None of it's real for them. But it's all too real for me. No one understands what's going on. No one knows what it's like. I feel isolated, excluded, shut out.

I'm trapped. I've locked myself away in my own mind, but I've lost the key. I've lost who I am.