An Assuredly Brief Episode from Sophia’s Childhood
I could feel another attack coming on. My defenses were weakening, I was breaking. I didn’t tell my parents that I feel the oncoming of another breakdown, they knew it too; Alice had seen it I was sure. I let them silently worry; I had bigger problems than comforting them.
  It never happens all at once, there’s a great deal of build up towards it, first would come the least problematic symptoms, I’d be distracted and a little paranoid, looking over my shoulder all the time, next I’d start hearing the voices, voices that were long since silenced, at this point I usually didn’t talk anymore but I wasn’t screaming yet, that’d come later, soon the fog would roll in and I’d be confined to the prison that was my mind.
  The fog was dense, completely impossible to see through. This fog didn’t exist; I was in my head now. I lived a good part of my childhood there and it wasn’t always a great place to be. Figures roamed about in this fog, always distant, never close enough to distinguish one from another, they were people, people I did know, or didn’t, or met once in the line at a store. It didn’t matter; all that mattered was that they were there and they weren’t happy.
  The fog swelled around me, encasing me, chocking me, killing me. I could feel my throat burning from lack of oxygen that I didn’t need. I only ever felt this when these attacks happened, my own powers destroying me. I could feel the floor beneath me spinning.
    My room with the blue walls and wide window was completely lost to me; I wasn’t there anymore. When these things happened I was never conscious of my body, just the memories and delusions in my mind. Distantly, I heard a voice that I should recognize, a voice I had heard all my life, but the name wouldn’t surface, they were calling me back to reality saying I was fine, they were there, they weren’t leaving. I tried to find the air to breathe, but as I drew the breath from the thick air I felt a horrible sharp pain tear through my chest, it was an all-consuming pain that threatened to destroy my very being.
  The fog was thinning out now, a scene before me solidifying, the pain was just as intense, just as horrible, as it was the moment I had felt it. I think I screamed now, not in my mind but actually screamed, (I was known to do things like that, scream and scratch and kick and cry out) but of course I cannot be sure.
  Suddenly I was in a room with pale blue walls and faded yellow curtains, I felt like I should know this room but I knew I had never been here before. I looked around and saw a girl lying on the bed, her head towards the ceiling just staring. Her eyes blank, her face emotionless. It took me a moment to make the connection that this was my mother, if darker in color and human in variety. This must be from a while back.
  The pain in my chest was persistently throbbing, every time I tried to take a breath I felt a new tear open in between the sides of my ribcage, I decided not to breathe, it wasn’t worth it.
  I took a step forward, towards my mother who was obviously having some sort of episode of her own, but as I moved my foot I could feel the pain in my chest spasm again, apparently showing any sign of life like breathing or moving exacerbated this injury. That was how it could be in these memories, I felt whatever the person whose memory I’m taking it from felt, and sometimes that meant pain, sometimes hysterical laughter, sometimes homicidal rage. It all depended on whose view a situation was from. Trying to fix the past like this was useless I had quickly learned, in these places and times where I didn’t belong all I could be was a witness. Still despite all of my experience with these horrid breakdowns of mine I wanted to comfort her, to make this better. But even as the thought occurred to me I knew whatever hurt she had sustained was much greater than what one eight-year-old can make better, and as soon as I was convinced of the utter hopelessness of life the scene faded as the fog came back.
And so it went…
I saw many things during that episode, some scenes were very exciting, and some ordinary, but all for some reason were memorable for the person. Where they were foggy on the details I was as well, anything that had slipped their mind in so-many years was lost to me. I saw bad things that time around, it was easily the worst of all my breakdowns yet, but it wouldn’t be the worst breakdown. That night I saw thirty-seven memories like the one I have detailed above, followed by a brief period of lucidness during which I tried to sleep, but was plagued with nightmares. The next day it continued with forty-two, and that night twenty-six. Among this total of 105 scenes I’d say only half were of any interest at all, the others were snippets of lives past, two German women laughing, a man trying to negotiate a deal for a new car, a girl getting her pigtail pulled in class by the boy behind her. But the other half were horrible, murders and accusations and funerals and suicides, none were pleasant.
  What was worse was that I saw some about my family. More than usual, more than I’d like to have seen. I saw a few of my father’s acts as a young vampire, my grandfather accusing our own kind in the streets of old London, Rosalie killing her ex-fiancé, Esme trying to kill herself. Although I’d later agree with their motives, thirst, a wanting to please his father, revenge, and depression, I’d never quite see any of them the same way.
   When I finally came out of my fog I was alone, I looked around my room waiting to see one of my parents worried faces or Alice sitting in the corner, or Esme holding my hand, but I was alone. I sighed heavily still waiting for one of them to appear by my side. I inhaled deeply in the light air, we had such a happy atmosphere in our home it was almost impossible to imagine such horrible memories breaking through my barriers and doing such terrible things to me.
   I was silently contemplating how wonderful it was to breathe for once when I heard the conversation going on downstairs.
  “How? She’s only eight!” My father’s voice was easily heard even through two floors. I held my breath, they were talking about me.
   “I only saw a casket,” Alice’s voice was strained, she hated herself for seeing this future.
    “What do you think happens?” Carlisle’s voice, usually smooth and calm was rough.
   Jasper intervenes, “She’s obviously depressed, and understandably with all the things that she’s seeing, this has been happening for nearly two years.”
  “You think she’s going to hurt herself?” My mother’s voice was sharp, defensive.
  “Ask Edward he knows how deeply disturbing what she’s going through is.” Jasper replied.
   I heard the chairs creak as they turned to him, “It’s . . . awful for me to be in her head when she has these… episodes. I cannot imagine what kind of pain she’s put through when these things happen,” his voice betrayed the strain of the conversation, “But for her to die so soon…” he floundered for a word to fit exactly what it was, “It’s completely unfair.” His last three words were angry. I shrunk back as I heard it wishing that I was tired enough to sleep, I only did for two or three hours now and for some reason beyond me my body seemed well-rested.
  There was a long silence as the conversation downstairs reached a standstill.
   “What do we do now?” Bella said.
   “Now we hope Alice is wrong and try to make however much time we have left with Sophia happy,” Esme finally answered, as it seemed no one else was willing to say it.
   “DAMMIT!” Edward yelled, I heard his chair pull out and the back door slam as he slammed it so hard that the hinges broke.
But Alice was wrong.
At least sort of, at the time she was right, if I had kept on as I did I would have died, and most likely by my own hand. I was an unstable child to say the least, my parents worried about me a lot, and I knew no one in my family really believed I’d make it to adolescence.
  One lifetime promises hopes, dreams, life, death, friendships, betrayals, loves, losses, sickness, injury, laughter, and anger among many other things. Sometimes living through that one lifetime isn’t pleasant for a person, imagine living through several all between the ages of seven and fourteen. It was brutal, it was disturbing, and yes more than once I didn’t want to live anymore. I was nature’s mistake, and it was trying to correct itself. I am the abnormality, the exception to such a decisive rule that it takes up a great portion of my identity, I was never meant to be, and this was my own powers trying to fix that.
   This is, I’m sure, not the first or last time that you’ll hear that our lives are made up of decisions that we make. They decide how long you live, where you go, what job you get, whether you die surrounded by friends or alone. That’s not to say that other people's decisions don’t also affect you, they change your life in its entirety but some of it is up to you, or at least I’d like to think so. We all made choices that night.
  My parents decided not to give up on me.
  I decided to try harder.
  Soon, things were different, if only a little. I was back in school regularly, all my late work completed flawlessly, I also went back to my music classes, now taking up cello as well as violin and piano, Alice started to teach me how to draw. I found escapes from the constant pressure of everyone else’s past as well as my own uncertain future through these activities, it wasn’t enough to completely drown out the voices and the occasional violent breakdowns did occur, but less frequently if with more intensity.
  I made it this far. Farther than anyone had hoped for.
  Now I can’t let them down, can I?