Prologue
He's pointing his phone at me, or so I thought to myself.
We were visiting a new location, away from the trauma from the past four years of Cameron's most recent psychotic episode, which ended up with a trip to the Intensive care unit.
"We found him in the bathroom, unconscious" Cameron's mother, June had told me. June was a kind woman, and devoted mother to Cameron and his sisters, so to her and her husbands shock,
they found Cameron unconscious, unable to speak sprawled out on the bathroom toilet. And just like me, I believe a part of June died the day she thought she had lost her only son for good.
We had just placed first for a house we had only dreamed of with the promise of peace and privacy in Liverpool. It was everything we wanted to start to rebuild our lives,
with Cameron having to give up his job a few years prior due to his Schizoaffective disorder.
It was a late March when June took us to visit Church Lane, a secluded spot on the outskirts of Liverpool, full of greenery and new build houses. It was the place we were soon to call home.
We couldn't enter the house as it was currently under construction, but from the outside the large driveway outlined the shape of the two story brick home. A purple butterfly decoration
was centered on the wall beneath the front room window, with the door neatly tucked behind another wall, adding even more privacy to our new home.
Although we couldn't see inside the house, we decided to check out a local shop nearby. As soon as we entered the shop it was as if someone turned the temperature in the room to ice,
as we were met with a frosty reception from the workers behind the counter. However, my attention quickly shifted to him. The man, with the phone held up in my direction for what felt like
the longest time.
Now, you could call me crazy for being paranoid about this as, or you could say, like my partner Cameron, it's the start of my mental breakdown into psychosis.
I had recently come across a new hobby to help pay the ever increasing bills. Selling my pictures online. It's not my life long dream career, but it was money none the less. And it could
be quite the fun distraction from the daily chores of life, pretending to be who I wanted to be, while I took pictures in beautiful lingerie, or barely there clothes for the crowds of people
on social media, hoping to gain attention from the right customer to get us through another month.
It's been a long time since I have thought about this and even longer since we first visited our new home, as it's now 4 years later. And my life has taken on it's own spider web of chaos.
I guess you could say, it began when Cameron bought me a set of tarot cards for my twenty-sixth birthday four years ago, and I fell in to the trap of spirituality, or you could say it was when I
started to believe everyone in Liverpool was out to cause myself and my family harm three years ago, or maybe when a device implanted inside me caused me to miscarry my baby two years ago.
I'll let you be the decider.
"We have lots of friends" the voice inside my mind states. It's a warm May night, while Cameron and I are outside discussing the possibilities of our hallucinations being real when I hear
the daily commentary from the monotone voice which haunts my days and nights. Trying to ignore the voice, I turn my attention back to Cameron who is too deep in conversation he is unaware
of my fleeting distraction.
"Does he have lots of friends, that Daniel?" I ask Cameron.
Daniel Mullingham, an old associate of Cameron's and known dealer to the community of Paisley Close. Our old neighbourhood.
"Yes, he's actually quite a friendly guy, except, you know.." I do know, my delusions, as Cameron calls them have targeted Daniel as a suspect in mine and Cameron's harassment and abuse which spans over multiple years.
I know you're wondering, why would anyone put up with this abuse. However, the abuse comes from a place inside our minds. A place where there is no proof. "Ha!" The voice says.
Gaining my attention back, I try to plead with Cameron, "He's the reason for your mental breakdown, Cameron. He put the device inside us and maybe inside Theodore too" Cameron smiles at the mention of our son, Theodore,
our perfect son who has recently turned 12. "But nothing bad happened to Theodore" I assure Cameron "So, I'm not worried there, because it's finished on him anyway" As if on cue, Cameron tries to reason with me,
sensing the same signs he showed himself, but now in his partner of 14 years.
"What are the likelihoods of a device that can read your thoughts and communicate through your mind be true? We're more likely to win the lottery, babe" Cameron tells me. I know he's correct in saying this, but the odds
have won this round, because it's true, there is a device that has been invented that can read your mind, and even communicate with you, but how? I don't know.
And who? Well, that's even more unknown. Just as I'm about to reply to Cameron, I feel a poke on my leg. It's them, again. The voices, trying to gain my attention. "Don't forget we're here." A sentence repeated
nearly daily. I look down at my leg, of course, no one's there, no one is ever there. Could it be ghosts? No, ghosts aren't real, Lizzie.
"What's on your mind? You seem quiet, are you okay?" Cameron asks.
Quickly turning my attention back to Cameron, I reply "I'm okay, just delusions" It has become a common statement for me to tell Cameron as he understands, having gone through the same himself.
"What is being said?" he asks.
I try and think of what just happened, juggling the voices and my conversation with Cameron has become an art I have yet to perfect and I start to forget what the voices were saying, only moments before.
"Just about friends, I can't really remember, it's alot" I tell Cameron. A look of understanding appears on Camerons face as he states "That was the same for me too, there was too much going on"
My mind starts to sympathise with Cameron, when my attention snaps to the sound of footsteps coming down the path, a group of boys walking dogs on the leads, "the lads" the voice tells me, on the other side of the road.
One catches my attention as he stares at me intently as they walk past Cameron and I. Without breaking eye contact, the boys, "the lads" the voice tells me again, carry on their way to the end of the road until they turn
out of sight.
"Did you see that?" I ask Cameron. Why does that keep happening? I wonder to myself.
"See what?" Cameron asks, sounding slightly confused at the change in conversation.
"The boy? He was staring at me"
"I didn't see, sorry babe" It has become a frequent occurrence in our lives of people staring at me, making inconclusive comments towards me in the streets and shops. Yet while all of this has been happening, Cameron
has remained unaware of these happenings, as if they are a fragment of my own mind. My therapist says this is normal when you have experienced such trauma as I have, you perception of the world can
unravel, but you have to fight through that feeling. "She's surviving!" Kate exclaimed, raising her arms to the air and standing, as if she was speaking to the voices herself. Kate, my therapist was the type of person
you can only meet once in a lifetime. A lovely, emphatic woman in her late forties, early fifties, Kate was a trained therapist who specalised in her field, and has helped me over the span of a year
to gain a sense of control over my own mind again. "Have you seen A Beautiful Mind?" Kate asks.
"No, is it good?" I reply.
"It's quite an old film, about a maths genius. He is an extremely smart man and he made a discovery in his early life which he was acclaimed for. Anyway, he started noticing people following him, and he believed
people like the government were targeting him. Years later, at the end of the film, he emerges out of a building and see's the same people who have always followed him, yet it had been awhile since he had seen them.
The poignant part of the film is when he realises these people who follow him have not aged in time, and he comes to grips with his alterting reality. However, he goes on to live a happy life, free of trauma in
acceptance that he might still be followed by these people, but he can still live a fullfilling life"
Kate adds, as if she's trying to assure me of the same fate. While I can appreciate Kate's determination to help me come to terms with my mental health, I know that what I'm experiencing is real. I'm being stalked.
By people, who exist.