My name is Kane. As you can tell by the name, I am an average white male with pale blond hair and blue eyes, standing at approximately 6'1". I don't know what's wrong with me, but I just can't seem to think like everybody else. Everyone I knew had a plan for what they wanted to do with their lives, or at least an idea of what they wanted to do. I don't have anything. No ambition, no purpose. I often feel like I just exist to exist. Throughout high school, I didn't have any hobbies and was just dragged places with my friends. They would have fun at the skate park or the arcade, but I would often just stand there. It didn't seem like I had a desire to do anything.
My mom often had to remind me to eat and my dad constantly scolded me about my grades. I tended to fall asleep in class. Eventually, my dad hired me a tutor to get me to graduate. I didn't care to study, but I didn't want my parents to scream at me anymore for being a lazy ass. Even when I graduated I felt nothing as I held a diploma that I worked hard to earn. It didn't matter to me. Usually, people like me have a reason to be so detached from the world. Either a traumatic childhood experience, the loss of a family member, an abusive family...etc... But I didn't.
My family was fine. Sure there were bad moments, but every family has those. Most of the time my family was like any other American suburban family, with a happy Christmas every year and birthdays to remember. I have a couple of younger siblings only a year apart from each other, but I won't go into detail about them. I have no right to from being such a detached brother. Who would I be to talk about them when I didn't bother trying to get to know them?
Long story short, I moved out when I was eighteen after my parents started planning my future for me since I wouldn't do it myself. I understood why they did it. I just didn't want to be controlled anymore. I wanted to find out for myself what I wanted to do, and I wasn't going to be able to do it here. I would describe myself as being bored with life. Maybe having a normal childhood was the problem. Everything was so normal I never had to deal with conflict. I was never challenged to find my way in life on my own so I thought that going out and experiencing life would help me find my passion.
I tried everything. I hitch-hiked to Mexico, studied art, explored new hobbies and sports, but nothing stuck with me. Finally, after years of failure, I gave up and accepted that I wasn't meant to have meaning in my life. I moved into the city back in the States with some friends and that's when my life really went downhill. I managed to hold a steady job for a while until my depression hit hard. My friend group wasn't the best and would often take me to raves and get involved with illegal things.
I craved to feel something so bad that I accepted it when my deadbeat friends offered me drugs. The first high made everything change. It was the perfect illusion of happiness, but I would never feel that high again. I woke up the next morning back to my horrible purposeless self. I constantly tried new drugs, new medications, and alcoholism, but nothing would get me to feel the same way I did when I first felt something. I knew it would lead me to addiction, but I had no reason to care. Sometimes I wished to overdose.
One night I got so energetic that my friends gave me marijuana to help me calm down before I threw something out of the window. I started doing it more often after that since it made the anxiety I developed go away. I only wished that my parents had told me that I had a grandfather who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and that the disease was hereditary. The risks of contracting it apparently increase dramatically through the use of drugs, specifically marijuana. I started to see things that weren't there when I was sober and hear things that no one else could hear. Suddenly, it was like I couldn't tell the difference between what was reality or not.
I didn't know what was happening to me. I was slipping. Soon my state of mentality completely dissipated and I wasn't in my mind anymore. I didn't have a concept of going to work, paying rent, or anything normal people do. I became homeless but insanity didn't know what homelessness was. Instead of seeing what was happening to me and trying to get me the treatment I needed, my friends cut me out of their lives and I forgot them. My family did the same and I was all alone with nowhere to go in the sketchy parts of the city. I became the guy who stumbles around the sidewalks at night mumbling to themselves.
I often spoke to the many voices I heard in my head, asking about the illusions I saw around me and whether they were real. My body was still suffering from the withdrawals of addiction, but I had no way to alleviate it. A part of me didn't know why I was experiencing such symptoms because they didn't know what drugs were. Meanwhile, the other half did. I can't explain how I felt to be completely insane, because I wasn't there. What I can say is that I wasn't a docile schizophrenic. Sometimes when insanity is taken care of by friends and family, along with proper treatment, those with my condition can be quite harmless. I, however, didn't know what life was anymore and I had no one to walk me through it.
What I did remember through all the blur that was myself, was seeing a person walk across the street from me with red eyes. I would walk along that street every night and so did they. He kept looking at me with eyes that appeared as windows to hell. I didn't know how long I could take the constant torment and one evening the man approached me in an alley. He spoke but all I could hear was terrifying sounds that a giant creature would make.
I was suddenly filled with rage and felt my hands grasp their neck. I shook them and screamed for them to go away and leave me alone, but the demon screamed back. My grip tightened until I saw that the redness had left the man's eyes, and now a corpse of no doubt a man who walked home from work down this street every night was in my grip. The man looked like an average guy, non-threatening. It hit me that he saw me often and probably approached me to see if I was okay or to give me some change.
I had forgotten what emotions meant, but right now I felt awful. I had murdered someone, and I must've been seen because the police came a few minutes later. That's when things became fuzzy again. I don't remember my trial, but I remember my sentence. I would've gotten the death penalty if it wasn't for my clear mental instability. I got life in prison and if I showed promise there was a good chance that I would be sent to a psych ward. If I could comprehend what was happening to me I wouldn't have liked who I had become.