PUBLISH’D AFRIKA Magazine Facebook Short Story Competition – April 2023 Leg/ Nala Nxumalo

THEME: KNOCK YOURSELF OUT

TITLE: SILENCE

Written by Nala Nxumalo

“The voices in my head – they are getting too loud…”

Those were the last words my father said to me. It was the 23rd of April when my gut told me to call him. I asked how he was doing and that’s all I got from him before the call disconnected. The next morning, I was told that he had committed suicide. I knew what he meant when he said the voices in his head were getting too loud; it happens to me too. It had been an ongoing battle with my dad. He couldn’t cope with the hallucinations and the ongoing psychotic episodes. He tried everything to help himself, I’m talking medication and even therapy, but none would help. In fact, the medication made it worse, that’s what he said.

After mom passed away, he succumbed to depression. Oh, that damaged his soul. As much as he was in an ongoing battle with Schizophrenia, he tried to be his jolly self just like before he got diagnosed, but when depression made him its next victim all of that was gone.

For the past six years I have not seen a smile on my father’s face or the sparkle in his eyes when mother was alive. Out of my four siblings, I was the one who understood what it was like to be in his shoes because I too, was diagnosed with Schizophrenia in my early teenage years. It was minor at first because the only symptom I had were hallucinations and they weren’t too bad. I would just see things that were never there.

I remember the time I saw a cat on a really tall tree, holding on to a branch for dear life. I wanted to save it. I needed to save it because it looked young and scared. I didn’t want to leave it alone. I remember running back into the house shouting at the top of my voice for Mom and Dad to come out and help me. They rushed out of their room ready to see what was causing me to make so much noise. I was too emotional to explain so I just grabbed their hands and led them outside to where the cat was. I pointed to the tree, and I remember them looking at me with confusion in their eyes.

“The cat! The cat is in danger can’t you see? Save him!” I screamed while shaking my dad. “He’s crying, please help him.”

“What cat? Sweetie, there’s no cat,” Mom said.

I remember my dad saying, “Oh no”, under his breath and sinking to the floor. I was confused, why they wouldn’t save the cat. Why was Mom saying there was no cat and why was Dad looking like he just had a bad realization? Those were all the questions that were running through my mind but the voice that overpowered them all was telling me to save the cat.

I started climbing up the tree but as soon as I reached my hand out to save the cat, I fell. To my luck, Dad was there waiting to save me should I fall. When I looked up, the cat was gone. That was when the voices in my head started. I couldn’t make sense of some but I remember it driving me insane. I kept on hearing, “You are a failure!” They started getting louder, I covered my ears and screamed for them to leave me alone with tears rolling down my cheeks.

That’s what people think everyday life with Schizophrenia is, but it’s not. Imagine being a fourteen-yea- old and hearing multiple voices in your head getting louder by the minute for the first time, would it not tear you apart like it did me?

That night I lay in bed staring at the ceiling trying to recall the events that occurred. I didn’t understand how the cat could just disappear. Could it be that it wasn’t there? A knock on my door interrupted my trail of thoughts.

“May I come in?” he asked.

I gave him a slight nod and he let himself in. He sat at the edge of my bed and took a deep breath. He looked as if he had a lot on his mind, like he wanted to talk to me but didn’t even know where to begin.

“Come here kiddo. Come sit here next to me,” he said patting the space on his right side.

I got out of the covers and sat next to him. He gave me a tight hug and I rested my head on his shoulder. He took one more deep breath and began to speak to me. I remember him telling me that he had been living with a mental disorder known as Schizophrenia for almost ten years at that time, and that it affected his ability to think, feel and behave normally. He told me that the symptoms included hallucinations, which means seeing, hearing, or even feeling things no one else does. At the mention of that I started to see where this conversation was heading.

“Just like how I saw that cat today?” I asked. “Yes, just like that cat you saw today.”

He mentioned how sometimes you can hear voices in your head. By then I had concluded that there was a high chance of me having Schizophrenia. Delusions are also one of the symptoms, episodes of psychosis, catatonia being the inability to move correctly, having difficulty concentrating and it affects your memory. The reason he told me the symptoms was so that I could be aware of the ones I had and the ones that could come later, or not. He promised to be there for me through every step. He proved that by taking me to a psychiatrist the next morning who did an evaluation on me and later diagnosed me with it. I also found that it has no cure and for me, I felt as if it was the end of the world.

My perspective on the condition got worse when I started experiencing more of the symptoms. I didn’t notice what was happening until my mom and siblings pointed it out. I had them telling me that what I was seeing was not real but what they failed to understand was that to me it felt real, it was my reality. It was only Dad who got it because he knew how it was like to live with it. Sometimes I can’t eat because the voices in my head get so loud I have to stop what I’m doing and just sit in silence listening to them go on.

My dad was my solace. Whenever it all got too much, all I had to do was call him and I would feel better again but after mom died, he started to pull away. I had to constantly visit him just so that he didn’t felt alone.

It breaks my heart to be looking at him in a coffin right now, but he looks so peaceful. He got the chance to silence the voices and cut off the depression that was slowly eating him away. It sounds like it was worth it, I hope it was. He is finally laid to rest next to the love of his life. Some may think that my dad lost the battle between himself and the voices, but if you really think about it, you’ll see that he won it greatly because he got to shut them up forever.

I, too wish to do the same but I have a daughter that is dependent on me; she has no one else but me. Sometimes I wish Dad wasn’t there to catch me on that day, and that I fell off that tree, cracked my skull and died. I wouldn’t have known about my mental illness, it wouldn’t have gotten worse and I wouldn’t have a daughter to live for as of this moment. I remember when I was pregnant with her, I would sometimes see her father who died in a car crash when I was three months pregnant. I would imagine that he was with me in all the moments that mattered to me the most. He was there when I first felt her kick and he held my belly. He never missed an appointment and he could not wait for her birth. Everything was perfect, until he didn’t show up to the hospital the day our daughter was born. I stopped seeing him and that killed me because it took me back to grieving. When I couldn’t see him, it was like he had died all over again, but I got through it with my dad’s help. I wonder if I’ll start seeing him too or hear his voice.

This thing is unpredictable. Instead of making me see my dad, I think it’s trying to make me follow him. I hear them whisper and giggle over how weak my father was, and pushing all the right buttons just for me to want to kill myself. These days I’m in my head just feeding off these voices.

One day they made me see my father and I thought, ‘finally, one good thing this week.’ Only for it to be an illusion of my father trying to convince me to come with him, and I knew what ‘coming with him’ meant. It took everything in me to tell myself that it wasn’t real and that my papa would never ask such of me. I’ve landed in the hospital twice because my siblings didn’t know what was going on with me, that I was going ‘crazy’ again as they would say.

In the two times of being in the hospital I escaped the second time. That’s what I was told but I don’t remember it. I saw a video that was circulating on social media of me walking around in a hospital gown shouting at cars and screaming while looking up into the skies. I was walking around on busy roads not caring whether one would hit me or not. I think it was my first psychotic episode if I haven’t had more that I just do not remember at all.

Seeing that video doing the rounds, having people who do not understand what it means to have Schizophrenia, calling me a mad woman, hurt me. It felt like it was the last straw. Like I simply could not do it anymore. Not for me, not for my dad, my siblings or even my daughter. That is what it has gotten to, this illness has driven me to the edge. It feels like I’ve reached a dead end or like I’m in the middle of the ocean with no ability to swim while trying not to drown, that’s how I feel.

The voices in my head have won. I am a failure, I am weak, I have amounted to nothing and I’ve lost a battle against voices in my own head. I have to do it, I have to take my own life. My daughter? She’s with me right now. I have made her favourite meal and she just got back from school. Earlier on while cooking, I carefully poured in a poison in our food and stirred it nicely.

“Are you enjoying the food, nana?” I ask.

She looks at me with a smile, “Yes mama.”

“I want you to know that mommy loves you and that everything she does is all for you.”

I kissed her forehead.

“Mama,” she says with her eyes partly closed., “I feel sleepy.”

I hold her hand. “Let’s sleep baby. Good night.”

She rests her head on the table and so do I.

“You win.”

My eyes shut and everything goes black.

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PUBLISH’D AFRIKA Magazine Facebook Short Story Competition is funded by the National Arts Council, Department of Sport, Arts and Culture and Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme 3