Hallucinations

When I was six years old, I was moved into a foster home after being taken from custody in an abusive home. I was assigned an elderly couple who had just seen the set of twins they had taken care of graduate. So, I had the entire two-story house and my new "parents" all to myself, so, six year old me thought he was going to have it pretty good. Well, he thought anyways.

You see, it must not have been one or two weeks after I had settled in that I began seeing things. They would appear anytime and anywhere, in dark rooms and broad daylight. They were twisted, disgusting abominations whose eyes seemed to pierce straight through me and cut my very soul apart. I really don't know how else to describe the things besides getting it across that they were overly disturbing. I remember screaming until it hurt and falling into panic until my foster father would run to find me and take me in his arms. Even then he could not get me to stop shaking. I don’t know how to explain this, but he seemed to know what frightened me. He too, would have the look of terror as we held each other until my tears subsided. He immediately had me go to weekly counseling with my school psychiatrist within a matter of days.

I didn't mind going there, I actually thought it was kind of fun. His name was Mr. Jamieson, and he was the nicest grown up I had ever met. He sometimes brought me ice cream and a deck of cards so we could play a few rounds. He never got me to talk about the things I saw, but I do remember talking a lot about my foster parents with him. I would tell him how my mom never looked me directly in the eyes or how she liked sunglasses or how nice she was to me; or about my father and how he worried a lot and didn't talk much. Mr. Jamieson told me I had something called PTSD (he most likely drew this conclusion from my past experiences) and that it was causing me to see scary things he called hallucinations. He assured me that when I was ready to talk about it, things would get better. And I eventually did describe to him what I saw nearly every day.

However, things did not get better.

My foster mother never understood what was so frightening to me, but my father always came to my side. She never seemed as scared or worried as we did. However, It got to the point where my panic attacks were so violent that I began breaking objects and hurting myself in attempt to make these ugly creatures to disappear. Eventually, I became too much for my foster parents to handle, and I was transferred within a couple months to a new home.

The whole reason I am writing this is because I got in touch with my foster father again. His wife had died four years ago from a heart condition and he has since moved to a new location. We met up for lunch and discussed my life and how I was doing. I eventually brought up my child hallucinations and he immediately began choking on his sandwich.

"That wasn't Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder you were experiencing," he said, "I thought that you wouldn’t be able to see them."

That's when I learned my foster mom was blind.