Hanna visited me. She was the only one lately. When she came in and talked to me, I wanted to talk back. But it took so much energy, and I didn't have any. I talked back to her, we had long conversations, but only in my head. In the inside I was filled with emotions, many different emotions, all conflicted, swirling inside me like a hurricane. Yet in the eye of the hurricane it was quiet, calm. That's how I was on the outside. Quiet, calm, still. Hanna yelled at me. She wondered where the Mona she knew had gone. I was still there, or at least a remnant of me was. But I couldn't seem to move, or think right. I was trapped in someone else's body, and I couldn't bring myself to care. I just wanted quiet. I wanted to stay in the eye of the hurricane. I didn't want to have to fight any more. They thought I was crazy. I thought so too. I felt crazy, but they say crazy people don't know their crazy, so that would make me normal. Of course, since I thought I was crazy and I wasn't, that would make me crazy. I was conflicted. My thoughts went in circles like these a lot. It made me want to scream. I wanted it all to just stop. I wanted peace. Sometimes I did scream. It came out it bursts. When they tried to soothe me, it just made me more enraged and crazed. Eventually they just gave up and started medicating me more heavily. Once Hanna had a burst like me. She yelled at me, wondering where I went. She threw a chair. The next time she came she was calm again, but I knew it was just an act. Underneath, she was boiling, a volcano ready to erupt again. She applied makeup to my face, subconsciously trying to trick herself into thinking I was the old Mona. That Mona didn't exist anymore, it never had. Even though my thoughts were distorted, and strange dreams and reality were blurred together, I managed to have a single thought. That thought became an action. I took the tweezers from Hanna's bag. The next time I started thinking in circles again, I took the tweezers and pierced myself. Pricked my finger. It hurt, but not as much as it did to think. Physical pain was nothing to me anymore. Not after all the pain inside me had started. When my thoughts went in circles I always thought I was crazy, it drove me insane knowing all the pain was just inside me head. So I made the pain outside my twisted brain. I watched the hot, metallic scented blood drip from my finger. It soothed me in some sort of twisted, sick way. I somehow managed to get better. The drugs that flowed and overloaded my system apparently helped. Hanna thought I was back to the old Mona. But I hadn't gone back to the old Mona. I was the new Mona, and I liked her a lot more. I didn't feel crazy anymore, at least not often. I just felt like a person. I felt human. I had burned a lot of bridges, but I managed to rebuild some of them, like my friendship with Hanna. I was happier. I was sane at last, free from the trap that was my brain. My thoughts ensnared me and my feelings tortured me. But not anymore. No more storms. No more circles. Free at last.