These four walls—stained with time, cracked in places where silence had settled too heavily—stood around me like they were alive. Not just walls, no… they breathed. They pressed inward, slow and patient, as if they had all the time in the world to crush me. The air inside them felt thicker than it should’ve been, like every breath had to fight its way into my lungs. Suffocating. Choking. A cage that didn’t need bars because it knew I wasn’t going anywhere.

It was the kind of place that could kill a person in a week. But it didn’t kill me. And that was the worst part. Because I had been trapped here for years.

Years of staring at the same peeling paint, the same corners that seemed darker than they should be, the same ceiling that felt too low on some days and too high on others. Years of existing in a space that never changed, while something inside me kept shifting, breaking, rebuilding itself into something I barely recognised anymore.

And it’s not like I couldn’t see the escape. That’s the thing people never understand, I could see it. Clear as day.

A door. Not an ordinary one—no, this one felt… different. It glowed, faintly at first, then brighter the longer I stared at it. It looked like relief. Like warmth. Like everything, I had been craving without even knowing how to name it. It looked like solace. 

And I ran towards it. God, I ran.

At the beginning, I ran like my life depended on it—like a child chasing a butterfly, reckless and desperate, hands outstretched, convinced that if I just tried hard enough, I’d catch it. My feet would pound against the ground, my lungs would burn, my vision would blur, but I kept going.

Because it was right there. Always right there. Close enough to see. Never close enough to reach.

Every time I thought I was getting closer, it slipped further away. Not suddenly, not dramatically—just enough that I couldn’t notice it at first. Just enough to keep me running.

Night after night, the same dream. The same run. The same door. The same failure. And slowly… something inside me began to change. The urgency faded first. Then the hope. Then the effort. I stopped running. At some point, I just stood there, staring at the door from a distance, my chest no longer heaving, my legs no longer trembling with exhaustion. I knew, deep down, what it really was. A mirage.

A cruel, persistent illusion my mind had crafted just to keep me moving. And I was tired of moving. Tired of chasing something that never wanted to be caught. So I stopped trying.

Now, when the dream came—and it always did—I didn’t run anymore. I just watched. Watched the door glow softly, invitingly, like it was mocking me. Like it knew I had given up.

And every time I woke up, I felt it.

The exhaustion.

Not just mental—physical. My muscles ached as I had actually run miles. My chest felt tight, my throat dry, my body heavy like it had carried something far too long.

Dreams weren’t supposed to do that.

But mine did. And I never told anyone.

I wanted to.

God, I wanted to so badly.

There were moments—brief, fragile moments—when I thought maybe if I just said it out loud, someone would understand. Someone would listen without that look in their eyes. That look that said, “What’s wrong with you?”

But fear always stopped me.

Fear of laughter.

Fear of judgment.

Fear of being reduced to something small and broken in their eyes.

So I kept it to myself.

And when you keep things inside for too long, they start to spill out in other ways.

I started talking to myself.

At first, it was small. Just whispers. Half-formed thoughts spoken under my breath. Then it became conversations. Back-and-forth exchanges where I played both parts, filling the silence with something—anything—just to make it less unbearable.

People noticed. Of course they did. They always do. And just like I had feared, the labels came.

“Mentally unstable.” “Crazy.” “Too much.”

It didn’t matter what I said after that. Once people decide what you are, they stop listening to what you’re saying. But that wasn’t even the strangest part. The strangest part was… him. Or maybe them. I don’t know what to call it, even now.

There was always this feeling—this presence. Like someone was watching me. Not in a threatening way, not like something out of a nightmare… but familiar. Comforting, almost. Like someone I had known for a long time. I would catch glimpses. A figure.

Always dressed the same way—a black jacket, a cap pulled low enough to hide their face. Always standing just out of reach, just at the edge of my vision. If I turned too quickly, they would vanish. If I stared too long, they would blur. 

But the feeling never left. That aura… it was unmistakable. I knew them. I just couldn’t remember how. Sometimes, I would point them out.

“Do you see them?” I’d ask, my voice almost hopeful.

And people would look. And then they’d look back at me. Confused. Concerned. Annoyed.

“There’s no one there.”

Every single time.

And every single time, the figure would disappear the moment I tried to show it. Like they only existed for me. That’s when the loneliness started to grow teeth. Because it’s one thing to feel alone.

It’s another thing entirely to feel alone in a room full of people. That kind of loneliness… it echoes. It lingers.

It eats away at you slowly, quietly, until you start questioning everything—your thoughts, your senses, your reality.

And just when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, I met Mary. She wasn’t dramatic. She didn’t appear with some grand entrance or sudden realisation.

She just… was there. Sitting beside me one day, as she had always been there. And the strangest thing? I didn’t question it. Not at first.

Because for the first time in what felt like forever, someone was listening. Really listening. Not interrupting. Not judging. Not labelling. Just… listening. I talked. God, I talked.

Words poured out of me like they had been trapped behind a dam that finally broke. I told her everything—the dreams, the walls, the door, the figure, the loneliness, the fear. And she stayed. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t laugh. She didn’t call me anything.

She just nodded, sometimes smiled softly, and sometimes asked questions that made me feel seen in a way I didn’t know I needed. She was different. So different from everyone else. And I held onto that. Tightly. Maybe too tightly.

Because when you finally find something that feels like understanding, you become terrified of losing it. People still didn’t notice her. That part… never changed.

We would sit together, talk together, laugh even—and people would walk past us like she wasn’t there. Like I was just… talking to the air. I would look at them, confused, frustrated.

“How do you not see her?” I wanted to scream. But Mary never seemed bothered.

“They just don’t get it,” she’d say lightly, like it wasn’t a big deal. And I believed her. Because it was easier than believing the alternative.

We talked all the time. About everything. About nothing. She filled the silence. She softened the edges of the loneliness. She made the walls feel less suffocating. For a while… I almost forgot about the door.

But there were moments—small, unsettling moments—when things didn’t quite add up. Like how she only seemed to speak when I felt ignored.

When the room got too quiet. When the loneliness crept in too close. When my thoughts started racing, spiralling, turning into something sharp and uncontrollable. That’s when she would lean in, her voice calm, grounding. And I clung to it. But somewhere deep down… a question started to form.

A quiet one. One, I tried very hard not to ask. When did I meet her? I couldn’t remember. Not a place. Not a time. Not even a moment. It was like she had just… appeared. Every time I asked, she would smile.

“Does it matter?” she’d say. “We’re here now.”

And I would nod. Because I didn’t want to push. I didn’t want to risk losing her. But the question didn’t go away. It lingered. Like a shadow I couldn’t quite shake off. And then, one day, she said something unexpected.

“You should talk to someone,” she told me gently.

“Someone real.”

I laughed it off at first. Of course I did. The irony was almost funny. But she didn’t drop it. She kept bringing it up. Over and over. Not forcefully. Not aggressively. Just… persistently. Until the idea stopped feeling ridiculous. Until it started feeling… necessary. So I went.

The psychiatrist’s office was nothing like I expected. No harsh lighting. No cold, clinical atmosphere. It was… quiet. Warm, even. And when she spoke, she didn’t rush me. She didn’t interrupt. She let me talk. Just like Mary did. So I told her everything. Every single thing. And she listened. Really listened.

And for the first time, I felt like maybe—just maybe—I wasn’t completely alone in this. Months passed. Sessions blurred together. Slowly, pieces of myself started to shift. Not fixed. Not healed. Just… understood. And then, one day, she asked me a question. A simple one.

“So,” she said softly, “how long has Mary been with you?”

And just like that—Everything stopped. Because I didn’t have an answer. Not even a vague one. Nothing. And in that silence… something inside me cracked.

All the little inconsistencies.All the moments I had ignored. All the questions I had pushed aside. They came rushing back. People are not seeing her. She appeared only when I felt alone.

Her knowing exactly what to say, exactly when to say it. Her avoiding questions about herself. It all… clicked. Painfully. Clearly. Mary wasn’t real. She had never been.

She was something my mind created. Something I needed so badly that my brain decided to give her a voice, a presence, a form. Because being alone was worse than being delusional.

Because silence was louder than anything else. Because I needed someone. Even if that someone wasn’t real. The realisation didn’t come with relief. It came with emptiness. A hollow, aching emptiness that spread through my chest like it had been waiting for this moment.

I sat there, staring at nothing, everything inside me unravelling quietly. And when the psychiatrist handed me the report, I already knew what it would say. Still, seeing the words made it real in a way nothing else had.

Schizophrenia. Psychosis.

Clinical terms. Clean. Detached. So different from the chaos they described. I held the paper in my hands, my fingers trembling slightly.

And for a moment… I didn’t know what hurt more. The fact that Mary wasn’t real. Or the fact that she had been the only one who ever truly listened. And now—She was gone. Or maybe… she was still there. Just quieter. Just waiting. Just a part of me I couldn’t separate anymore.

The walls didn’t feel any less suffocating. The door didn’t feel any closer. But now I understand something I hadn’t before. The cage wasn’t just around me. It was inside me too. And escaping it…was going to take more than just running.

.    .    .