For this one, you must convince your mother to let you take a faraway job, even though it might make your condition worse.
GIFT (any gender, mid to late teens)
Mom, you could just... just sign the form. It could be that simple. Sign the form and let me go to the camp. Trust that I'll be alright? Trust that I can figure it out? How to take care of myself? How to take care of the... condition?
I'm... I'm not good for you right now, mom. I see the toll. The toll I've taken... the toll IT has taken... I know you're not sleeping. GOD. How CAN you sleep when I'm up screaming back at invisible people; the voices and all that? You're up all the time, trying to take care of me... you can't send me back to the institute because THEY don't know what to do with me...
But mom, if I were to go to this camp... somewhere different. Someplace I've never been... what if the voices... what if they just stopped? New environment, no personal baggage. And my condition, mom... what the doctors all agree on is that there's no brain malfunction, I just seem to be able to, to, to SEE things or HEAR things. The children's wing? When I did some therapy hours there, the clinicians, they said I had a gift. I knew just how to work with the younger kids, like I could READ them.
Camp... mom, I promise this is my chance to turn this all around. My condition... it won't be a condition anymore. I'll come back and I'll know I have a GIFT, I'll know how to deal with the voices, I'll know how to get RID of them, FINALLY. FINALLY.
I know you tried, mom. Sign the form and let me help us.
Copyright 2016 by Matt Haynes.
If you would like to use this piece, please credit: "Courtesy of Matt Haynes and The Pulp Stage"