I am a thief.
I stole this notebook and this pen from one of the doctors, from one of his lab coats when he wasn’t looking, and I shoved them both down my pants. This was just before he ordered those men to come and get me. The ones in the strange suits with the thick gloves and the gas masks with the foggy plastic windows hiding their eyes. They were aliens, I remember thinking. I remember thinking they must’ve been aliens because they couldn’t have been human, the ones who handcuffed my hands behind my back, the ones who strapped me to my seat. They stuck Tasers to my skin over and over for no reason other than to hear me scream but I wouldn’t. I whimpered but I never said a word. I felt the tears streak down my cheeks but I wasn’t crying.
I think it made them angry.
They slapped me awake even though my eyes were open when we arrived. Someone unstrapped me without removing my handcuffs and kicked me in both kneecaps before ordering me to rise. And I tried. I tried but I couldn’t and finally 6 hands shoved me out the door and my face was bleeding on the concrete for a while. I can’t really remember the part where they dragged me inside.
I feel cold all the time.
I feel empty, like there is nothing inside of me but this broken heart, the only organ left in this hell. I feel the bleats echo within me, I feel the thumping reverberate around my skeleton. I have a heart, says science, but
I am a monster, says society. And I know it, of course I know it. I know what I’ve done. I’m not asking for sympathy.
But sometimes I think—sometimes I wonder—if I were a monster—surely, I would feel it by now?
I would feel angry and vicious and vengeful.
I’d know blind rage and bloodlust and a need for vindication.
Instead I feel an abyss within me that’s so deep, so dark I can’t see within it; I can’t see what it holds. I do not know what I am or what might happen to me.
I do not know what I might do again.
—An excerpt from Juliette’s journals in the asylum
