Tortoise Dreams

Trey Smith

I rarely have nightmares or bad dreams. In fact, because of my weird sleep habits, I usually don't dream at all -- at least, I'm not aware of it. While bad dreams are few and far between for me, when I do have them, they often involve a tortoise. A dead tortoise. A dead tortoise that I hacked to death with an ax.

Sadly, the wanton slaughter of the tortoise is not a dream. It is an act I actually committed in my mid-teens. It was during the time I first started suffering from audio and visual hallucinations. The voice told me to kill the tortoise and I did what the voice told me to do.

I bludgeoned and hacked the tortoise like I was a crazed serial killer. After the frenzy released its hold on me, I was filled with remorse. I had senselessly ended the life of another being. I'm a pacifist, I screamed at myself. What in the hell is wrong with you?

To say the least, this episode scared the wits out of me. I was convinced I was going mad. I didn't tell a soul about the incident for a decade or so because I was so ashamed of my actions. When I did finally fess up, I conveniently left out the part about "the voice." That was part of the secret I shared with no one until the past year.

After that scary episode, I vowed that I would fight "the voice" in the future with everything I have. Though "the voice" continues to share its disquieting and, sometimes, violent messages, I am happy to report that I haven't killed or injured anyone else. I've broken a plate or two over the past 40 years or so, but even those incidents are few and far between.

Such is the life of a person with Schizotypal Personality Disorder (SPD).

I do worry sometimes about progressing to full-blown schizophrenia. People with SPD have a greater propensity to develop schizophrenia than the general population. If I were to get to the point in which I began to lose touch with reality, I might not have the strength or ability to keep "the voice" at bay.