M a g g i e

The scars on her wrists show she had lost control one time or another.

Maggie’s mom gave her away at twelve, old enough to feel the brunt of abandonment, and to feast on rebellion.

And she did.

It was the summer of 1974 when she was sent away—first from her mother, then from those who were supposed to save her a few years after.

White walls became her new home. She drew figures on them with her finger, creating masterpieces entirely from imagination.

In previous facilities, Maggie underwent multiple treatments of shock therapy on a minor. By this time, she forgot what it was like to live outside of walls. She forgot what it meant to be a kid, running free, getting into trouble.

After a year, Maggie was granted unsupervised freedom one privilege at a time. But it never lasted.

PTSD and maniac episodes always pulled her back to what felt normal, uncontrolled, angry, biting, kicking, screaming.

“Do you want help?” her therapist would ask.

“No,” was always the answer.

Not because she didn’t want help, but because yes was never taught to her—nor its meaning. How could she say yes when she didn’t know what lived inside its possibility?

A child told no her entire life—no love, no safety, no saving—learns that yes is the boogeyman. Yes is the haunting behind hope. Yes meant, suffer. It meant succumbing to fear.

Yes meant trusting something that would break you, lie to you. Thievery always came disguised as yes for Maggie.

After three long years, Maggie approached her eighteenth birthday.

At that point, she would have to decide—yes or no—on her own.

Her therapist believed she had done enough reverse psychology to at least open Maggie’s eyes to what her brain had been taught, and to the truth that it didn’t have to stay that way. That if Maggie could believe in the power of her brain, she would be able to change things herself.

One day, Maggie would have to choose whether to hold the flashlight steady through intellect, or fear.

Over those three years, Maggie became quiet.

Calm.

But quiet did not mean healed and calm did not mean safe inside.So her therapist worked to know Maggie—not just her behavior, but her truths.

So much research fills science books because of people like Maggie. She isn’t broken. She’s feral.

Maggie was often found in the library on the third floor of the facility. As she grew older, she learned to release the kicking, screaming, and biting if it meant earning small privileges to living. And once she grew boobs, she realized she had to grow out of her training bra and that meant in her attitude as well.

As young women, we all grow up to this realization at some point outside of these walls, but it was a little different for Maggie, growing up in a cage where you’ve always been allowed to bite and scream.

For a long time, the cage was comfort—spelling her name into the lonely walls with her fingernails.

As she matured, Maggie found escape in books. She read nearly every book on the third floor. Was she trying to become the puppet master of her own undoing?

After all, if your therapist is your only friend for three years, you learn to befriend yourself.

The library was the most beautiful place in the facility. Small, but intentionally crafted that way to draw inspiration within the minds of the insane. Thirty-foot windows and antique chandeliers. The smell of old books—overwhelming sensory, and alive.

It was almost like it was a special dimension crafted just for the guinea pigs who have reached a new level. To see how they spin their wheels.

For Maggie, her wheels were spinning. Doctors kept watch of her results and were pleased.

Maggie didn’t find peace in just the stories or the minds who wrote them, but in the pages themselves, their roughness, their scent of survival through time travel.

Maggie realized her world was not the only world. This facility was not the whole universe. There were other worlds, older ones, that existed long before her broken one.

And she found peace in that.

She found peace knowing her life was not the only story. That an identity could still be chosen. That she could become something other than this.

Books reminded her that life was real and long lived, ancient, not just fiction—and that with choice,

an ending could be rewritten.