Out of It

It was my sophomore year of college and I had moved into a quad with a few good friends. The quad was set up with two shared bedrooms and a large living area in the middle.  I shared my bedroom with T, a girl I’d become very close friends with during freshman year; our friends K and C shared the other bedroom. Fall semester was wonderful. Then, during spring semester, T got “sick”.  At first we thought she was genuinely sick, since she was fainting a lot and claimed she was really weak. She never got any confirmation from a doctor that she had anything wrong with her, but she stopped going to class anyway. Eventually we realized that she was faking it to get attention; aside from the random “fainting”, she didn’t really seem sick. She also always “fainted” rather conveniently – she never fainted during her long, hot showers in the dorm bathroom, even though she didn’t bring a chair in there or anything. I felt pretty certain that a long, hot shower is almost guaranteed to make you pass out if you’re really that sick. She also always “fainted” very gracefully – for example, she often “fainted” while she was drying her hair, but she always managed to turn off the hair dryer, set it on the dresser and then collapse neatly in the very narrow area between the bed and the dresser, with her head on her arm.  She must have “fainted” five or six times a day for a couple months and never once hit her head on something.  When she’d “come to,” she was never disoriented and was able to sit back up without even a hint of dizziness. She also insisted on making us walk her to the school cafeteria with her arms on our shoulders and she’d “faint” every few steps. We volunteered to bring back some food but she refused, insisting on going to the cafeteria with us.

That alone wouldn’t have made her MVWR; at least she was still showering and being social during her “illness.”  The real problem came when she miraculously improved and instead began seeing demons following everyone around. This went on for a few weeks and although it seemed a bit odd and I began wondering if she may be schizophrenic, it still wasn’t too bad. Then, one night at about 3 am, she woke us all up with a blood-curdling scream and began claiming that demons were attacking her. Somehow, she managed to convince someone that she needed to get her pastor from church, so then he showed up and started praying with her. She remained in her bed in our shared room during this whole ordeal; I don’t think I got any sleep that night. Thankfully, after that she said the demons were gone and things calmed down. The worst thing she did after she got rid of the demons was to throw her shoes at the wall whenever she was mad at this guy she liked, leaving large black marks. Junior year I moved off-campus with my boyfriend and she moved into one of the upperclassmen apartments. She and I still hung out a few times after that, but we eventually drifted apart.