Rapunzel

And she was destined

A girl sat in the corner of a room, walls painted the colour of the sky and carpet the colour of brown sugar. Her hands were trembling as they covered her face, blocking her vision from seeing the world around her. Her mind painted her a sweet lullaby, softly cooing at her as she sat there, rigid with fear.

A man and a woman were in chairs facing one another, parallel to a desk the colour of honey oak. The woman’s hands were clasped in front of her, wavering slightly with anxiety as she stared down at the floor. “All she does is sit there,” she whispered softly, emerald eyes lost and forlorn. “All she does is sit there and stare out the window. She never talks. Never smiles. Every time I try to take her out she panics.” Her face was wrinkled with age, creases brushing against her brow and against the edges of her eyes. Greying hair became tangled in calloused fingers as she lowered her face, in the corner of her eyes catching sight of a young girl in a yellow dress.

She was beautiful. With long tendrils of hair the colour of coal falling against skin the colour of snow, she should have been… well, more than she was. She looked like a Princess. In her yellow dress and deep green slippers she was almost ethereal to look at.

It was maddening to consider that she had so much confusion inside of her, so much insanity, so much angst. It was like staring into the dazed eyes of a baby, so lost in the new world and so alarmed by all that it contained.

In a way she hoped she could save her. In a way she knew she couldn’t be saved.

“Does she have friends that she’s comfortable around?” the man asked, hands folded over dark grey pants.

Her eyes flickered over to her daughter, watching her relentlessly scratch at the skin on her fingers, over and over, over and over. Her ebony hair was like a curtain surrounding her, every now and then fingers embedding in thick twirls of hair, pulling them over her frightened face.

“None,” was all that the woman said, words quivering as they passed through trembling lips.

There was more that could be said. More about the Death, the delusions, the crying, the hallucinations. The staring out of the window as though all of the beauty was below her house, as though she owned it, as though she was different. The lack of eating, her inability to bathe, the clothes that she wore everyday, in darkness and in light. There was more that could be said but in truth nothing at all, because the idea of someone knowing her daughter as well as she knew her was mortifying at best.

It made her wonder who was luckier; the woman burdened with loneliness and seeing eyes, or the girl burdened by blindness and madness. It made her wonder if maybe, just maybe, this death was inside of her too, and maybe it would swallow her, take her away, strengthen her. Because she was struggling through a crippling depression, a condition in which she saw her daughter far too well and was terrified by all that was there. Because god… she loved her, she loved her so much, but the idea of her love being unrequited was almost more painful than dying itself.

In a way death was beautiful. It was feared but the fact that it was there, always there, was comforting. Because life had its ups and downs and its twists and turns, but the end of the ride was always the same and nothing else could be expected. It was almost enviable, she thought. Almost enviable to know the end of the book before you opened the first pages. Life was infinitely more precious, and infinitely more livable with the knowledge that death would always be a friend at the end of the road.

“Your daughter suffers from something known as Schizotypal Personality Disorder,” he said quietly, breaking her from her daze. Eyes flecked with sympathy stared at her unwaveringly, a large, calloused hand pushing back short hair. “It’s not common, but it can be treated… not cured, however.”

Tears fell down her cheeks at the words, her teeth clamping down on her lower lip to stop a sob from escaping. Her eyes wandered over to her daughter, her Rose, clouded by love and resentment and a sadness so strong that it tore her apart.

“Is there anything that I can… I can do? Anything at all?”

The corner of the man’s lips tilted up into a solemn, saddened smile. “Love her like you’ve never loved anyone before, and accept the fact that you may never be loved back.”
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one more to go! tell me what you think now that it's all unfolded XD I got the idea to use this disorder because of a memory of mine. Years and years ago I used to have a friend whose older sister suffered from this, and I vaguely remembered certain characteristics. I thought it would be good to do a sort of fractured fairytale from it. :3

Schizotypal Personality Disorder is defined as:
-Ideas of reference (excluding delusions of reference)
-Odd beliefs or magical thinking that influences behavior and is inconsistent with subcultural norms (e.g. superstition, belief in clairvoyance, telepathy, "sixth sense", or bizarre fantasies or preoccupations)
-Unusual perceptual experiences, including bodily illusions
-Odd thinking and speech (e.g. vague, circumstantial, metaphorical, or stereotyped speaking)
-Suspiciousness or paranoid ideation
-Inappropriate or constricted affect
-Behavior or appearance that is odd, eccentric or peculiar
-Lack of close friends or confidants other than first degree relatives
-Excessive social anxiety that does not diminish with familiarity and tends to be associated with paranoid fears rather than negative judgments about self