I hope you guys don’t mind but um…hi, this is Sandra. Like most things, Alice and I share a reddit account. Previously we had just used it to lurk on meme subs or relationship_advice for the baffling problems but when I saw notifications, I knew she was posting.
The most important thing I need you to understand before we start, is that our marriage wasn’t always like this. It wasn’t always stressful or full of uncertainty. Alice is a really kind and caring partner and I have always admired how on top of her health she is.
So when she began to fall apart, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know who to contact or who to help to assist me with this. I just came home one day and her feet are trailing blood through the house, broken glass embedded in them. She was gesturing grandly, talking to the cats as if they were people I just couldn’t see, advising them on their problems. I tried to tap her shoulder and she whipped around, snarling at me as if I were an aggressive stranger.
I have seen this woman happy. I have seen her sad. I have seen her on the edge of a cliff, her fear of heights not slowing her down as she stuck her chin out and defiantly faced them. I have seen all these expressions and more in our ten years of being together but I have never seen this look of hatred on her face. It seems wrong and is so reminiscent of her mother that I am beginning to feel afraid of her, the love of my life who I swore to stand by, thick or thin. That is not something I ever thought I would be and I felt stuck.
So I had no choice, I had to call someone to come assess her, get her help and figure out what was happening because she wouldn’t let me come near her. When I pleaded, “don’t you know who I am? You know me, Alice, please!”, all she did was glare and mumble something about her regulars and turn back around.
In the end, the people who came to help didn’t seem surprised by her state. They seemed almost to be…anticipating it? When I begged them to let me come with her, they said no, she needed to be held for observation somewhere and that they couldn’t let her stay with me if I didn’t know how to handle her. I finally was able to convince them to fix her injuries in the ER then let me bring her home but it wasn’t long before I had to call again and ask for help because she had burned her arm trying to make a complicated cocktail in the kitchen and wouldn’t let me come closer. She got more and more aggressive until I could no longer see my Alice in her eyes. This person who insisted she was a bartender and held long conversations with imaginary guests was someone else, she was not my wife anymore.
Surprisingly, it was her mother who stepped up to the plate and got Alice admitted into a normal medical hospital, not a mental one as I feared. She did, also, convince them to let Alice go home with her and live in her guest house under home care. Her mother and I were not on the best of terms, mostly due to her being a bigoted jerk and her insistence that I doomed Alice to a life of sin but it was somewhat nice to know she was at least willing to help her when we needed her. Though I suppose it was less of a “we” and more of a “just Alice” situation. I was bitter that Alice was not allowed to be with me but had been so easily passed to her mother as if she were a child but all that matters is that Alice is safe and happy.
Thus begins me being at the mercy of her mother to visit her. She’s basically mad with power, giving me times I can be there and when I have to leave. On the first visit, I brought her laptop and she seemed happy with me for the first time in so long. God, I love her smile. But then she went back to ignoring me and saying she didn’t even know my drink order.
For weeks, I visited and on each visit, begged her to know me. I tried everything and every time she acted as though I was just some Karen intruding on her. I even brought her all of her treasured things, hoping to jog some kind of memory. Finally, she promised she would know me eventually but nothing changed, not until I gave her the necklace.
The necklace was one that she had given me for our fifth anniversary. It was thick with an inscription on it and it was this inscription that finally got her to see the light. The relief was short-lived however, because on my next visit, she no longer remembered me.
Alice had struggled with mental health before but never like this. There was never any indication of the things that google was throwing at my face when I searched her behavior. Things like schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder and I know these things can present late in life but I just can’t see it, this is not what was happening to Alice. Maybe I was just in denial, I don’t know. Her mother was also contributing to my stress and discomfort by that time, so I suppose my relief was short-lived.
I saw her mother in the hall one day and she smirked at me. She looked smug, which of all things, seemed vastly inappropriate. I know she hated me but to glory in her own daughter’s illness was sick. I couldn’t believe she could not even set her beliefs aside when we were on the same team for once. We were both here for Alice, or so I thought.
Countless nights pass with me weeping into my pillow, praying for Alice to be well, to finally remember me and be able to come home. She remembered me once and she can do it again, I know she can. Each time I visit, I can feel myself getting more and more insistent and I know that I am probably pushing her too much, too fast but to catch a glimpse of the love of my life still alive in any way, it was a fire under my butt that I couldn’t let die out.
On a particularly tear-heavy night, I find myself getting dehydrated and go to our kitchen to get a drink. In the back is a jug of water that would normally just be Alice’s and I know it’s silly and weird and creepy but I miss my fucking wife so bad, I drink from it to feel closer to her. It can’t be much worse than me sleeping with one of her many shirts wrapped around my pillow.
The next 24 hours are hell. They are the worst I have ever experienced and I have done my fair share of drugs in the past. I spend the time vomiting, hallucinating. I see Alice in our bedroom, eyes large and mouth unhinged, parroting back my ceaseless questions at me.
“Whereeeee doooo yoooo goooo?” she asks loopily, like she’s a character in her favorite movie, Alice in Wonderland. I have always teased her about this little tidbit but right now, watching my wife drool and shake in the corner, I am shitting bricks. The fear has me curled in a ball and I am frozen with it, unable to move until I start to come down. I “wake up” clutching a picture of Alice and it is covered in vomit and my own handwriting, where I have sloppily written “wheredoyougo” dozens of times.
I tear the house apart, trying to figure out what the hell happened to me. I have dozens of missed calls from work, Alice’s mother even thought to text, though it was just a thumbs-up followed by a question mark. I feel as if I had spent the last day eating buckets of sand, it was so dry.
Dry. My mouth is dry.
SONOFABITCH
I race to the refrigerator and the offending jug of water is still there. I can do this one of two ways. The logical way, which is taking it somewhere to get tested…or the other way. Which is me drinking it again and seeing what happens. I have never been as smart or as careful as Alice. Fighting back my fear in favor of a possible lead, I drink it.
Again, I trip for what feels like hours. Less this time because I didn’t foolishly drink 8 ounces of it and bingo, it’s the fucking water. I came around 8 hours later after what felt like I had been having a fucked-up dinner party surrounded by eyeless monstrosities but was really me gathering our cats together, having doled out ketchup on our wedding china to them. This is what has been happening to Alice on a much larger scale and my heart is breaking for her all over again.
There is someone who drugged my wife, drugged me presumably by accident. Someone who would know when I would be and when I wouldn’t be home. Someone whose approval Alice has so desperately craved for years and even though she continues to hurt her and use her to her own advantage, still loves her.
Her fucking mother.
The woman who forced Alice to be her little bartender, no doubt lending to this part of the psychosis that is currently going through her head right now. The woman who called me names and slapped me at my own wedding for daring to fall in love with what she saw as her property. She got in, put SOMETHING in the water and got out. I have never felt unsafe in my own home and I have never assumed her mother would go this far and now I am obviously wrong on both accounts. I feel as if I have failed Alice. I let this monster in with my negligence somehow after I swore in my vows to protect her. I have held her as she sobbed from her mother’s abuse and the lasting effects thereof and now not only has that bitch gotten me terrified of making the wrong move, she’s gotten Alice too. Did she sneak in while I was away from the house to feed these delusions? How much of this was Alice and how much was Brenda poisoning her own daughter, in more ways than one?
I spent the afternoon tearing my home apart, a woman possessed. I looked for cameras, wanting to find anything that would verify if she would know that I was on the move. So far, nothing. The woman is just so confident that I would listen to her and obey her. It infuriates me that she was right.
Every car on the street is her mother or a lackey. Every noise in my home is someone here to refill the water supply, should Alice be set free to come home. Though I doubt that is ever going to be a part of Brenda’s plan. Whether or not this was a quest to separate us forever, frame me or just keep Alice under her thumb, I will never know, but the damage is done. I still have lingering effects of whatever drug she used and I feel the terror it was causing on top of the already crushing fear of uncertainty. I need to get to Alice but her mother is always there when I check in on her and when I leave. It’s like she knows what we talk about and what we do when I visit. I may not be under surveillance but I am beginning to realize that Alice absolutely is. When is she finding time to post? I begin to doubt my hypothesis until I realize that all the posts line up with her mother’s daily nap. Her mother’s confidence is once again biting her in the ass, she would have never considered that Alice would think to reach out for help, even unintentionally. She likely told her not to and while my wife tries her best to listen to her mother, some things always slipped through.
There are no special precautions from what I can remember, she’s just under observation as a normal patient, although normal patients aren’t being watched by their overbearing mother. I could have been with her all day almost, barring mandatory break times in the afternoon when they come to take her vitals, had I been able to say, “Fuck off, I’m seeing my wife.” I could have worked remotely from there, now that I know she has wifi.
I race to the modest home and try to appear normal, careful to skirt any small lenses I can now see in the corners of the yard. They’re hidden so well that if I wasn’t already on the lookout for them, they would blend seamlessly into their hiding places.
To avoid any neighbors seeing me and thinking that I am here to case the joint or try to break in, which is almost exactly what I am doing, I casually walk through. My hurry to get to my wife almost breaks the slow stride, but I am nearly shaking with the effort it is taking to not draw attention to myself.
After what feels like an age, I finally arrive at the modest little guest house and look into the window which has been opened to let a draft in. What I saw when I got there would have made me gasp in fright if I wasn’t so goddamned mad.
A man in nurse’s scrubs is sitting in a chair in front of my wife, holding a glass. He’s wearing a generic mask from a Halloween store with two more lying at his feet. This one has an older man’s face and I am beginning to see the inspiration behind her drawings. The room is dark and her laptop is now set under the man’s chair. I stay back a bit to see what is happening, it won’t do to go in half-cocked. Alice is holding a water bottle as he says in a nasal voice, “Oh, and then wouldn’t you believe, after they laid off most of my department, they came to my office and offered me a raise! Like I would take money from my coworkers’ pain! Well, I did, but only because I have to support my family.”
Alice nods and pours more water in his glass.
“Why don’t you join me? Could always use the company.”
Alice nods again, robotically drinking her own drink.
This is how they’ve been doing it. This is how my wife has been trapped in her own head. It wasn’t the drawings on the wall that she was hallucinating, no. These people are keeping her there, conversing with a drugged-up woman and convincing her she is a bartender. How many nurses? How many doctors? Why would they not check her system? Are they all in the pocket of her mother or have I blatantly missed something here? I know I haven’t. This is not Alice’s brain and never has been, this is Alice under the influence. How long would this have gone on? Had I not missed my wife so badly that I would drink from her special jug, would I have been depressed into inaction forever? I never even thought to cross-reference the home care her mother is paying for. I have failed on so many counts and all I can hope is that Alice will forgive me when this is all over.
Now all I am left with is questions. How far is their overreach and can I even get her out safely without harming her further? Will anyone even believe me?
I miss Alice so damn much and I need her back home where she belongs, yelling at The Price is Right, leaving her stinky ass socks on the bathroom floor two feet from the basket. I don’t even know who to trust right now and when or where I can find them. I am a stranger in a foreign, terrifying land but I am Alice’s only hope.
I have to save Alice. I am gathering evidence and I will be going back to the house. Turning around and leaving is the hardest thing that I have ever had to do but I need to know who I can trust to help me save her before I try to get her out. I need help. Please help me.
Please help Alice.