First, I drew her profile. Her head was pointed straight at the wall to my left, simply hovering in mid-air; her detached body was in pieces on the floor. I stood up from the table and found her limbs laying on the carpet, her torso and waist propped up in the chair across from me. Her head was completely still, though I could hear the sound of grinding teeth. This was what was left of Alice, the first of many hallucinations I have experienced over the course of my illness.

She was, of course, not real—yet her floating head and broken body were very convincing. She did not used to come in pieces, though. The first time I saw her, she looked like an average teenager; her body was nicely put together with thin arms and slender legs. I added her lips and white eyes to the picture.

When I began to realize she was not real, she disintegrated. Pleasant conversation turned into one-sided screaming, sometimes until her tongue would bleed. Her fingers would fall off of what used to be delicate hands—now, they were stumps. The blood in her arms and legs turned blue, as if it had stopped running through her veins. It was only a matter of time before they fell off, too.

I shaded in her hair as best as I could (though, I will add, I am not very good at drawing hair). The sunken cheekbones were next, then her oddly thin neck. I held up the paper and aligned it with her floating head; a good match, I said out loud. After a few more minutes of touch ups, I took a step back, my eyes focused on the drawing. I signed and dated it on the back. By the time I had lifted my head up from the paper, she was gone; all of the pieces of her had disappeared.

That day was the last time I saw Alice. I kept the drawing, though. Sometimes, I use it to remind me of how far I’ve come if I ever feel discouraged. Schizophrenia is certainly a strange hand to be given, no matter how far along you are in life. But if you play your cards right, you might just see the illness fizzle out right before your eyes. There is no cure, and I know that she is not gone for good; I fully expect to see Alice again in the future. But for now, I think the picture will do.