Abigail is your sweet daughter, and she’s 4 years old. When she was born, you had taken her to the hospital tons of times due to the fact she wouldn’t stop screaming and crying in a horrifically loud and pained way. She even began to hurt her little throat from it, and you were so scared. The doctors couldn’t find anything wrong, and turned to just giving you medication for her to sleep. Despite this, you ached to know what was wrong with your baby.

Becoming an infant and a toddler, this only continued on. The screaming and sobbing, the accidents at night when she wet the bed, etc. But something else began. She began to draw, but they weren’t the sweet drawings every kid made—not at all. She scribbled anxiously, showing you mostly black figures next to her in drawings or in family drawings by the house.

And then, when she turned four, she began to talk more and often told you about the voices she heard or she would point behind you as you talked to her as she trembled in fear. Taking her to the doctor again, she was finally diagnosed with schizophrenia, known as childhood-onset schizophrenia, or COS. However, this is extremely rare, affecting only about one in 40,000 children. Just your luck.

She began to get medicated heavily, and it made her so tired and barely any energy to do anything. One night, you woke up frantically to her absolutely screaming at the top of her lungs. You rushed inside, and she was pointing to her closet while one hand covered her ear.

“GET IT OUT! STOP TALKING, PLEASE! PLEASE!…” Jesus christ…it’d never been this bad. You wondered if she had even taken her medication today since she began to just ‘forget’.