text: When I was a child I had an imaginary friend, and every night while I was falling asleep she would stand outside my doorway and watch me, imparting a deep feeling of calm over me and in a way lulling me to sleep. I had named her the Mother of Spiders, a rather fitting name in my opinion. Although my parents, who lovingly tolerated the strange and yet inexplicably common aspect of a child's mental development, considered the name to be more than a bit unnerving. My attempts to explain why the title was a deserved one, describing her tall, thin figure, her leatherlike skin, her lanky quadra-jointed limbs, all ending in four hyper flexible digits and her oblong and insect like head, perched upon a long, strained neck. Although this description only seemed to worsen their anxieties. As I began to grow older and the age when imaginary friends were considered acceptable was behind me my parents began to consider the ongoing presence of the Mother of Spiders to be a problem. Although, personally, I considered her presence to be a reassurance, a sort of constant throughout the ever changing landscape that was adolescence. I had my first appointment with a psychiatrist when I was in 4th grade, and after my parents explained my symptoms to the doctor for me I was finally given diagnoses, a scientific explanation for what my parents considered to be a strange ailment. It was a strange form of pre-sleep sleep paralysis. Rare, but not unheard of, and learning this my parents finally seemed satisfied. It took the better part of a decade before my nightly visits from the Mother of Spiders began to mutate and change. I was unmedicated for the better part of that time, and I slept well under the entity's caring gaze. It was in the middle of highschool, late 10th grade, when my parents decided enough is enough, and although my pre-sleep paralysis had remained unchanged for over five years at that time I was placed on imipramine, a medication designed to put a stop to the episodes. The mutation almost seemed like a response to my medicated status. Not only did they fail to stop my sleep paralysis, but the visions began to slip, bleeding out of their nightly allotted slots and into my waking days in the form of hallucinations. Not only this but as the medication failed to have any of its intended effects I was faced with the worst of its negative side effects, and for some time I was plagued with fits of dizziness and blurry vision along with frequent headaches and I gained and lost weight with an uncontrollable ease. I spent a month like this, blighted by the side effects of a useless medication while I went day to day fearing the possible appearance of the Mother of Spiders. I went on like this for a few months before finally confessing to my parents, I switched from imipramine and too olanzapine, an antipsychotic, and while the negative side effects went away, my hallucinations remained. She would appear to me in the least expected of places, on busy sidewalks where I'm reasonably sure trees were meant to be, down the vacant side streets when I would take walks down my hometown of Littlebrook’s sleepy mainstreet and within the empty aisles of department stores. In these moments I could finally fully observe and appreciate her. And while she still exuded a calming aura of motherhood I found her to be physically terrifying. She must have been 8-9ft tall, with skin like mummy yet oddly flexible, a beaklike mouth and eyes that rippled and shimmered like an oil slick. I found her beautiful in a horrifying sort of way. While she continued to visit me before I fell asleep, and while those nightly visits were more than welcome I began to grow hopeless on the topic of ever ridding myself of her in the hallucination form. Surprisingly this didn't effect me, at least not as much as I assumed it would, if I had grown used to the sleep paralysis I could grow used to this, I told myself, and within a few months my life was seemly normal again, not because anything had changed but because I had gotten used to it. I stopped taking my olanzapine soon after and found my life to be unchanged. For a year I managed to live a mostly normal life, I graduated high school and went through my summer content and normal, ignoring the once unnerving sight of the Mother of Spiders exposed in daylight. Over familiarization maybe. Life was good, at least for a while. I write this from my cubelike room, cell, whatever, in the Pine County Psych Hospital. I've been here roughly a month now, and in addition to that it's been nearly a month since I last saw her. It's so unnerving not having her accompany me, being abandoned by my one and only constant companion throughout life. I feel so dreadfully alone. It started two weeks before my internment when my family discovered I hadn't been taking my olanzapine It appears that refusing to take your medication while still claiming to see a titanic spider woman and openly describing it as an hallucination was seemingly a good enough reason to be checked in to a psych ward, no matter how lucid I claimed to be. In all honesty I don't mind most of my treatment here, the constant therapy sessions, both group and one on one, and I can understand why my off hours are spent locked in my room, I don't even mind taking my medication, I thought it was working, for a while at least, but not anymore, because last night she finally returned. I'm writing this for a reason, not just to recount my mildly interesting life story but because last night my entire world changed. After a near month of absence she finally returned, and as I drifted off into the uneasy slumbers I had grown used to without her, I heard a deep low noise from the hallway, from just outside my door. Slowly she pushed open my door and I saw her through my hazy eyes, and gazing at me as I drifted into my first peaceful slumber in what felt like a lifetime. I woke up early in the morning, content and well rested, although those feelings changed in mere moments when I noticed the irregularity across from my bed and I felt my heart skip a beat , across the room I saw my door, the one I knew to be locked when I fell asleep, hanging open and ajar within the morning sunlight with the metal lock torn, twisted and sitting on the floor.