How do you know you’ve had a break with reality? I was losing the last bit of my identity.  I was afraid but in some sick way I welcomed the break. Somehow I perceived rest was coming.
I got up the nerve to tiptoe down the stairs, pausing on the middle of the stairway. There it was again. It sounded like tiny feet scurrying. I was not crazy, was I?

I made my way to the couch in the front room. In there I was to remain in fear for the rest of the day.

We had wooden floors, having taken up the old nasty carpet that had been on the floor since when we first moved here. Somehow we were thinking the house would look better and the floor would be easier to clean. That was back when I was rational; before I went insane. Each room had a grated opening on the floor that allowed the house to be heated from the furnace in the basement. This opening was not very large.

What I saw frightened and perplexed me.

I saw a herd of rats. As I saw them I thought, wow, do rats actually come or travel in herds?

Could this be real? Was I crazy?

The herd of rats, maybe 10 to 20, were running back and forth between the grates in each room. Running from the kitchen to the dining room to the front. Up out of one grate across the floor down into another. I was so afraid. I was hunched up on the couch hugging my knees crying with snot running down my face. Afraid to move, I sat there for that entire day. When the kids were home or when anyone else was in house this never seemed to happened.

Eventually I had Steve nail a heavy plastic cover over each of the grates. When I was alone I could still hear them pushing on the plastic. I was afraid that they would chew their way through. This was so real and traumatizing. I went back to work mainly to get away from the rats. My mental health did not improve. Around about this time I started hearing those voices at work…