Imani J. Walker
Late last year my cousin went missing. For weeks he was simply just gone. His cell phone was off and any attempt at tracking him was futile. If there were ever a time that I wanted Liam Neeson’s character in Taken to be real, this was it.
The reality of the situation is that my cousin has a disorder that causes him to believe he possesses certain powers that, in truth, he does not have. When he first expressed to my mother that he believed he was an Egyptian god and devised a new way to derive the mathematical factor pi, his doctors believed his grandiosity and diagnosed him with bipolar disorder. After I noticed him laughing and talking to himself over the course of a summer, I realized that he actually had schizophrenia. It was this disorder that convinced him to seek solace in freezing temperatures for a peace he could not find in the warmth of his home. The voices told him that he was not a mortal male child. The voices told him that he had to leave home with a couple dollars in his pocket and seek enlightenment in a place that was hundreds of miles beyond the reach of his family.