Reality Check

<h3>Reality can shatter in a matter of seconds. </h3><h3>Ten to be exact.</h3><p><br></p><p> In ten seconds 16-year-old Priya watched her first love Dimitri get fatally wounded. Yet while Dimitri's life slipped through her fingers she was the one hospitalized.</p><p> Why?</p><p> Because Priya has schizophrenia.</p><p> And Dimitri never existed.</p><p> </p><p> While Priya is still mourning her loss and understanding her diagnosis her clinical team decides she needs to learn to be a normal teenager to find her footing in reality. So they give her a checklist-for-success and send her off to the vultures at the start of her senior year. It's a good thing her best friend Elli is an expert teen and can show her how to be that normal teenager.</p><p> </p><p> Because of Elli Priya starts crossing off items on her checklist from going to a party to going on a date.</p><p> </p><p> However as Priya experiences real-life to the fullest -- the good <strong>and </strong>the bad -- she finds herself on loose ground as she's constantly tempted by her old life.</p><p> </p><p> Can Priya manage to stay grounded in the real world or will she fall back into the one she made up in her head?</p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(24 24 24 1)>Content Warning: This story contains themes of severe mental Illness/severe mental health symptoms instances of alcohol use/abuse and mentions of suicide and suicidal ideation</span></p>