My Conflict With Schizophrenia

    I’ve become a writer to find a truth, buried within me for too long. It’s been screaming deeply within, even sprouting to taste the quenching air it has so longed. Feeding it with my taboo desires, which I’ve chosen to keep hidden from a suspicious world. I cannot stop feeding it, it’s another stomach needing to be filled and stretched, its acid dissolving the virtues inflowing and absorbing the nutrient lust. If I hold these truths to be self-destructive, then maybe I truly am a schizophrenic!
     I’ve tried to approach others, but so hesitantly. How could you possibly explain something like this to someone? The sane shall read these words with confusion and think: “well, get help! Why didn’t you talk to someone?” Oh, I’ve tried for years. Over a decade of speaking to those holding doctorates in psychiatry have always been puzzled, or say, “I may not be able to help you.” I’ve also been told, “it’s not as bad as you think Daniel.”
     I know the true extent of the catastrophe within. It’s something that the world has proven time and again that it is not able to understand or even willing to. When I do find that someone who listens, whether they hold a doctorate or not, will be too late; the canister of gasoline will have been tipped, the green meadows around me scorched. I’ve seriously contemplated suicide so many times since teenagerhood. Sometimes, in some lives, it’s the right thing to do. Many suicidal persons carry the weight of concrete in their minds, when they as children were meant to carry the weightlessness of a feathered touch. Only they know… not their family or friends, only they know the firestorm they knew had to be smothered.
     Typically, it’s the acquaintance that sees in different perspective and realizes what truly is. I’m afraid to write of those whom I’ve crossed paths with that found me to be scary or, “weird.” I rest and remember stilled images of their faces, their reactions as they look back into my eyes. This is where my rant typically morphs into riddles. I can only explain these things the way I can, I’m not writing this for the simple-minded who join the ranks of most others, as I’m marching on a narrowing road to…. I don’t know. Their reasons for rejecting me pinprick my mind constantly. I know they’re right though, and I know I’m wrong. But I can’t change it. I cannot go through a day without thinking of their faces and what mine must look to them.
     I want to go back to the day a few years ago when I sat in a bistro beside a woman who was serving in the National Guard. She looked at me so positively, so differently from the others. Intrigued about my writing, her eyes were sewn to mine. The “something” within my mind, no longer crawled or hid behind these perceiving eyes, peeking through these black irises. I sift through more memories to find another more recent one, the face of my ex-girlfriend, resembling the child that we never had together. She’s such an energetic little girl, very comical and just brings a smile to my face whenever I think of her. I see her face in the same image behind closed eyelids and she looks at me with a smile that never ceases. The image wrinkles, and the cold returns to my skin. Suddenly I’m beside the face of a man with a rigid, stone-carved face.
     The dream will return unexpectedly. My physical being left as a corpse in this realist world as my soulful dreams leave such a stagnate thing behind. “The Wall,” a piece I’ve written tells of how I’ve followed the warmth back to the land sorrow never invaded. It’s the world I can survive as me; not as a “something.” This “something” I am is the energy constantly reacting within, giving this tongue a voice and articulating fingers to duplicate my thoughts to writing. I would prefer this body destroyed; burned, crushed, or just incinerated. Whatever afterlife there may be, I don’t think it’s anything like we can comprehend in this life. “My soul” crossing “the wall” that splits my mind, into “my world” with my dreams guiding me through the threshold between realism and surrealism, off into a surrealist writer’s paradise. I know I’m delusional, but at least I’ve learned to embrace it. Turning it from a weakness into a strength!

     Only If you could step into my schizophrenic world! I often wonder: what is the point of life when you can’t feel the warmth of normalcy? People look at you differently and they make false assumptions. It’s as if they’re glaring at you through a cracked window and the impression becomes distorted. Forget the rumors, the stereotypes, and step into my world for even an hour… you’d feel the pain I’ve felt it all these years and it’d be too unbearable for you! You would withdraw into your realist world in shock and ask; “How Daniel? How’d you do it all these years? The armed forces may have rejected you for psychiatric reasons, but you truly do have the perseverance of a soldier!” That may very well be true, but I need to hear it more from the world. I need to hear it! I want someone to walk into my life, grab hold of me and cry… “Daniel! I hear you!”
     Those of us who suffer psychologically, never stop suffering. In the silence of the night I will always hear those voices. Are they just memories being played back in my mind and they just sound real? Or am I truly plagued with this pestilence of a disorder? The termites are eating my legs and the whole rotten edifice is about to collapse. I’m falling! I’m crashing into a pile of burning rubble. The debris of my being looted by the sanity of others. I want my pieces gathered and piled into a coffin and given a gloomy, quiet funeral while it’s raining. At last I’d be given peace. I could just rest in harmony. I’ve seen, heard, felt enough already, I feel like an old man. I’m not religious, so “don’t bring a priest,” I’d say in my suicide note. Just gather and remember the good things, not the bad, but the good I’ve done that most had decided to overlook. Soon this withering soul will cease spinning around in the sandstorm and be feathered back down to the cold earth. Oh, how unsympathetic this world is! Sometimes… only sometimes, I’ll scream and the glass cage around me shatters and then I am free! The flame within me too weak for the sane to notice. So, the cold overpowers my flame and a layer of ice encases me. Stiff, rigor mortis, save for my eyes. With my eyelids frozen open, I can watch the world pass by. All the happy people; gifted with saneness. Can one of you put your warm hand on this icy corpse and perhaps thaw me back to life? I didn’t think so...
    
     Step after fall is how I’ll continue. Whatever happens in coming time happens. I’ve warned the world, they cannot tell me or you later that there was no avoiding the power of will. Embrace whatever you feel you can understand in this passage, maybe you’ll learn something of your own conflict as well!

-Daniel