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battle with insanity
'How do you know I’m mad?' said Alice.
'You must be,” said the Cat. 'or you wouldn’t have come here.”
Lewis Carroll
Those voices beckoned her to shrill loudly, chaotically, beneath the evanescent sky. Voices, the taunting voices wearing strange identities and with a new persona for every day of the year. Her madness was unmatchable to the stars who poked their eyes lifelessly out every night, to see what the world was up to. Maybe Jesus Christ himself heard voices, or maybe he could heal her of them—someday, one day. He'd dip her into that holy water and absolve her of the sins that left her selfless, selfish, confusing. She'd crumble into his arms.
The man of the household kicked the dog, he has just been promoted and now goes to work three times a week instead of one. For a seccond he hated the sutpid dog, and the woman with the cast watching videotapes and dreaming of other lives. Now and then she would stop, and then she'd speak in codes and whispers. This was not always my mother. Once, not that long ago, she fought against war and its assassins. She did her time in Muscogee jail, barred in between white cells with barely any bedding or food.
They taunted her, the guards, and shook her freedom away. She came home, glowing, but tired. She never protested war again. She felt it was useless, like she hadn't been heard. Now she speaks to ghosts who listen in third person to the woman she longed to become. How we all worked tirelessly to prove that we were still there for each other. But mom just wouldn't see.
I have heard voices too. It happened with the car accident, that I already knew a strange man was in a coma.. Well, it was true after all. And the first time, they were there screaming at the world to let her out, or me, between the confines of a brick trap door hospital, where they sanitized me of sanity, and stripped me of my reason. I was there for fighting with them, and breaking a cup. When I was there had pushed the trap doors and told them all I was well, before they diagnosed this as an episode of defiance, of madness, of denial and freaking out. But it helped me...that was what it was for.
The doors were all glass, the windows made you invisible. But the mirrors were for the important doctors to see all of you, no matter what disease you had. They would peer in, and justify their malady of panaceas that would never cure you, only dull your senses unto perfect, justifiable behavior. And the doctor, who wouldn't cure your failing memories, only correct your errors of perception.
But they haven't killed the memories, for I wrote the truth on the wall of justice. I am sane, after-all, only living in a deteriorating schizophrenic world. One of my own design, though by force. It's a world I can retreat to, now, that I am safe. One where dreams are reality, but reality isn't really even there. One with cotton candy clouds and a premonitions that come true too often to keep dreaming...
White blood cells, anemia, dementia, lost dogs lost minds lost friends. A pattern in the sky. A voice whispering on the wind, a colorful picture book that is too bright to call anything. I am schizophrenic. I am schizophrenic. I am schizophrenic. So I dull my hues to a perfect combination of blue and purple and yellow. I refrain from remembering, I stop myself from questioning, from asking anything. And I cry silently for the abused animal I have become. I will never know, I am simply too dumb.
Because Sometimes when I close my eyes, I can still hear my mother screaming. I envision all these scary things, like a dimly lit room with a woman in restraints- Who studied the sunlight and was open to things that no one else was aware of. As a child I colored rainbows that laughed and together we vanished into the sunrise. But unlike my mother, I got help. I survived.
She hands me a tearful letter, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,”
I believed in her more than she realized, and her dreams were called borderline by the man in spectacles who wanted to believe in nothing. I turned eight when I heard them say she tried to catch a bus, but ended up with slashed wrists and a diagnosis of psychosis/. No one ever told me she tried to run away. My memory, has it betrayed me?
So what happens when a rainbow turns upside down and the edges twist, and what happens when the flower in your hand turns into a wish? What happens when it’s too much to be silent in prayer? I remember how much she believed in me, and how everything she believed in caved eventually. Maybe we are the same as them, but they just don't see. They don't know how to embrace the deepest recesses...what it means to be human and free.
She had the passion to resist every bullet until the one that pierced right through to the core, this evil poison of disillusionment . She crossed the barred off line and got arrested for protesting a white man's war. They painted the padded walls off-white and we were screaming. The doctor uses his syringe to steal every soul and cell until God dances Manically, "why can't we all be happy?" all she wanted was to teach peace to the children across the world, who knew only the bloody war of independence or slavery...
But for people like me, we wonder if we're still free. A battle with insanity.
'You must be,” said the Cat. 'or you wouldn’t have come here.”
Lewis Carroll
Those voices beckoned her to shrill loudly, chaotically, beneath the evanescent sky. Voices, the taunting voices wearing strange identities and with a new persona for every day of the year. Her madness was unmatchable to the stars who poked their eyes lifelessly out every night, to see what the world was up to. Maybe Jesus Christ himself heard voices, or maybe he could heal her of them—someday, one day. He'd dip her into that holy water and absolve her of the sins that left her selfless, selfish, confusing. She'd crumble into his arms.
The man of the household kicked the dog, he has just been promoted and now goes to work three times a week instead of one. For a seccond he hated the sutpid dog, and the woman with the cast watching videotapes and dreaming of other lives. Now and then she would stop, and then she'd speak in codes and whispers. This was not always my mother. Once, not that long ago, she fought against war and its assassins. She did her time in Muscogee jail, barred in between white cells with barely any bedding or food.
They taunted her, the guards, and shook her freedom away. She came home, glowing, but tired. She never protested war again. She felt it was useless, like she hadn't been heard. Now she speaks to ghosts who listen in third person to the woman she longed to become. How we all worked tirelessly to prove that we were still there for each other. But mom just wouldn't see.
I have heard voices too. It happened with the car accident, that I already knew a strange man was in a coma.. Well, it was true after all. And the first time, they were there screaming at the world to let her out, or me, between the confines of a brick trap door hospital, where they sanitized me of sanity, and stripped me of my reason. I was there for fighting with them, and breaking a cup. When I was there had pushed the trap doors and told them all I was well, before they diagnosed this as an episode of defiance, of madness, of denial and freaking out. But it helped me...that was what it was for.
The doors were all glass, the windows made you invisible. But the mirrors were for the important doctors to see all of you, no matter what disease you had. They would peer in, and justify their malady of panaceas that would never cure you, only dull your senses unto perfect, justifiable behavior. And the doctor, who wouldn't cure your failing memories, only correct your errors of perception.
But they haven't killed the memories, for I wrote the truth on the wall of justice. I am sane, after-all, only living in a deteriorating schizophrenic world. One of my own design, though by force. It's a world I can retreat to, now, that I am safe. One where dreams are reality, but reality isn't really even there. One with cotton candy clouds and a premonitions that come true too often to keep dreaming...
White blood cells, anemia, dementia, lost dogs lost minds lost friends. A pattern in the sky. A voice whispering on the wind, a colorful picture book that is too bright to call anything. I am schizophrenic. I am schizophrenic. I am schizophrenic. So I dull my hues to a perfect combination of blue and purple and yellow. I refrain from remembering, I stop myself from questioning, from asking anything. And I cry silently for the abused animal I have become. I will never know, I am simply too dumb.
Because Sometimes when I close my eyes, I can still hear my mother screaming. I envision all these scary things, like a dimly lit room with a woman in restraints- Who studied the sunlight and was open to things that no one else was aware of. As a child I colored rainbows that laughed and together we vanished into the sunrise. But unlike my mother, I got help. I survived.
She hands me a tearful letter, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine,”
I believed in her more than she realized, and her dreams were called borderline by the man in spectacles who wanted to believe in nothing. I turned eight when I heard them say she tried to catch a bus, but ended up with slashed wrists and a diagnosis of psychosis/. No one ever told me she tried to run away. My memory, has it betrayed me?
So what happens when a rainbow turns upside down and the edges twist, and what happens when the flower in your hand turns into a wish? What happens when it’s too much to be silent in prayer? I remember how much she believed in me, and how everything she believed in caved eventually. Maybe we are the same as them, but they just don't see. They don't know how to embrace the deepest recesses...what it means to be human and free.
She had the passion to resist every bullet until the one that pierced right through to the core, this evil poison of disillusionment . She crossed the barred off line and got arrested for protesting a white man's war. They painted the padded walls off-white and we were screaming. The doctor uses his syringe to steal every soul and cell until God dances Manically, "why can't we all be happy?" all she wanted was to teach peace to the children across the world, who knew only the bloody war of independence or slavery...
But for people like me, we wonder if we're still free. A battle with insanity.
Published 7th Jul 2012
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