She stands
On the parapet
Of the bridge
Staring down
At the sparkling blue
Of the water below
Her body slices
Through the stillness
Of the pale morning
At one with the air
Shimmering
And translucent
She descends,
Greeting the dawn
She is ethereal
She is a ghost
Who slips through the cracks
In your consciousness
She bids you farewell
She no longer needs you
She exists now
Only in dreams
And in fragments
Of memory
And in the stories
You whisper to your children
On long, dark winter nights
Myself: A Case Study:
This will be the bleakest blog entry for a while and for that I apologise. The breadcrumbs have been devoured by the birds and there is no way back. I have to create a new future for myself. This is a kind of SOS.
This is actually about me but I am writing about myself in the third person. What shall I call myself today: Susan perhaps.
My diagnosis was, until recently schizoaffective disorder but the powers that be have chosen to change it to ‘schizophrenia’. Schizophrenia is a cruel disease. It attacks every aspect of your being and even after a successful medication regime has been established there are problems that may seem unsurmountable but they must be faced up to and overcome. At the moment I am experiencing residual symptoms of my disorder: loneliness, social isolation, suicidal thoughts, panic and anxiety. However, my greatest enemy is poverty of expectation in myself and in others. I find myself longing to give into the temptation to curl up into a ball and lie there forever, to succumb to a dreamless sleep.
Right now I am terrified of the future. I have a tendency to catastrophise. I am finding the world almost impossible to navigate. I am nothing, I am passive, a mere observer. I am characterless, A tabla rasa. My self esteem has been ravaged. I feel socially disenfranchised, as if I have no place in the world. I am living on the edge of darkness, huddled down deep inside myself, wondering whether I will find myself again. “it is my portion to die out and disappear.”
I need to bear constantly in mind that there is a solution to every problem. Something as simple as making a list of problems and solutions can be immensely helpful as it helps to put them into some kind of perspective. I have got to this stage and the darkest hour is just before the dawn. I will not let this illness win. I must triumph over this nameless dread. A life lived in perennial fear is no life at all. Time propels you forward. There is no turning back.
https://www.livingwithschizophreniauk.org/
This is how things used to be:
Why is it that the mere mention of mental illness arouses such extreme reactions?
We are freaks, outcasts, deviants. We arouse hostility and fear. Unlike Bedlam today’s lunatic asylums do not attract tourists. Nobody wanders through the wards laughing, joking, pointing at the inmates. But I know that if they could they most certainly would. We are protected by the thin veneer of civilisation. But something tells me that in the years since Bedlam closed its doors, humanity hasn’t changed a bit. The stage occupied by the mad has moved to that voyeur’s paradise: reality television.
The mentally Ill represent devastation. Lives laid to waste by some invisible force over which we have no control. We do not follow the rules. We do not obey instructions. We are weak, we are feckless, they are helpless. Our very presence corrupts society. The industrious middle classes are the most hostile. It is not that they lack imagination. It is not that they are devoid of empathy. Far from it. They posses those qualities in abundance. They understand more than they want to.
People are afraid because one day they know it could happen to them. Like aerial bombardment. No one knows who the missiles will hit next. But they will never acknowledge that. Not in a million years.
If you have a problem with this then please tell me why you have a problem with this. I need to hear alternative views.
So Sick of Drowning 