Another Awakening

Understanding how the human mind works is not easy, neither for the person him/herself nor for the others around them. For eighteen years now I’ve had this disease which was apparently “my way”. Everyone who knows me always said my transient mood was simply what I was like. They were wrong. But I suffered with that. With every little criticism I suffered, I plunged even deeper into myself to look for answers that could justify why I was like that. Literature was where I sheltered and shielded my inconstancy attributing to it some sort of poetic freedom. Books were my companionship when talking to others felt burdensome. It all started suddenly. I began retracting myself to my shell and remained there, afraid of the outside world. I felt as if I were sitting in front of a window, looking out there where trees had sere leaves falling around them due to the freezing breeze that blew. At the background of that landscape were mountains that could hardly be seen because of the foggy air. But there I was. And there I’ve always felt to be all throughout my existence. Hopeless, helpless, just waiting for something I didn’t know. Thoughts running around in my head compelled my body to move towards an abyss. Death was the only thing I believed could really disenthrall me from the rusty chains that had been put around me. Figuring out that turmoil of nonsensical thoughts was something I couldn’t do, let alone the others around me. Whenever a crisis struck, the use of medicine would be made necessary. Eighteen years! Almost two decades of numb sensations, colorless images. Nothing soothed the restlessness; no answers fulfilled the nagging mindset. There had been no justifiable reason for my state of mind. Always that feeling of the odd one out.


Until the day I heard the word schizophrenia when I went to this psychiatrist who could decipher the enigma underneath all that suffering. I had been diagnosed with schizophrenia associated with a chronic depression. It’s a neverending feeling of sadness that has ups and downs. At times it could be incapacitating. I lay in bed for days, quiet, motionless. No hunger, no expression of any kind. Tranquilizers helped lower the high voltage that kept me on all night long, writing nonstop and unstoppably. Antidepressant drugs slowly, but gradually, gave me a feeling of wellness back. But I never accepted treatment. I started taking those medicines, slightly recuperated, then… stopped taking them, claiming I was fine. Only now do I finally surrender to the treatment which lasts at least 6 months. For the first time in my entire life I feel there is a silver lining. That is just good. No questioning, just believing in the possible magical effect of medication. Although schizophrenia is not diagnosable through a blood test or MRI, it has physical symptoms which can lead the individual to destruction. I am not the bad-humored man people think I am. I am not anti-social like it might seem. I have a disease. But like a hypertensive or diabetic person, I can lead a normal life if I stick to the prescriptions. But above all: I must truly WANT it. And I do!

I want to enjoy, not like. I want to live, not exist. I want to be, not question whether I want it or not, like a modern Hamlet. Turning point? Definitely! Being alive is a gift we can’t waste on unanswerable conundrums! Leave those to fiction, which is where the tragic boosts ratings. Real life is much simpler than we think it is. We have been taught to rationalize, categorize things binarily – it is good OR bad, this OR that. It’s about time we unlearned a little bit of all that impractical theoretical verborrhagic rhetoric on to a more practical silenced contempt which makes us feel, listen, watch more naïvely, filtering the poisoned zeitgeist through flamboyant lenses. It’s as simple as that. Let it be. Let’s live.

Friday, December 5, 2008