Tags
mental health, mental illness, poems, poetry, psychiatry, psychology, psychosis, schizophrenia, writing
There is a lot of shame that comes from being psychotic. The bizarre things you say and do, and for someone who lived “undercover” for twenty years, it was almost impossible to explain away the hallucinations and delusions. Shame isn’t the only thing that periodic episodes of psychosis have left me with.
Psychosis has stolen my keepsakes. When I am psychotic, for whatever reason (some irrational delusion, or a voice tells me to) I throw away all the things I have been keeping that are sentimental. I have thrown away all my baby pictures, all the pictures of my grandparents, all my former writing, artwork that friends made for me, etc.
It is heartbreaking. I try not to think about it. The regrets from a mental illness already stack up like a Lego tower, and I don’t want to add more heartache to that tower for fear it will one day tip over and take me with it.
The things I have missed most are the pictures and my early writing.
Before I was diagnosed with a mental illness I was becoming a successful poet. After I was diagnosed, the medication dulled all of my creativity. I stopped writing completely for many years. The loss of the ability to write was one of the most painful losses I have experienced in my life. After twenty years, and the correct medication, I can write again, but I am still not even close to having the level of creativity I had in my twenties, pre-diagnosis.
Yesterday, a package arrived from a friend I have known for over twenty years.
When I opened the package, the tears started immediately. Inside, was some of my writing from 1993. I read through it immediately.
Wow, I miss that young woman. Wow, that young woman had guts, and hope, and ideas. Wow, that young woman was truly an artist and activist.
Here are a few things that young woman, who was smashed in her prime, had to say before the chemicals in her mind went in all different directions due to genes and medication:
“I don’t have a label for her. Maybe, that is why I love her. There is no container to keep her confined.”
Then there is this poem:
He is my everything, my all, my more (never less),
my hope, my dream, my soar to the sky,
my crash to the earth,
my tongue all tied,
his ears always open.
Our throats deep with the syrup we do drink
from one another.
And a very short poem:
Just Say Sleep
A little nap
a few Z’s
go to bed early…
wake up late.
Life’s internal way to cope.
Sleep is the dope,
I use too much.
There is much more. Mental illness is a thief. If had spent the last twenty two years building on her writing…twenty two years is a long time to grieve the loss of a young woman in her prime. I got a glimpse of her again through her writing. I missed her today, more than usual.
Powerful and sad. Mental illness is a thief. What a line. This sums up our family experience as well. It takes so much away and even the photos you cherished. Thank goodness you had some writing returned.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Quite a few years ago now I had a breakdown. It was, I later discovered, a side effect of sarcoidosis. My son was at university at the time. I hardly remember anything about the time he was there. Almost nothing. It still hurts when I try to remember. You are still you. That is why you hurt so much. Be a poet. Be a crusader. Take back from the thief what it stole from you. All the best. Kris.
LikeLiked by 1 person
My husband has sarcoidosis.
LikeLike
Lungs ?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes.
LikeLike
The illness I seem to have is the opposite: hoarding and harvesting scribbles perceived as useless otherwise. Thankfully you cling to other emotionally valuable things, as gifts. I identity with the sleep poem, however.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, our illnesses all look a little different. Usually we can relate to one another though. Thanks for your comment.
LikeLike
Thank you for following back and your welcome to come by if you’re for the mood for a distraction
LikeLiked by 1 person
Will stop by!
LikeLike
Thank you for sharing the poems from your youth. Love you
LikeLiked by 1 person
Love you too!
LikeLike
I loved the sleep poem!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Severe mental illness involves a complicated maze of loss, grief and bereavement while on the way to recovery. Thank you for sharing your experience with that grief through your regained writing.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m glad you got some of your poems back, because they are lovely.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thank you!
LikeLike
I can relate to this. I have memories as a teenager and in my early twenties of throwing keepsakes, canvases (friends artwork and my own), and journals with hundreds of pages of writing into the dumpster. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time to stop myself somehow. Fortunately, I was a prolific writer and there is an entire drawer in my nightstand full of papers with poems and art that somehow survived all the purging, along with a few journals (though most of the journals have half the pages ripped out).
It’s weird to go over to my husbands childhood home and see his old room full of his stuff. My childhood home is literally gone. Last time I drove by there was nothing but a hole in the ground next to the driveway I walked up thousands of times. It’s sad, but the funny thing is that what I miss more than the childhood home and all it’s contents is all the words I wrote down then threw away.
I’m glad you got some of yours back. 😀
LikeLiked by 1 person
Beautiful, as usual!!! Xo
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you! xoxo
LikeLike
Yes mental illness can rob you of so much.I’m glad you got your poems back!! I was just looking at images from the Book of Kells to inspire me to start drawing again.It does help.I love it,always wanted to go to Ireland.Grin!
LikeLike