Reality has always had a problem with me. I live in a world where monsters are real and the gods you choose to talk to effect your universe in complicated ways. A few years ago, after a lot of quiet and stressful conversations with psychiatrists, I was diagnosed with pretty much equal parts schizophrenia, bipolar and generalised anxiety disorder. I see shit, hear shit, feel shit and everything I think will be wrong if I give it an hour or so. I have lived this every day I can remember. There are no straight lines, no getting back to square one. What I have doesn’t get better, it is an endless dark forest; it may have some sunny patches but I will be trudging through it and fighting its monsters for as long as I live.
People try to help you. They want you to be happy and strong and prosperous. They want you to share in their reality and stand on their solid ground. I spent a lot of time getting help and planning strategies but the more you try the more you realise it won’t work. The strategies are tried and tested but they are always for someone else. The more I tried to fix myself the more broken I thought I was. No-one can understand how deep it goes. The things you think and feel and see are not a fog that can be blown away or a dye that can be washed out, they go right down to the core. Fixing yourself would mean changing every fibre of your being. The only way to be what people want you to be is to be someone else.
People will draw you maps and the maps will say what areas are safe and what caves the dragons dwell in but these maps are for their own kingdoms. Your mind is unexplored. The paths you take cannot be taken by anyone else. You can take people along for the ride, but in the end you are the hero of your own stories. You have to overcome the challenges. You are the one that has to work shit out. You are the only thing you truly own and you have to get by in any way you can. When you experience hallucinations and delusions you realise just how subjective reality is. Eventually you realise that nobody actually knows what is going on. Truth is a currency that cannot be exchanged. Everyone thinks the thoughts they have to to get by. If the crazy is what you have to use to get by then use it. Make it your tool. Make it drive you. Exploit it and enslave it. When you are ready for it, go off the map and forge your own paths. Claim your own territory and win your own battles and don’t let anyone tell you to do it their way.
Skydekkerix 