Are You Normal?

Why does this photo bother me so? It makes me hurt. It makes me still feel pain. I feel it in my bones although I can only bring it up in the dark and quiet places of my home, when the music sounds hurtful and sad, and my soul seems to touch a thousand screams for help, a thousand voices begging to live.

I see rubble and smoke and fires and dim lighting and sounds, like that of construction, machinery. I hear fresh fall leaves crumble underfoot, but see only the glittering shards of glass of building windows covered in dust and kicked to the surface by my shoes.



These images are fleeting, coming to me in dreams and glimpses, but it's strange, very strange, that when I see a photo like this one, I get new gifts, new memories, new things that I saw and had forgotten. The pall of death and destruction, easily forgotten. Easily placed in the back of my mind. In all of our minds. Have we forgotten this day already? Have we made it go away now that Afganistan, Iraq and Iran are basically rubbed off the map? I feel for this. I feel for them. I feel for myself. There is no cure for this pain, just the one thing that I can't seem to do in my life. Accept it. I can't accept it. I can't even witness it again in my head. My memories refuse to let me go there, to re-live it. I feel twisted, like looking at a broken limb, shattered at the bone, a fractured forearm or calf, with blood, bone muscle and fat poking through the skin. An appalling sight, but what is more, there is no pain, no motion of the wrist or hand, no feeling below the elbow. It is suddenly useless meat, like carrying home a steak. Something that you are not even akin to. You are not allowed to feel pain at all. It's divested from you.



Your soul is trapped in your ribcage, a canary in a cage, you are visibly fine, but inside, you have to admit, you have been broken. Broken for a long time. You don't want sympathy. You just want a doctor. You just want a cure. You're tired of hearing one psychiatrist/psychologist/therapist recite to you the same litany of your problems, Bi-polar, PTSD, Survivors Guilt, Agoraphobia, Social Phobia, delusional episodes, Dissociative Identity Disorder...the list goes on and on. So does the drugs. You never felt this way before. You were totally normal before. You were a regular guy, with regular friends, regular habits, regular propensities. THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOU BEFORE!



But, honestly... be true to yourself. Was that really true? Was it? Your wife called them 'your dark periods' where you couldn't speak, couldn't relate to the world around you. You sat in the dark of your living room, listening to the Cure sing about death and suicide and sadness, album after album until you drove her crazy. You and a bottle of wine. Then the wine became vodka, then the vodka became Jack Daniels, and then the spells, the blank parts of time where you were not you. Where you were someone else for periods at a time, only to wake up here and there, in this place or that place, having absolutely no clue what the 'other you' had done. Your first bouts of Dissociative Identity Disorder. You were coming apart, weren't you? You were self medicating heavily with alcohol, weren't you? You became more terrified to go into work with every passing day. The rush hour panicked you, the people, the crowds, going back to that befallen world at the foot of what once were the most majestic buildings ever caused you pain daily. To cope, you drank. And the more you drank, the more you had to drink.



The pain, like a sinking ship, kept rising until it was over the transom, swamping the deck, sucking down the boat as your life was sucked out of you. But...you could have thought you were normal. How can a normal man drink from sun up to sun up? How can a normal man shut up all of his emotions and 'do his job'? You were fired because of drinking on the job. You lost your driver's license because of drinking while driving. You lost your home because you could no longer pay rent. You lost everything and went out into the streets...your time in exile. You marched on the dry, hot, hurtful sidewalks of the city, barefooted. And you actually believe that you are NORMAL? This sounds like a normal person to you? Are all those professionals that you have been hopping around to see lying to you? Are they the shadows you see moving in your room at night? Could this be the reason why you turn off the lights and sit in the dark, because you are too afraid to see the shadows moving, or standing around you. Are you afraid that they are the dead, welcoming you to join them? Did you miss the hearse that day, and they've come to reclaim you?



Do you need another drink? Do you need to take more pills? What do you need? What do you need? Do you even know any longer? No one blames you for lying to yourself. You're only hurting yourself. You're just taking longer to seek the help that you need. But you are now on the right track I feel. You are sober, you are happy, you are in motion and suddenly, the world seems to be under your feet. You have power and strength and most of all, vibrancy. But you must understand, this is not a by-product of Abilify. Soon, the Abilify will work, and it will cut your edge. You will settle down, and your manic period will lessen, slow down and all of your woes will catch up to you once more.



But let's be concerned about that every next tomorrow. That's a bridge that will be crossed sooner or later, so let's just plan for later. For right now, let's study the picture above and try to remember.



I know that I swore that this blog would never become a commercial entity type of thing. I don't want your dollars or your sympathies, but this is for a good cause. One that should last a lifetime. Even I, broke and destitute, am saving for one. You can too.


Never forget.

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