Elizabeth's story

Enduring mental illness: a companion’s perspective

Dying, an event
which happens for some in seconds, for some a few years
of pain,
of regrets or celebrations,
of memories or forgetfulness
whichever guise death takes it is a process of
degeneration, decline, decay.
Instant or prolonged it is dynamic, moving,
beginning and ending.

Dying when you are not dying, a prolonged state of nothing,
hellish in many ways perhaps.
Hell the absence of God, assuming God is the essence of life
a prolonged nothing, a hell to stumble into.

The sense of suspension,
always treading water, never reaching shore, never touching the bottom.
Sinking or swimming are not the only options.
Watching the beach unmoving, appear and disappear as the waves rise and fall,
longing to drown but clinging to the hope that some miracle,
King Neptune perhaps, will come by with his chariot, transport to somewhere,
anywhere which isn’t this.
Day after day
after day
after day
after day.
Exhaustion of running so fast the world could have been circumnavigated twice before lunchtime,
but the view unchanged, the outlook remains the same and King has again missed his lines.

Maybe tomorrow,

but there is no saviour
riding on the waves, the clouds,
coursing through the mountains, charging across the plains
whichever way you look at it he, she, they aren’t coming, it sits with you.

The only god involved here does not seem inclined to benevolence.
To watch rituals which only for moments appease the god of the obsession,
only for moments calm the beast who is always hungry,
who eats without devouring, takes everything
before coming back for more.

To hide, absorbed in a world not your own,
to experience the warmth of the soft evening sun of the French vineyards,
the rush of love,
the touch of connection.
The book, the movie the picture,
what ever the vehicle it is welcomed
like the return of lost treasure, gone so long its existence had been forgotten,
but then in a careless moment it again departs, the nothing reasserts its place.

God is not in hell, despite this knowledge looking continues but,
god is not to be found,
though you look, and cry and search
god is not to be found.
god is not there,
abandoning the most tormented to their fate, at the point of total helplessness
eternally drowning, but never gone,
are watched from some distant place.

Hell is a place a of forgotten dreams,
long crushed,
buried but continue to rise again,
not for fulfilment but torture,
not to provide hope but to taunt,
to be always out of reach,
always a futile figment of an imagination transitioned to a nightmare.

And God seems as impotent as all others.

Impotence the preferred thought to that of choice,
impotence being involuntary could give birth to sorrow.
suggesting other than impotence
implies a master of all who assigns to some,
a path covered in briars
offering little respite,
content to permit the futile struggle
oft repeated wounds,
where the rawness is ignored
the sojourn of battle not only accepted but,
for an unknowable reason, if any reason could exist,
perpetuated.

Responsibility belongs nowhere but blame is easily assigned.
Being overtaken by this alien force, which
purports to be you,
hangs you out to dry, laughs at you,
demands everything from you and yet claims to be your best friend,
never will it leave you, never forsake you
but its malevolence consumes you while claiming to release you.

The cat allows the mouse to run only so far before it is reined in,
a small glimpse of freedom which only magnifies the prison.
The darkest point following recapture.
to live in the greyness of nothing becomes the better choice,
the blackness of complete despair avoided only by the light being perfectly eclipsed.
For in the blackness anything can happen,
the blackness cloaks everything,
the results of the descent undeterminable,
the drowning may finally end,
the blackness having delivered the release all others failed to,
any end being better than none.
To hold on through the blackness preferring the grey to the freedom of an end,
any sense of energy voided,
emerging to the victory of the nothing.

The hollowest of triumphs where failure is dressed in its black tie and evening gown,
dancing to the beat of nothing,
celebrating a continuation of the nothing,
the off colour,
no colour,
grating noise
and deafening silence
the nothing.

But clawed out of the blackness the grey is a comfort,
the cause of the descent the earlier ascent,
the reality that light leads to dark
further strengthens the bars
escape a now departed illusion.

A wish that the light should never return the enduring result.
A fear of the light,
a very source of hope now a terror all of its own.

And the watchers watch.


*Please note: this story was shared anonymously and Elizabeth is not the author's real name.