A heart beats strong and steadily inside my chest, feeding all ends with vitality. It's neighbor to the north fires directions to arms legs and toes like a conductor in front of his symphony. Organs hum happily along; unaware of the deceitful whispers burrowing their way into my psyche, swearing there was a glitch in the rhythm. Maybe it was nothing.... maybe it was something.
This is always where it starts; the beginning of the end in a life once known.
At first, the new sensations mean nothing because they are nothing. The whispers are simply inventions of a hapless and exhausted mind. Work and play carry on for the sake of public perception - no need to raise the terror alert level just yet, after all. Inside is a different story; a tug of war between rationality and fear has already begun to fight for bragging rights over me. The human thought process can be a hysterical one, battling all odds for those crucial feelings of safety, sanity, and peace. I speculate what is going to happen to me, when I collapse under the perceived weight of my own chest, and give a genuine listen to these whispers.
Furtive trips to the clinic start. The good doctor supplies me with obligatory comfort but only momentarily so. I assure myself that tests, pills, and prodding will give me the answers I seem to believe I need. However, this new savior cannot save His follower from nothingness and He soon becomes the enemy. I listen to the news with no emotion, only a hot white anger at them for wasting my time. These trips were meant to bear fruit- no matter how scary that fruit may have been at least it was real and not just my resurrected imagination. My Enemy gives such a casual conclusion ( You're fine, relax ) that I do become relaxed-I need a second opinion, that's so obvious now. In the meantime, with a fake nod and a smile to assure them I understand and won't return, it's solo once more in the Land of the Troubled, population one.
Okay, I admit it. Something isn't right and it's not my heart. It never was my heart or my brainstem or my blood or any of the hundreds of things I heard them say on ER. Buried behind corners and hidden under the mess of pills and bills I always knew it wasn't really my heart. Something is wrong with the essence of who I am and it's threatening to destroy who I want to be. I've got to stop this. If you can believe in the soul then you can believe it can be bruised as easily as the flesh on your arm.
Who fixes what cannot be examined through the thin film of an x-ray?
Before long a dense and loathsome cocoon begins to grow all around me, blocking out light and laughter from my life. This cocoon camouflages itself in with my environment so well even I, its host, am not sure that there is a cocoon at all. Maybe it will be better there, they whisper softly, safer inside the cocoon? Ask anyone who's gotten out...it never is.
I visit a well rehearsed psychiatrist, who's heard it all before and knows what the problem is before She sees my wringing hands. Together in the room we're only feet apart, but in the Land, ahhh in the Land we're not even in the same building. The good doctor listens so intently to my gibbering at first that I leave elated-salvation at last! Soon enough, she grows tired of idle-first date-chit chat and wants to dig into the meat of me, she wants my essence.
Frustrations on both our parts begin to flower. I want to be a good patient, to help her to help me, as they say. But my cup of bravado runneth over. I clamp my jaw tightly, look to the floor and notice dimly that it's the same carpeting that covered the corridors of my high school. Precious time slips away from us, time that could be spent pleading for help from this place I've put myself in. I don't know why I do this, but I've done it again.
Pride is a fighter and depression is a quitter; the session ends where it began.
It is still nearly impossible to believe what's happening isn't some horrific undiagnosed problem that was missed. I'm taking my pills and breathing from my diaphragm but I'll be damned if the whispers haven't taken notice and are breathing from their diaphragm, accordingly. It's going to be tight, this race for survival between the Whispers and I.
For some, this existence is in fact the end. All of the hate anger and confusion is stifled and whats left is an empty feeling; maybe it can be called depression-maybe not. Perhaps it is better for them; to learn to feel nothing instead of being so hurt by feeling everything. Maybe at some point clouds will part and the brief sunshine that breaks through is enough to remind them of what it could be like, again, if they just tried. That wont be enough; who cares if they do or dont, in the vast Land of the Troubled. (These are your whispers talking, friend. If you cant trust the whispers, just who can you trust?)
Other=s will claw pull and punch their way out. It really is warfare of the mind, where you have to trek through so much mud shit and debris you outta have a rifle slung over your back. If you want it, if you can see that sun through those clouds there is still time to help you help yourself, as they say. Dignity is nothing worth fighting for when lives are at stake-specifically ones own.
In reality, arms were always open and hands were always outstretched. They were just waiting for someone to want to fill them.
