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-LRose
Tag: mentalhealth
“What’s Wrong With Me?”
At one point in his memoir, Daudet describes staying at a sanatorium, one of those places where everyone understands what everyone else is going through. He talks about the strange pleasure of searching for the patient whose experience of illness is most like his own. Today’s version of the sanatorium is the Internet, where you find a vaporous world of fellow-sufferers, companions in isolation and fear and frustration, as well as practitioners who have made it their life’s work to understand why a segment of the population always feels unwell. I fell into the rabbit hole, and emerged in another world, online.
Elderly women whisper
Elderly women whisper: “marry a man that loves you more than you love him.”
Fall in love, get married and have babies. This is the unspoken rule. This is how life is lived.
A husband, a wife, a house in the suburbs. Fulfilling Big Brother complete. This is what we display to the public, social normative behavior. Wouldn’t want to stand out.
In that house, hidden from the public view, depression, irritability, wild thoughts and obsessive behavior. Brilliant minds are partially revealed, but the invisible force of the fear of nonconformity drives us to shelter those ideas most objectionable.
But what about happiness? A secret love, a passion, something more. Don’t let them see it. It is not allowed.
Out of earshot rapid ideas are exchanged between lovers. The conversation is stimulating, exciting, brilliant. The chains of normalcy are broken, excitement reaches a climax, euphoria is found in forbidden love making.
A secret is kept, for now the lovers live in painful longing. The roles of the nuclear family continue. Big Brother smiles.The grandmothers are proud. Conformity complete.
-LRose
Stuck
All people have a comfort zone and a safety zone. What they fail to realize is, they aren’t the same.
Thoughts
We live in an age where pulling all nighters talking to strangers on the Internet about suicide and political discourse is less socially acceptable than sexually budding teenage vampires and shades of grey.
-LRose
The Trees Tree
-LRose
6 word stories (various authors)
“I feel profoundly sad and melancholic”
“I don’t have all the answers”
“Yes. Of course I have ghosts”
“Momentos from another era, left behind.”
“I can’t focus. There’s so much.”
“what did i get myself into”
“I wish I was never born”
“Long journeys take cause homesickness. Treatment.”
“i didn’t ask to be born”
“Some day the sun will die.”
“three words: evolution is a lie”
“This is my six word sentence”
“Rip my cuticles, blood at last”
“I think this is based off a challenge that was posed to Hemingway. He wrote: Baby shoes for sale. Never used.”
“Having hard time. Gonna try later”
“Garage closed. Engine on. Just breathe.”
“Oppressive heat sedates… gradient plum salivates.”
“I love costco, monster on sale”
“ah! oh, huh? um… meh. om”
“Time for my role, professional person”
“melt into the couch, Dogs pant”
“return from vacation, dog has cancer”
“my sister pregnant, now its gone”
“Grandpa dying, son reads story aloud.”
“No real people, only telegram cares.”
“Suffer by day, sweet Seroquel sleep”
“I lied to my psychiatrist… Again”
“Smear fingers in graphite, not blood”
“My mom is great, but insane”
“I wish my coworker would leave.
Get the fuck outta here bitch.
Your shift is over, so leave.
Stop finding ways to stalk Mark
You’re both taken, just go away.
Ba boom, i’ll see you later”
(six sentences at six words a piece)
“6 word stories” – by various authors
I Eat
I eat
Pills
That eat
Memories
That create
Pain
That causes
Suffering
My brain
Eats me
So I eat
Pills
The Threshold
Where do we break? Between composure and infantile wailing? Euphoria and irritability? Comfort and pain? The pain that pushes you to the point where suicide makes sense. The threshold is lower in us. They try to raise it with pills and therapy and sunshine, so it can’t easily be breached, but it dangles over me, just out of my reach.
I jump for it over and over, wishing I had longer arms or legs. Sometimes I’m weighted down and can barely get off the ground. And if I’m lucky it soars out of sight and I am happy to not have it rest so close to my head.
That line, that threshold, the difference in us is that we see it. Discuss the risk and benefit, what society won’t admit. This makes us real. We do not pretend it is out of reach, that breakdown, that violence, that final breath. We know it is closer to us, our eyes are open.
Admitting it’s existence pushes the breaking point a bit further away. But it is still near. There is comfort where there is pain. It’s an angel and devil, not so far away. That lower threshold, some of us reach it anyway.
americandenial 