Home is Where the Mind is
You wake up from a dream. The sun is lightly shining through your window, the promise of a new day. You walk to the light and watch. Outside lays the new beginning. Happy faces everywhere. The promise of friends, excitement, opportunity… love. You long to be there, in the dream; you envy it.
You crave possibility. The thought of starting new is refreshing, the answer to all of your prayers. But there lays a darkness. The past draws you in. The sunlight begins to fade, and the black haze of your thoughts creeps back in.
Familiar.
Suddenly the happy faces become judging glares, the friends enemies, the excitement panic, opportunity a trap… love, your demise.
The unknown becomes terrifying. The unknown becomes unbearable. You fall back into the haze because you know when the monsters come if you close your eyes.
You are stuck in an endless cycle. Your heart is at war, your memories the artillery. Every decision you make is delegated by the voices in your head.
‘Don’t talk to him, he could never like you,’
‘You’re too weird to be their friend, don’t bother them,’
‘Why try? You might fail,’
‘Why are you like this?’
‘You aren’t good enough. You’ll never be good enough.’
This is what you know. This is what is bearable. This is home.
Depression, anxiety, PTSD. On their own they are demons; together they are hell. They contradict one another, yet manage to make each other worse. Knowing you have to go outside but fearing the possibility of judgment, the anticipation of attack or failure. It is not a way to live.
And I realized this. In my mind I had flashbacks, doubts, voices screaming, telling me I was no one, telling me I was nothing. The other side of me was creation, confidence, knowing I was someone, knowing I was something. But there is no being in-between; the screaming voices always win. I had to choose a side, and the side I wanted seemed impossible to get to… but I had to try.
Through months of ‘trying’ I felt like giving up. No matter how hard I thought about the positives they just never stayed. Everyday I’d just end up back in the hole my mind had dug for me, and I’d stop fighting. I would sit there and rot.
It was a Friday. My roommate was going away for the weekend, and I’d be alone in the dorm for a few days. As she said her goodbye, the light left with her, and the door shut. They were calling for overcast, but I got rain. Without anyone to convince me to ‘try,’ I dug that hole so deep I couldn’t see the top. The room was black, my mind was black, my heart was black. I felt like I had dissolved. Every part that made me me was gone. All that was left was the empty vessel of the body I once inhabited. I thought I had finally reached the end, that the crows were here.
But then I breathed.
I breathed so hard I screamed. My head in my pillow, my face hot with tears of fire, I screamed. All those demons came tumbling out. I was swimming. The rain was pouring, cooling, refreshing. The hole was filling with water. I was floating to the top. But my past was trying to pull me under, to drown me. So I did what I do best, and picked up my paints.
Through the span of eighteen hours, I painted without pause. With each brushstroke I could feel my mind lightening. The black transferred itself in dark inky splotches that spread like spiders across the page. The blue and purple of my sorrows seeped out of my pores and spewed onto the page. I emerged from hell and let myself feel the warmth of the sun. I was finally awake.
Of those eighteen hours of darkness I did not sleep, I did not eat, I did not drink. When I finally set down my brush I was exhausted. Every muscle in my body pulsed with agony. My mouth was dry and my eyes were heavy, but my mind was bright. I had won the war.
When I finally slept it was dreamless. When I awoke the sky was blue, the grass green, the sun bright and yellow. That morning I saw the happy faces, the excitement, the opportunity, and most of all, love. I felt love; love for myself. That morning I let myself be happy. I embraced the person that was hidden away for years. I was finally me. I was finally home.
Home is the result of my fight with mental illness. This piece was the first, and biggest step in my recovery. That being said it is by no means a cure. Mental illness is something that haunts all of us, whether we like to admit it or not. And it does not sleep. I still work on it everyday. Some days I go back into that hole, and I don’t think it will ever truly fill up. Despite that, your demons do NOT define you. No matter the fight you have to put up, there will always be a way to push through, even just a little. You have more power than you give yourself credit. You are important. You matter. You have a purpose. The voices in your head do not reflect reality. The unknown is scary, yes. But the exciting and fulfilling part of life is figuring out what lays behind. There is so much opportunity wasted if you let your conscience tell you you can’t. Ultimately, you may not have control over what is around you, but you do have control over yourself.
You have a choice. You can let those voices pull you down and keep you under, or you can scream back until they start to listen.
Home was featured in the Moncton Art Gallery 2017 Juried Exhibition.
Home now resides with her sisters Resurrection and Restriction in the home of a lovely man in Moncton, NB.