Thoughts on Insanity

I wrote this about 10 years ago as an assignment after doing an intensive case study in a clinical psychology class. It was written as my perspective of the person being studied.

Choosing to voluntarily lock yourself into a mental hospital is probably one of the most difficult decisions that any human being can make. I mean it is one thing for others to think that you are crazy, but as long as you are happy, who cares? But to know that with every passing week, day, hour, second that sanity is slipping past you like sand in an hourglass, well, its pure terror. Way down deep in your gut, we as human beings push our wants, fears, desires and sadness down. Everything that hurts, we push it down, down, into oblivion. But what happens if one day our chest becomes too full? What if we have so much hurt, pain, and fear that it becomes too much to contain? What if the chest becomes so full that our worst thoughts come popping out at us like a jack-in-the-box? Or what if they come pouring out all at once like the waves of an incoming tide? That's when the sanity starts to slip. One begins to fail to separate the real from unreal, the past from present, dreams from life. Do we get to a point where we can no longer distinguish between the things that are mere coincidence from things that were done on purpose?

Is there a purpose? Are we each simply a large gathering of cells hurling through space thousands of miles per hour for a reason? Or are we here simply to fill a void in this ever changing, ongoing hole?

People spend their entire lives searching for the answer with little success. The human lifetime is no more than a few moments. Some we remember, some we forget. Life can be taken in the blink of an eye. Some people wait for death to choose them. Others choose death. Although every life is short, some people make such use of their time, that they impact others. They live on after death through memory, like a scar. Others wisp through life touching few, and when they pass on, they are immediately forgotten. It is as if they were never here. I WAS NEVER HERE.

This is when sanity starts to fade. The line between the sane and the insane is so thin that at times it becomes unseen. We carelessly cloud the depths of our mind, and at times we cross the line between sanity and insanity without even knowing it until we stop, turn around, and look back at what we have done. Looking back, I fear that I have crossed that line.

I have been extinguished. My thoughts, feelings, and actions no longer carry meaning. M life has ended and yet my body lives on. I walk among the cursed and the forgotten. I am merely a shadow in the corner of ones eye.

I gave and gave and gave until the pit of my soul became hollow. I am left empty and angry. There is nothing left but a shell of what once was.

I feel as if I have already been locked away. I am trapped in a cell of emptiness, nothing around but the cold. Way up high, there is a window, too far to reach. Without even looking, I know what is on the other side. Dandelions. Miles and miles of beautiful dandelions, and they are laughing at me. Now I am left to spend the rest of my days thinking of them. Dreaming of the day when I can go outside to stomp them.

I was here. I touched you. Yet my fingerprints seem to have been washed away. Washed away like footprints that were made in the sand.

I gave and gave and gave, until I was left hollow. Now, I have nothing.