What I know

A short Personal Narrative of a teenager finding out more of himself than he had hoped.

 One will never truly know their full self

By Brandon Dawson

 

I have always been afraid, frantic about losing control " over my body, my emotions; afraid of whom I might unknowingly become. It’s with these fears that one starts to realise that there comes a time in everyone’s life where everything they knew, or thought they knew, about their lives is not the whole and complete truth. Learning something new is always scary, especially when it is something about yourself that you realise will be a heavy burden in your life " for the present and future. The moment when you’re biggest fear becomes your inescapable reality. It felt like anyone of our ordinary Sunday afternoons " sunshine, the family sitting along the poolside, kids swimming, with smiles and laughter all around. The kind of day that we all thought we wished would never end, not only because Monday was around the corner, but because there was pure and utter happiness all around - or so we thought. I was never an extremely angry or aggressive child, but the more I look back on it, I noticed that I did have my bad days more than most, but as your average 13 year old boy everyone seemed to accept the: all of a sudden mood swings, the ‘You can’t tell me what to do’ escapades and of course the slamming of the doors " general characteristics of a young man going through puberty; anger and aggression being the norm. For some reason this Sunday just seemed as though it was worse off for me; which was strange because how could anyone, even a boy going through the ups and downs of puberty, be this aggressive on such a ‘fun-filled’ day?

“Supper time!” " My Mother called in the most cheerful of voices. As I walked and awaited the cheery faces that were a mere floor below me; I suddenly felt tense, as though my entire body had changed form, as though a raging fire was ignited inside of me, leaving me without any sort of control over my body. I began to shake and slowly found myself falling to the floor. Screams and then tears, screams and then tears. Each outburst even more agonisingly painful and intense than the last! The last thing I remember was hitting the floor and hearing the nervous repetitive cries from my family and friends that surrounded me: “Help him!”, “Call an ambulance”, “Wake up!” and then, there was silence…

I was awoken by the beeps of the machines and rushing of the nurses in the Hospital. Unsure of what had happened, and a blur " that felt like a black hole in my memory. I was scared. I searched my body for wounds of some sort and found nothing other than a bump on my head. An elderly woman by the name of, Dr. S. Wilkinson entered the room, ecstatic to see that I had finally woken up. Before I could even ask what had happened she began to tell me, “You had a fit. An attack inside your body, there was no way that you or your family could have prevented it, purely because none of you had any idea of your mental condition.” An awkward silence entered the room intertwined with a gush of anticipation. “What condition?” " I asked. The morning of the 12^th of April 2008, I was told that I had an intense form of Bi-Polar disorder; which meant that I would struggle to gain control over my body and emotions for the rest of my life. My greatest fear had just become my reality, and in that instance I knew I was not entirely who I thought I was.

 

 

 

Author's Note

Open to any thoughts and suggestions :) Thank you for taking the time to read my work.

Reviews

[Nusquam Esse]

This hits on a personal level. I have always been extremely careful to maintain control over myself, to a point that many people think is absurd. Fact of the matter is, my Uncle had Schizophrenia, and it escalated out of control quickly. Just a few decades ago, people did not understand mental illness the way they do now; so while many people now would not understand why he was not properly taken care of, it just wasn't as widely understood and recognized back then. He ended up committing suicide, killing himself out in a deserted meadow. For years, the family just thought he had killed himself, the cowards way out. But my father found a journal of his, and through all the incoherent rambles and scribbled numbers (he was convinced he was about to discover the unifying theory) there was an oddly coherent message at the end. He described how he couldn't hold the demon's back much longer, that they had grown stronger and more demanding. And while it had once been them warning him, they were now trying to command him. They had told him to kill his family, and he didn't want to... but he felt it was a downhill battle. He was afraid of death, he was afraid of hell, which is where those who committed suicide went. But he felt that it was the only way. So he killed himself. We often do not realize just how important control over ourselves is, and even when there is a side to us which lurks, often undetected, which we can never control; trying to keep ourselves reigned in is never something we should take lightly!

[Alexis]

awwww.. thank you for sharing

[BrandonDawson]

Thank you for reading. Hope you enjoyed it and found it an interesting story.

[Alexis]

:) you should keep writing you are really good at it