White Paper Ward

 

 

-I- Electricity.

I am writing again. Pretending that this sub-standard string of words; this badly structured syntax; this theatre of symbolism, is more than just a faulty illusion by a defective stage magician. Pretending that there is some profound, intrinsic truth between the ambivalent  ink lines that I rigidly carve. Pretending that I posses even the slightest shred of undiluted talent when all I do is imitate: endless simulacra.  Pretending that life has anymore meaning than an incidental and endless string of action and reaction; of cause and effect. Pretending that I’m perceptive and intelligent when most of the time I’m simply pathologically manipulative. The acerbic, ashen taste of guilt swells beneath my tongue and fills my mouth with self-loathing atrophy over this.

 

 I’ve worn this mask for so long that I’ve forgotten who I am beneath. Forgotten who it is that I loathe. I no longer recognize my reflected image upon this mirror of paper and ink. I don’t know who I am anymore. Did I ever? Maybe I’m nothing and nobody. Just an empty space that words no longer fill. Maybe I’m an aporia: an irredeemable paradox. The loose thread that if tugged in the right direction will unravel the fabric illusion of my fiction.

 

I wonder is it the same with you? Do you write to reveal the truth compacted between the ink imprints, grounded by a definite full stop? Or do you write to conceal it behind the indecisive comma or the question marks that require no answer? Maybe you just write for the sake of the illusion; reality indefinitely deferred by the wandering trail of an ellipsis…

 

-II- Electricity.

I sit in one of the many identical white walled, sterile rooms of the hospitals psychiatric ward, my thoughts swirling chaotically in an erratic, imperfect circle. The room is padded soft and scornfully devoid of all sharp edges. In the absence of a pen and paper I carve words into my arm with a paper clip I preemptively stole from the reception desk upon being admitted for an indefinite expanse of time.

“Until I get better” they said. As though this “condition” were not so much a part of who I am as a curable sickness; a sexually transmitted disease I’d contracted when oblivion drugged me with an entire bottle of anti-depressants and fucked me senseless. I still lust after it.

 

My doctor, Dr. Placebo, just finished routinely insulting me with vague, self-preserving, carefully worded claims that he can better understand the dark contours of my twisted mind through the modern day discourses of psychology and psychiatry than I can by having lived within them. “Borderline Personality Disorder” is one of many labels they’ve habitually thrown at me in this place as a series of pitiful attempts to explain me away; as if naming the demon automatically enabled them to combat it; as if diagnosis equated to understanding. I resent being forced into boxes like the easy bend of an inked tick on the standardized questionnaires they handed me upon arrival. However this particular label, BPD, is one I’ve come to like. I am on the borderline: the borderline of this moment and the next; of memory and hallucination; of truth and lie; of reality and fiction; of life and of death.

 

 Oh how I covet death and its promise of permanent, eternal release. Why can’t the world just let me die a guiltless death? Is that really so much to ask? Would you let me die? I am in incomprehensible anguish, constantly tormented by the arched shadows as I watch them distort and twist (in ways they shouldn’t) into lurid tentacles that insidiously coil themselves around me, swallowing me beneath the dying light. I don’t know you, but I am in love with you, or at least what I imagine you to be: my ideal reader. All I want from you is such a small, simple thing. Would you deny it to me when the blood red ink of imagined worlds can no longer pull us through the pain of living? Would you show kindness to a stranger and grant his final intimate wish?

 

-III- Electricity.

To whom it may concern,

 

After administering, often forcefully, high dosages of the medications Prozac, Olanzapine, and Valium as well as three consecutive bouts of electroconvulsive therapy the patient has shown a marked improvement. He no longer expresses a wish to die. Although he often claims that he is already dead and no longer feels anything, I have concluded that this is mostly the product of his continued resentment towards the Karathine Mental Health Centre in spite of its efforts to help him. Therefore as of today’s date I declare that said patient is recovered and fit for reintegration into the wider community.

 

Kind regards,

 

Dr. M. Placebo

 

13/05/1986