We Are

Not really a story, but a short piece I wrote a while back regarding personal experience with mental illness.

We are the children of darkness. Lost in our own homes, we struggle night after night to rest, only to be plagued by sleepless sleep for hours on end. Our days are spent floating in a Haloperidol Haze or swallowing the lonely dregs of an Aripiprazole illusion. We are the broken toys, left on a playground to bleach in the sun. No one wants our damaged parts. Our shadows haunt us; they read the novel of our imagination without invitation and manipulate our minds with little regard towards boundaries or limits. They are, of course, master puppeteers. When the bugs get under our skin, our solution is to dig them out one by one-- a wrapped gift tearing up its epidermis packaging. What’s to mourn? We had the wrong mailing address anyway. Horribly alone, the importance of communication is long forgotten. We slip further into the frantic melancholy of psychosis; a wind up music box playing the same tune over, and over again. Leave us alone! we pray, for though we may feel lonely, the silent terror, the murderer of our dreams, the very bane of our existence lives behind our own eyes, transforming  them into black funnels of smoldering, bitter hatred. The process is now complete. We are the children of darkness-- forever renegades poisoned by our own bodies, attacked by our own minds, and slain by our own sadness only to begin the cycle yet again, forcing us once more into the turbulent waves of madness. We are the children of darkness, swept away by insanity, indefinitely locked in a waking nightmare that we cannot escape. We are the disturbed youth of the world-- forever quarantined, bleeding into non- existence as a result of misunderstanding, never to return. We were the children of darkness.

Reviews

[Agyani]

Sara, I don't know what is your experience with mental illness, so I will not question everything you talk about since I lack your perspective.
The thing I liked most about this piece was how you said that those who are the most troubled have long since forgotten the importance of communication. It tells me that you know how important communicating is, even if we feel we are not making progress or if things go from bad to worse. I like that you think so. :)
What I am not really sure about is us being children of darkness. It's a part of us, yes, but it doesn't encompass us. There is more to us than the darkness around and within us. And I feel that when we distance ourselves from those things we get closer to the darkness, and THAT's when it becomes our entire world. You might ask what those other things are? Well, I'm no expert, and I confess that I don't know. But what I feel is that when we stop making an effort to change a certain situation, when we accept our condition as our fate, that's when things get really bad, for it gets so much harder to find some peace, some happiness.
I would like to know what you think about this now. It will help us understand this topic and ourselves better. :)

P.S. - You got a little esoteric at times in the beginning, so much to the point that I was left wondering what is the word/s I had just read!

[Sara Brown]

Thank you for your thoughtful review. I totally agree that in many ways our world is not defined by our "dark areas." For this piece, I wanted to construct something that expressed my thoughts when coming from a "dark" place and allow myself to get lost in the process of writing it. It depicts the hopeless struggle that many live for years. However there can be no light without the dark. What I also find interesting is that acceptance doesn't necessarily mean "resignation" or to stop fighting and trying. Sometimes I feel that once we accept our flaws and the things going on in our lives, we can work forward more efficiently from there rather than being in a state of denial. Essentially, just because you are born from "darkness" doesn't mean you can't have light. I am very interested in your point of view! Thank you so much for taking the time to review my work; it means a lot!

[Agyani]

What you said about accepting the flaws to work forward makes complete sense. I agree with you on that. In this case though it didn't feel that way. I mean it's one thing to be in denial about your chubbiness or rudeness but it's quite different from accepting things as your bad luck or just how you are born or just something that happened because of the circumstances. I hope you understand what I mean.
By the way, it's really good to know your thoughts like this. You're open to discussion and reflection on both sides of an idea, and that itself makes me happy. :D

[Esther]

To be honest, I've rarely come across as expressive a writing as this, in depicting depression. Mostly, you come across slit wrists or overdosing on drugs in pieces ruminating on the inner darkness.
You have brought into it, a poetic flow as it begins in confusion and ends in the realisation of a bitter truth.
I can't really express how much I loved this, how much it echoed my thoughts.
Thank you,
Esther

[Sara Brown]

Thank you so much!