Maybe you’re in mad (A Sonnet)

"It's not that you believe people are lying when they tell you that they love you, or when they say that you have value. You just think they're mistaken. 'I love you.' 'I know you do. I know you think you do.’ It’s all in the thought" (Agides, 2015)

Maybe you’re in mad  

Belief in mental illness is the same

as she convinced by what she thinks is real.

In search of feeling... fearful of the name

its promise without trust; has no appeal.

Shaping shared translations each will steal

closer to the truth than many others.

Compassion their combined Achilles heel

agápe flowed, from blind-hearted mothers.

When lovers say they love you; have they lied?

When loves announce they lied; is that your truth?

Affection seems like bullshit we denied

or failed to learn as signals in our youth.

All should just believe that love is giving 

Live to love: a life that is worth living

Choose

Some hearts are so split open

You see bleeding in dying eyes

Others get so badly burnt

They taste bitter char on blistered kiss

Some have a lust so vanquishing

You feel them beat their sensuality to death

Others with a lust so debilitating

They stumble in shadowed feelings and miss.

Some with a love so desperate

You smell them in their foetid fear

Others with a love so disfiguring

They hold their faith in a knot wizened fist.

She owns hate to keep
her company; Scorn to keep
her warm; Fear to keep
her lonely - safe from being harmed.

You choose.

George's War

Princess Josephine (image courtesy wikipedia)

He woke late. Emily; pregnant with their fifth child, lay heavily in a warm wet glow from a fitful sleep. He'd lain awake wondering if this would be their second boy. They had chatted before sleeping of the void left by the passing of their first son aged only eight months. Emily had the three girls to help but George coveted a son to share his gardens and joys.

“Stay there Emm. I’ll get the girls to keep an eye on things”.

Kathleen was thirteen and managed well. The younger two between them doing all those little things that mum struggled with now her sight was lost. George kissed Emily’s pink glowing belly. ‘See you soon little man’ he said picking his cream leather helmet from a hook on the bedroom door before turning; 'love you Em'.

He weaved the black chromed motorcycle along baked autumn lanes, a Blackfin tuna in a rippling sea. She was glossy, glimmer bright, fishtail exhausts polished to a gleam brighter than a smile in a child’s eye. She wore a jet black sidecar, languishing like a platinum draped Josephine Baker. She was his joy his release his obsession his mistress.

It was late morning, an Indian summer day October 1938. Chamberlain had returned a few days earlier with his fluttering paper promise. His Princess always out on Sundays releasing her from her wooden temple taking her to visit his parents. It was about twenty five miles along the counties byways and he knew the route like he knew the growing phases of his prize rhododendrons.

The sun baked a shimmer into the road, making it uncomfortably warm. Sweating heavily in jacket and pale gauntlets his helmet squeaked with perspiration; pushing the peak back every few miles was useless, He pulled over. George took a coarse grey knitted blanket from the sidecar, brought to wrap plants from his father’s estate. Removing helmet and jacket the blanket was used to dry his nape and forehead before replacing and adding his jacket. He pushed the helmet down firmly onto his crown thumping it down with the side of a clenched hand to get a good tight purchase. The rough wiry blanket combined with sweat and rubbing of chin straps had left his jowl sore so he’d left them unfastened. He was fewer than five miles from his parent’s cottage.

Cooler now cruising winding roads, thinning woodland flowing past. Torrents of rose and sage leaves rose as he reached them lowered as he passed in a wave of branches. Ahead the road bore sharp right it was simple to cut the angle by skirting the inside kerb drifting back across he had done it a hundred or more times. This time an enormous moss green liveried bull in the shape of an army Scammell took the same bend from the opposite direction. George snatched at the brake.

But for his sidecar he may well have avoided impact. It had slapped the bulbous wheel arch of the beast and flicked the bike into the air. The bike remains of the side-car and George had their momentum violently stopped by a stolid statuesque gilt leafed Elm tree. Wrapped around its trunk tighter than puttee’s, soldiers leaped from the lorry racing to the confusion; dangling like a pink grub eaten fruit from the blackened branches. His right leg severely lacerated by torn metal he was trapped, the bike above him. His helmet had burst from his head clattered against the hanging branches bouncing into the road.  A junior crewman mistook it for his head and fainted. Hot fuel and oil leaking from the tanks dripped, blistering flesh from his cheek and neck. A gunner grabbed a piece of blanket cloth wrapped into the branches pushing it over his face to stop the burning. The cloth soaked up dripping fuel. Crew and passers-by helped yank the bike out of the trees. In that moment the heat from the engine ignited the cloth  instantly melting it into George’s face and neck. Jackets were ripped from backs and three men beat at the flames and body aware that the whole might explode at any moment. They managed to peel George from the crumpled metal throwing him across the road away from the danger. He passed out from the excrutiating pain.

Emily was told of the accident in the late afternoon. A baby boy was born later that day, five days early. It would be several weeks before Dad met son. He was a beautiful baby.Everyone said how much he looked like his mum

©Agides

Catch 42

Look it up in your favoured browser, the meaning of life is “42”. Douglas Adams may well be smiling at how his apocryphal assertion has become the ultimate answer. But there is a catch.

For me the meaning of life changes dramatically as events along life’s itinerary  impact and it seems to me that these meanderings impact a "mal de tête" person in a disproportionate way.

 The difficulty with the meaning of life whilst suffering a mental illness is that it is in constant flux. Frequently and most damagingly it reaches its nadir in possession of zero meaning. A state reached far too many times and very deeply in recent weeks. Despite a greater understanding of how, one that never feels easier to return from... Whatever you get told!

'There is always the Dog to talk too'

Doctors and psychiatric workers will be horrified by this as its the basic assumption all their work is predicated upon. That the more one understands the factors that precede depressive feelings,the easier you'll find it to modify them’. The reality seems to be that the more one understands, the more one questions the reasons why the pea soup persistently descends. And questions one’s ability to ever permanently prevent it from falling.

The questions you ask yourself are nearly all unanswerable. But often those canvassed by others (not least professionals) bewilder. They are often risible to a malignant, miasmic, mind:

"Have you ever been truly happy?" 

"Have you ever been depression free?"

"Have you ever been hopeful?"

"Tell me why do ‘you’, think you're unhappy"

"Why are you sad?"

"What causes them to start?"

"When is it at its worst?"......;

"What!?"

'20,000  Doubts under the Skull'

Sometimes I forget that those things really exist. There are fleeting moments. Unfortunately guilt persistently swamps the joys just as they are being recognised as such. This guilt is like a cloak that depression wears to cover you in darkness.To make you invisible before joy takes hold too firmly. Then comes the doubt... The doubt that you will ever truly rid yourself of this whirling mass of unanswerable questions. Painful overwhelming doubts. The doubts within the ungraspable dark grey covered  'duck down' duvet. Engorged with the leaden weights of memories too heavy to release from inside this cover. Meant to bring you warmth and comfort. It instead presses down on you in a way that makes you feel as though 'all that you are' is racing to your brain. To escape your body and the only route out is through your eyes. So overwhelmed by the flow that the tears appear as a stream and you wonder if they will ever be 'drops' again. The doubt - the doubt that sows seeds of self deprecation that germinate in rivulets of tears and the swanlike songs of Bunyan's slough"

So there you are mental health problems are really a Catch 22. A paradox where the attempting to escape suffering of depression seems to make the escape impossible and each new attempt makes the next episode more painful and more desperate.

"TOWARDS THE LIGHT! you bloody fool!"

AH! I hear the crowds roar; ' but you proved you can escape so next time you'll feel better because you know you can do it!'

'Really?' how many times do you visit failure before saying 'no more!'

Drink from the puddle the first day you may be quenched drink from it every day you may be trenched.

I have fought back with extreme effort this time. I have walked further with and spoken more to  my dog’s (to reassure myself I still have a voice).Though enjoying these things the respite from my troubled mind looms above me as a terrifying reminder that, the next plummet into the 20,000 doubts under the skull is but a pin prick in a buoyancy tank away. It has left me very tired.

If Adam's is right?; The meaning of a 'Life' with mental health?

It's a Catch 42......