Wounded King

Swords of the soldiers cut into flesh and bone. Deep wounds, when the arrows fell. The crown made bloody. A coward cries. An army yields to the enemy.

Dark ages, when a King becomes a peasant. Humbled by his injuries, anger grows and spite is unleashed from his tongue. He is not who he thought.

A scar develops where Love once lived. Empathy knows no bounds, and yet it hides at the thought of death. A growl will replace laughter when danger looms.

Further and further the King wanders through pitch black darkness. He sees no light but somehow he is never blind. A voice calls to him and he moves ever closer to the sound.

He stumbles over something hard, impenetrable. Reaching down, he brushes off the black stone. Green light explodes from the jewel that lays under layers of soot. The King weeps.

His pockets now lined with riches, the King carries on. Though hobbled and weak, he smiles, once, twice, and no more. For the green stone asks him to disrobe and walk through the frost. He obeys but he spits on the stone.

Years and years. An eon to the mind. The king carries the small burdens of treasure that appear on his path. It is heavy and he curses out at the gods. They do not answer. His guts spill out from the wounds that have not healed since the war.

Though his kingdom has fallen, his Queen and his Captains remain. They carry him when he falls unconscious. They see something perhaps he does not.

A white hot sword of truth manifests in front of him. He is cut in half, the flaming blade searing his insides shut. Two Kings now form, The Judge and The Evil One. His eyes now see that they were always a part of him, intertwined in a disgusting heap with a golden veneer.

The Gods finally act. The king is blessed with vision that can see beyond horizons he once conquered. A stone is engraved with commandments and placed in his heart.

Love slowly creeps into his veins, it has not left him. It was only in hiding, biding time. It is fragile still, and does not have the strength yet to take him over. The King Smiles again.

The Evil One will contend with The Judge, and indeed it will even triumph on occasion. But the Judge is the true King.

Responsibility falls on the King, he must rebuild what has been taken from him and what he has tossed away in ignorance.

Standing on stilted legs, the King announces his Kingdom to come. His Queen raises her hands to pray, a sign of faith. His Captains give their salute and begin forming the Golden Army.

The Wounded King fills his chest as he looks out to world. He knows now that he may fall endlessly again. He is exalted beyond his former self. Fractured still, he raises his voice to the clouds and exclaims,

“I was, I am, I will!”

New Beginnings

Artwork credit: @leaptheman

I came across a picture today that I think represents how I feel about my life lately. I really love this drawing done by an artist who also has schizoaffective disorder. It’s almost as if I could have manifest it myself, if I only had the same skill of expression through artwork.

As I saw it, the picture shows a face that is fractured, torn, suppressed, insane, malfunctioning, sick. There is a flower that grows out of the top of this face, its roots intertwined in the dilapidated illness of the mind.

And the more I looked at this drawing the more I felt I could relate to it. I felt it because I’ve been through the muck and the mire and I have died and been reborn. That flower, to me, represents hope, change, ambition, rebirth. It is rooted in the mess that is my mind. From a distorted bed of lies rises something new, something beautiful.

My life before the illness was without passion, ambition, direction. And it remained like that even through many years after the diagnosis. I have no doubt it would have stayed this way until I died, had it not been for the most traumatic thing that ever happened to me.

It’s hard to believe it happened six years ago, it still feels fresh as if it was a month ago. I was at the mall with my family, browsing in a jeans supply store. A man approached me and began asking strange questions. Even as I write this it is too much for me and I think I am not ready to go into details. I will just say that in the moment I thought he was there to murder me. I truly believed this to be true. I told my brother, who was with me while this man spoke to me, that I loved him, and goodbye. I accepted my coming death and waited for the gunshot.

My dad, who was waiting outside the store, saw that something strange was going on. He intervened and told the man to leave us alone. Even to this day with medication and perspective, I still think that if my dad hadn’t stepped in that this man would have murdered me.

In what seemed like my last moments on earth, it wasn’t just fear of death that shook me to my core. I mean, sure, death is fucking scary and it was most definitely a reason for me to be afraid. But it was the knowledge that I was going to die having never accomplished anything that really settled into my mind.

After this incident, I ended up holing up in my room, terrified of even going outside of my house. But there was this new fire in me, something that fought back. Something that said I have things I need to do with my life.

And so I began to venture outside of my comfort zones. I would go out into the yard for 5 minutes. And then I would go out in the driveway. And then I would go or a quick drive around the block. So on and so forth I built up my courage to go out for longer periods of time.

These days, I go out in public by myself for long periods of time. The fear is still there, and I don’t think it will ever go away. I have learned to be brave and to test my delusions. I’m still not perfect and I still have days when I cannot bring myself to go out in the world. But I am not stuck in my room, which I very well could have allowed myself to be forever.

I have learned so much about myself and my limits. Where I am weak and where I am strong. How to cope with hardship. How to survive depression. How to have hope when all seems to be falling down.

At the moment, I am building a business plan with a friend. We started over a year ago and had planned to open shop in 2018, but I had a minor relapse and things had to be postponed. This year we are back at it and our plans are stronger than ever. Soon we will be going to a workshop to learn how to make a professional business plan. Then we will be presenting that business plan to an organization to seek funding. We can start even without the extra funding, but it would make a big impact on getting going. So that is where our focus is.

Today, 9 years into having schizoaffective, I am the best version of myself that I have ever been. I have ambition and drive. I am passionate about becoming a better person. I am changing the things that have kept me down even before the illness. I am no longer nihilistic. I seek to make a difference in the world. I see growth in myself every few months. Even looking back at old blog posts I have made here, I know that I have changed as a person.

I still face depression and I still want to give up some days. I am quicker to respond to that negativity than I used to be even a year ago. I use life to inspire me. Just eight hours ago I was feeling hopeless and useless for the hundredth time this month. But I do not let those feelings sit with me for very long. I always push back. I find a way to overcome them. I look at how far I’ve come and that reminds me that there is still more left in me to fight. It will always be hard for me, and I accept that when I can. This is the adventure that is my life.

Switching Direction

So I’ve been writing a lot of poetry lately. It makes more sense to have this blog dedicated mostly to poetry, with my blog as more of an aside. I’ve been writing poetry as an outlet for the thoughts that I have, and kind of steered away from outright blogging my thoughts. I haven’t decided if I will do away with the blog portion altogether, and only focus on poems. For now I will leave up my blog posts. My poetry seems to be what people are most interested in reading, so it seems rational to do away with the blog posts eventually. I think I will switch over to a personal journal for when I need to write about the things I am thinking about. I’ve also updated my theme as the old one was getting a little dated, and wasn’t as pleasant on the eyes. Hope you enjoy the new theme!

1 Month

Things have been improving in my life over the past month. My biggest achievement is that I haven’t smoked pot for just over a month now. The first two weeks of withdrawal came with lots of headaches, insomnia, tiredness and stomach aches. After that initial hump it’s only been up from there. I’ve had more energy and motivation. My cognitive functioning is improving everyday. I haven’t been having so much paranoia and anxiety.

I spent the past few months lowering my intake from everyday smoking down to once a week, and on January 1st I quit altogether. I didn’t try to make it a new years resolution because those don’t seem to last more then a week. It was more of just that I was ready to finally go cold turkey and doing it on the first day of the year seemed like a good day to track how long I had been off of it.

This is the first time I’ve quit before without having cravings. Which is a great sign for keeping up with it. I think the work I’ve done on myself, and the goals I’ve set, have created a reality where I don’t need it anymore to deal with my problems. I know that it only increases my chances of psychosis, causes anxiety and paranoia, and messes with my motivation and thinking ability.

I am wary of when I hit the 2-3 month mark of being off of it this time. The last time I quit, that was when I tricked myself into “just one more time”. I will not be having another last toke. I am finished with it. And I realize now that it is a daily choice that I have to make. I cannot let myself play mind games and rationalize reasons to smoke again. When I quit for 2 months over a year ago, just smoking up again once was all it took to get back into it daily for another year straight. And although I fell down, it was necessary to learn a lesson of just how far I will fall if I allow myself to.

I won’t be able to learn the complex things I need to learn to go into engineering if I am smoking up. Some people can deal with going to school and toking, but I am not one of those people. It has affects on my mental illness and cognitive functioning. It makes me stupid.

Going to school is my biggest goal at the moment. I am pursuing a career in electrical engineering. I have a lot of work to do but I am excited about the process as much as I am about the reward. I’ve been practicing my math skills over the past couple weeks, learning the things I failed to understand while in high school. I’ve been enjoying the work I put into it very much. And the sense of accomplishment as I fill up my notebook with equations is lifting my self-esteem.

I have a lot to learn about still. I did poorly while in school, and although I graduated I just barely made it through. I learned the absolute minimum. Which will not suffice when I go back to do my upgrading of prerequisites to get into university. The next semester for upgrading starts in winter of this year. And although that is a far ways away, I am still worried it may not be enough time to catch up. I need to ace my math courses to get into the university I would like to go to.

So I’m feeling slightly overwhelmed, but at the same time I’m feeling good about myself for reaching for my goals. I have something to accomplish and I am set out to do so. My medication is working well since I have not drank in a few months. I don’t have any plans to drink again in the future.

Life is looking up right now. And that is just as scary as it is comforting. I have a little fear some nights that something terrible is going to happen to bring it all crashing down again. I try my best to have courage and understand that I will just have to deal with whatever comes my way.

I’ve especially been enjoying writing poetry for the past couple weeks. It seems to be the only thing that soothes my anxiety. When I can’t sleep at night it keeps me occupied and free from worry. It may not be very good poetry, but it is my expression of self and that makes it special to me.

I will continue working on my goals as much as I can. I know that with persistence, and the support I receive from loved ones and my mental health workers, that I can do something worthwhile with my life. I don’t want to self sabotage anymore, I just want to keep putting one foot in front of the other and remain steadfast on my journey.