THE COLOUR OF MADNESS
A Blog About Living with Mental Illness
Labrador
The California skyline stretches out before me. It’s night time and the glow of lights, blinking from helicopter tails and city offices replaces the stars and illuminates my view. I watch in a trance like state as tiny cars pass through my bedroom along distant roads intertwining seamlessly between buildings and bridges.
The world around me glows a comforting blue and I begin to wonder about the people. The ones that don’t really exist inside this computer generated landscape. The people going about their pretend lives, leaving pretend workplaces on their pretend commutes home. I wonder about their homes, do they have children? Partners? Do they have dogs? If so, are they Labradors? For some reason pretend people in pretend worlds always seem to own Labradors.
I run my hand down my face, I feel it’s shape and I question it’s reality. My hand brushes reflexively across my collarbone and down the thin tube that runs beneath my skin toward my breast where a round metal port about the size of a coin protrudes a good few millimetres from my chest wall.
For a moment I imagine injecting into it with an oversized syringe filled with heroin. A direct line to my heart, how much could I get in before I succumbed? Old habits die hard.
I trace the scar on my abdomen with my finger as I have a thousand times before. Thick and rope like, it continues past the place where my belly button used to be, beyond the bag that now lives on my stomach and disappears into my pubic bone. “Told you you’re the clone” whispers a voice in my head and I grin for a second before wondering if she is in fact right.
The person I once thought I was certainly doesn’t exist.
I remember the first moment I truly understood the world wasn’t real. I remember the feelings of fear and doubt that had haunted me for so long being suddenly replaced by a feeling of power. I was six years old, and by all definitions completely lost in a densely wooded forest somewhere in England, but none of that mattered at the time because now I had indisputable proof. I finally knew their secret and nothing else could ever matter.
How does one hold onto that secret? What can be done with such information? Who knows, who doesn’t? As time wore on I realised I wasn’t the only one who had figured it out. Hints were everywhere, some carefully testing the waters like a secret code only visible to those in the know. Others were so blatant it was as if they were flaunting their knowledge in front of those who were not yet awake to the truth just so they’d kick themselves later for not seeing it.
I reach over and fumble for the remote to turn off the television. Los Angeles fades to black and the bedroom becomes a party of silhouettes with the ability to morph into anyone and anything until my eyes adjust. I still hate the darkness.
I hold my hand on my abdomen again. The same abdomen that supposedly grew and carried four babies. I try to imagine for a moment what it must feel like to be pregnant, but all I can feel beneath my hand is scarred skin and the rhythmic pulsating of my aorta.
My mind defaults to images of self directed violence and I lift my hand quickly as I remember I’m not supposed to be here. This isn’t my body, this isn’t my life, that isn’t to be my death. I try to find a fix point in the blackened room but the darkness starts to strangle me.
I try to stifle the onslaught of inevitable screaming, I feel it in my heart more than I hear it these days. My throat tightens in terror and my chest crushes under its own weight. I redirect my hand, ritualistically running it along the edges of my hip bones one at a time over and over. It helps block it out. The dungeon, the smell of blood, the flurry of a thousand imprinted memories that did not belong to me, memories I never wanted, memories I can’t escape, memories that, just like me aren’t real, can’t be real.
The muted glow of moonlight peeks from a clouded sky and filters through the bedroom window, in its wake I can see the shape of the big black dog that’s lying on the end bed snoring softly.
It’s not a Labrador.
9 Comments on “Labrador”
Leave a Reply to Carol anne Cancel reply
THE COLOUR OF MADNESS 
Hugs ❤ ❤ ❤
LikeLike
❤️
LikeLike
and not a wait,what… to be read… but wait I’m ditching the WP thing and can’t take yous with me… but wait.. what if you sent stuff anyways… I can hang on to my first free site at alecfraher@gmail.com… it has a sunflower header… and hopefully yous’ll be able be able be able to see flowers too.. I haven’t had luck with the lottery yet but if I do it I will find you and yours too, for sure… I just noticed the be able repetition but rather liked it… thinking of yous, oink oink pink 🐷🐷🐷
LikeLiked by 1 person
Aloha. Hello and goodbye? I prefer goodbye and hello… Less sad. Sometimes WP is bad for the soul. Cleansing is understandable, free yourself. I’ll still be here in the shadow lands. I do think you can still follow ppl by email notification without a WP account? Can’t remember how, might be a random link floating around the side of the page?
Until we meet again…
LikeLiked by 1 person
damn techi stuff does my head in although where would any of us be without… I want to say Thank you for being or beings… I struggle massively with numbing out… cptsd and emotional disassociation and reading your stories and other stuff hits home…. and I feel real for a bit…you are truly gifted and how…there’s €90m on the lottery tonight lol lol… I wish ⚡⚡⚡
LikeLiked by 2 people
Well they, meaning Google/WP, finally ended the service, which was odd because I never got it in the first place. anyhow, they did it as I replied to Seven. I have sneaked in here through a back door but will get my reply to you ASAP, or something like when I navigate the site properly. btw my hand is better but I can’t stop waving. The man sat in his car at the traffic lights almost got out to chase me. Lucky for me that the lights changed from stop to go. Lights do that. Colours are lights too, no? Hang on to your Brilliant Selves. 💜
LikeLiked by 2 people
💜💜💜💜
LikeLiked by 1 person
reply to Seven
Allow the Colours that Yous are.
How far, if at all, in m(l)anguaged words can Yous fall?
Unpunctuated, the mirror’s looking-back gaps, cracks, shards
without, ever, asking if Yous knew Little Hans,
and who is actually scared of who?
The zeitgeist of madness, is, th(m)en, accordingly explained this way, and at Colours expense, these are not, knots meant, of this we’re assured, but what of the Colours classified and captured in code.
Do lean-in. Yous won’t fall. Trust in insights Yous possess. In the many incarnations, not persona non-grata, making a mockery in psychotherapy. Yous contrubtion is crisp and clear and so bright. It is in Yous shadow the outside world hides.
Knowth this. Circumvent that which m(l)anguage alone prevents. Hell bent on Yous annihilation. Let the Colours do what colours do best, appear, disappear, bend light, reflect/refract and digest. Give them the time needed to be at their best. Patience of heart is all they request.
Light will, if Yous Will, get you through, paths to defy the hidden orthogonality, for Yous are, actually, living the really real, Reality. Broken. In Bits. Sharp and Edgy. Cuts. Deep. Beneath. In-between and the rest.
The will of countless others, for a 100yrs or more, seek only understanding, a hand-me-down gown, an ill fitted understanding projected on to their subjects, scared of the honesty and openness, scared of the abjection, in their own hearts they project, completely, missing the point of a collective with-standing.
Standing alone on this hill, Knowth. Swirling patterns of a single light form Ezzy speaks of. Heart felt meaning restored to All and the very purpose of which Yous all were born. Yous defy that which science forgets, bogged down in its own reflection, the mirror projects, a function of brain, of how we dress, where we’re born, it’s the Mirror that’s in a mess, so, please when Yous see them, ask the secular sinners to give it a rest.
Let Yous and the Colours, Do, what they Do best. Forget the mirror and it’s projected mess.
*it’s a bit all over and quite long and not too well formed. Knowth is a place in Ireland and site of ancient wisdoms *
LikeLiked by 2 people
Whenever you see a rainbow bright,
know I’m watching over you.
When the pot of gold is out of sight,
and all you see is blue,
remember the sky’s reflect the ocean and the sea reflects our mood.
But sands of time heal the darkest nights and the waves will settle to.
Part the heavy clouds & find the light,
let my colours shine on through.
Feel the love of angels in the gift of sight and bathe within its hue.
Let the sun take over until dusk turns night,
and dream of beauty rich and true.
For madness might be a lonely fight,
and sadness feel like the only truth,
but each of us has had a story to write and grateful to have had a friend to write it to.
LikeLiked by 2 people