by Meghan Hanna

Created on: September 09, 2009

Mental illness is an interesting predicament to suffer from. It takes reality and distorts it beyond recognition. It takes something normally comforting, like homemade cranberry sauce, and morphs it into brain matter and skull fragments. It takes the simple voice of reason and instead of hearing "just breathe" in your mind, you hear "you'll die soon".

Once you've crossed a certain barrier it becomes nearly impossible to discern what is real and what is brewing in your imagination. Not sleeping, and not eating only added to this terrifying alternate reality that had enveloped me.

By hiding the things that were going on, I truly believed that I was helping him. I thought that maybe I could save him. I see now that I probably helped him along his twisted, surreal path which eventually led to his decision to part from the world that he had so badly misunderstood.

When it comes to views of the world, mine had become unendingly inauspicious. I saw nothing but varying shades of gray. There was no color anymore, no laughter, no light. Just darkness and the agonizing assemblage of demons in my head.

As days passed my demons grew stronger and stronger. They gained more and more control of every aspect of life. Every shadow held my death. In each darkened corner I saw my demise more vividly than I could see anything else. In the dim evening lights my friends faces morphed into the face of a shotgun death. They're eyes getting lost in the blood and shadows of their crumpled heads.

I grew so sick that even in broad daylight I couldn't wipe the twisted fog from my weary eyes. The real world continued slipping further and further away, then one day, it was gone all together. There were no more voices of reason. There was no rationale. It was all just pain, distortion and an inability to even remember what normal was.

The one question I always had was "Did normal ever really exist?" Was this my destiny? Was I to sit there and accept the harsh reality that maybe my definition of normal was really insanity, and what I viewed as insanity was the true reality?

It's like cancer. It starts slowly, a vague twinge, a slight sense of discomfort. It becomes more and more aggressive the longer it goes untreated. Then when finally help is sought, it's too late. The prognosis has become terminal. There was nothing but a miracle that could save me...and by that point I couldn't even remember what a miracle was, let alone try to hope for one.

My sickness ate away at the very core of my being.

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