The Man, the Myth, and the Madness

I sat on the edge of a sheer cliff, where no one’s sight penetrated the darkness of that pit met its ground. Wound tighter than and coiled steel spring, I gripped the dark earth with all my might, and leaned over the edge, undeterred from my desire to know that final destination, because it was my fault. I had always been my fault, or at least that was what I had been told. Over, and over a voice taunted me with my fate. I was fated to fail.

In February of 2013, I had voluntarily checked myself into Kaseman Medical Center’s psychiatric wing. For three days in a row prior, I had been unable to think about anything else but the multitude of ways that I would have killed myself. Sleep had offered no respite, as dreams of death and my inability to escape it had haunted me. I hadn’t stopped crying, balling, at thoughts like boats full of people that had careened over the edge of a waterfall, only to have found jagged rocks and hard earth. After I had a frantic, panicked call to my psychologist, I had found myself at Kaseman. I think my youngest sister had taken me there, and within moments of checking in, I had been given something to calm me down.

I had finally found rest I had so needed, darkness and no dreams. Regimented routines had filled the morning and afternoon, designed to have brought order to chaos, and a bit of time to have healed. It had been like Basic Training Camp in the US Army (and just a bit of a nit-pick, it totally gets under my skin when people call the US Army and US Air Force training Boot Camp; Boot Camp is a Marine or US Navy term, and in the US Army and US Air Force it’s call Basic Training Camp – BTC), where there had been a time for eating and socializing, a time for individual care, group care, and most of the waking day was spent alone in our rooms. This process had been exactly what I had needed right then. I had been allowed a pencil, sharpener, and all of the printed wastepaper I could have ever wanted. I had needed to write, to have asked myself questions, and then to have answered them. The only way I could have begun to have understood what had been happening within my own psyche was to have had strict regimen and plenty of time alone.

Somewhere in my mind had lived a voice that shouldn’t have been there at all. My stepfather’s direct and cruel tone had had but one line to have spoken:

“If something goes wrong, it’s always your fault.”

Once I had figured that out, I had known what to do next:

Pen to paper to bleed out the past.