The following is an excerpt from the collected writings of a famous schizophrenic who wished to remain anonymous.
Should I be sorry, I sometimes wonder, about not being sane? Should I feel some sort of regret, that I missed the opportunity to experience the world as, perhaps, man was meant to experience it? As I sit here, feeling very among the trees even though I'm on my veranda, I wonder if the view is better to a sane man.
Even so, I myself often wonder if there exists such an entity as the "sane man". Perhaps "sane" is merely an ideal to which we bow, like to so many other ideals. Peace. Justice. Freedom. Sanity? Of course, we treat sanity as something we are all born with one hundred percent, as though those of us markedly without it somehow ended up short--either by a small amount, in the case of the neurotic, or by a large amount, a yawning chasm of insanity eating up the space where our sanity should be--er, in the case of me.
Sometimes I even try to pretend, try to imagine, if you will, what my particular situation might look like, were I sane. I wonder if the colors would seem different, if the voices of the others might not sound so cold, if perhaps a particular chemical in my brain had not developed just so. Or perhaps it would not be so esoteric a change; there is the chance that my state is actually what they say it is: Something "wrong". Something that misinterprets, that fouls up the otherwise-obvious equations of Reality. So also, perhaps the world would simply be not at all what I, in my insanity, could ever see it as. Perhaps my aunt Maureen over in the corner is, in the eyes of the Right, a coatrack. And I, a victim of mechanical error, am forever forbidden from seeing, from knowing, the coatrack.
I must conclude for now, but rest assured that I shall foul these pages with ink once again; it is my plight to do so, and my only relief. For these few moments I am able to communicate with what is increasinly an "outside world" to me, something that I cannot feel the proper connection with anymore. It lacks the sting of Life, I know; it is a sterile and useless process; a mere terminus to something that ended a long time ago. Until the next time, then.
Bless this Life, Yours and Mine,
NAME WITHELD
submitted as an anonymous favor by the Internet entity known as PureDoxyk.
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