Has anyone read
Veronika decides to die, by
Paulo Coelho? It's a very interesting book. One of the characters in it pretends to be
schizophrenic, to escape his parents. He wants to be an artist. His father is a diplomat of sorts, and wants him to be a serious man with a serious job. Yeah.
I've thought about doing that sometimes. Just flipping out. I mean, who's to say I haven't really flipped out? Earlier this year and late last year, I felt like I was really walking a very thin line between staying in the world of the sane and crossing over to the absolutely fucked up crazy side.
In 7th grade, I started consciously trying to write fiction. I had an obsession with the human mind and the way we perceive things. I wrote a couple of short pieces from the perspective of someone who had hallucinations and a very fucked up mind (I didn't really know about schizophrenia back then). The series was called Monologues of a crazy boy, and it ended with the boy jumping out a window, not knowing that he was up in the 10th floor of a building (I didn't really consider the fact that they bar windows in psychiatric institutions. Again, I didn't know this back then). I was alone a good part of the time I wasn't in school, this was the year my little sister moved with my dad, and I started going home instead of going to my Nanny's (I was old enough to take care of myself). I started having issues, I became introverted and that was the start of the depression that lasted until earlier this year. Many a time I thought about just pretending to flip out so that I wouldn't have to deal with the painful world around me. I was tired of it all.
Sometime late last year, I thought I was having hallucinations. Lights coming in through windows in dark rooms became faces, shadows became people, and I could hear their voices in my head and feel their emotions: Only I could see them, and they didn't like me because I could see them. I told Brian, my boyfriend at the time, about these things, and he was skeptical, obviously. I mean, jeez. Now that i think back on it, I can only say one thing:
A couple of months ago, I was very, very fucked up.
Now I'm okay, I think. I mean, I'm pretty content with life, and all that. I don't get horrible suicidal thoughts. But in my empty apartment, in the dark, the shadows still move. It's kinda creepy. I'm pretty much okay. But sometimes I wonder if a very horrible shock would just make me completely flip out, for good. It's a possibility that scares me.
The human mind is a very complex and interesting thing.