Madness

It’s hard to not think about your own insanity when your thoughts are competing with one another and screaming at you from every direction.

Every line written or every thought spoken is merely a chain of consciousness pulled from the darkness of my mind and shared with whomever should be listening. It is only even one branch of thinking, or one small isolated thought at a time. Do they represent me? How can they? But yes, of they do.

Can you judge the ocean by one wave on the beach? That one small wave that ripples over the soft sands of the comforting beach fall in contrast to the dark terrifying unexplored voids that make up the ocean. Which one is real? Does the softness of the wave comfort you enough to feel an inkling of understanding, and perhaps it’s enough to put the darkness to the back of your mind?

Of course I am plagued by some sort of madness. How can I not? I feel cursed in my own mind. I doubt myself, and my thoughts, and my place in the world. I am angry and bemused at the lack of a descent into madness, in fact. There has been no spiral or decline; it has just been uncovered by an awareness and understanding of myself and everything around me. It’s always been there; this chaos both inside me, in my chest - and the chaos in my mind. The ever present chaos, that is normally hidden and buried by the noise. So much noise. It’s all around us, and it’s purposeful. How can it not be?

Everyone is blissfully ignorant, they’re happy to live their lives with their eyes closed; or worse still they will look wherever they are told, and will listen to whatever it is that they’re told to listen to.

It has to be madness.

Madness by awakening; or perhaps sadder still merely opening one’s eyes to the flaws and chaos of your own design. An incompatibility with how the world wants you to be and wants you to live.

And let’s be clear, it’s a people problem. These systems that control us or dictate every moment of our lives are systems and designs by people. The people who lack understanding, who walk around with their eyes closed, and are ignorant to everything including their own minds - they are still people, and so people are part of the problem. Of course they are. And can you see the irony of one person writing about how people are the problem to one’s madness? I see the irony, I think the irony; and it fuels the madness and the feeling of insanity. And so perhaps whilst it has not been a descent, it is just that I am on the top of the mountain and my fall is yet to come. Perhaps I am at the summit looking at and I am blinded by the overwhelming discovery of my curse and my rejection of what is right now; and perhaps the only want to see more of what is to come is to simply take a step forward and accept the reality of what is.

Maybe it is comparative. Life is by no means easy for everyone - let’s get that clear; but we’re also talking about madness and so we’re allowed to talk in general terms. Looking from within and looking at the world it is difficult not to recognise the general ease at which the normal person has at existing. Of course thriving is another thing, but let’s talk about existing. How can I speak about the general ease as if I can live inside another’s mind? Well, to feel so unseen and misunderstood comes with being alone - if I lived in a world where everyone lived with the heaviness and the chaos and the madness I am sure I would have known by now - certainly the world we live in would be much different. I see how people act when they are in rooms full of people. I see how they talk, and how they plan their days and their lives.

No one talks with the contemplation and pain that attacks your mind when you live like this. It is unfair. I do not know why everything is so difficult for me, when it does not seem hard for everyone else.

And so perhaps it is a desperation that I believe I am alone. If everyone felt like I do, and I was the only one finding things so difficult, I think I would find it even more difficult to bare. Not only being broken and suffering together with everyone else, but doing so and feeling alone again and struggling more so than others.

There is nothing wrong with struggling, I know that. But it is difficult to suffer and truly believe that. No one enjoys it. And yet, would I change myself for more sanity? Would I trade the complexities and the deepness and the madness for blissful ignorance and straight thinking and empty existence?

No, I would not. Why? I guess it makes me feel special. It makes me feel some sort of self importance that I wouldn’t usually feel. I do not think that that is coming from a sense of ego, rather I think it is a reflection of my lack of understanding from the world. Perhaps an element of it is that I find so much wrong with the world, and so my rejection and incompatibility represents a contrast to what I see as inherently evil and unnatural. In that contrast, my being is therefore also a rejection of those ideals and those negatives that I find so reprehensible.

It also represents to me an understanding and acceptance of myself in ways that I think I have not felt or seen for a very long time. If my madness is a natural state of being then what else can I do but to accept it with grace and clarity? It does not help me to live, and I would go as far as to say that my understanding and acceptance pushes me over the edge to where there is no way back but a descent down the other side.

And yet I can still feel the apprehension. I am fragmenting and I can feel it, and I feel physically sick because of it. It is as though my mind and body is in conflict with everything that the world has tried to force me to become. Every time the madness has reached the surface there has invariably been a crash down to put me back in line. I can feel the cracks more than ever and I am closer to the resignation of the uncertainty, the emotion, the pain, and the chaos that is me. I can see that there must be some acceptance of self, and so seeing it means that there is still that something holding on.

Is it that I am scared? To accept myself and my madness is to accept my differences and to accept the turmoil and confusion is a part of me and is something that conflicts with the world. Accepting that is akin to accept a virus or a curse. It is to accept the pain that comes from existing, and to accept that I am different. That I am the problem. That I do not need to change, but subsequently that things may not change.

And so I find myself questioning my own value and place in the world whilst questioning my sanity. My consciousness is doing something and I am struggling to stay in control. I have been shaken up and there has been a reaction, and it is bubbling up and infecting my thoughts and actions, and there is a part of me that is looking to contain it.

And there is a part of me that is begging me to accept it and to just let go.

I can’t help but sense an inner me, a past self; a younger version of me hoping that I make the right decision. There is anger and sadness that he’s been buried and not allowed to be him. All I have to do is to let go.