There was a time in my life, not that long ago, when I felt a drive to write, learn, create, I was alive. I wanted to understand the nature of the universe, the nature of the mind and the operation of the human body on a molecular level certain that the key to optimum physical and mental systems could be found if you could simply identify molecular action in the body and then �feed� it. In typical behavior for someone with a �grave� mental disorder I wanted to understand the mind. I wished to understand how and why I came to be, in this universe, in this mental state, and physically living and breathing rather than simply a mass of cells. Thoughts raced, sometimes too fast for me to follow, but other times opening doors and making connections that seemed far beyond my limited education. I am not stupid. In an effort to prove my theory that the secret to the martial arts power was based firmly in the tenets of physics and that acceleration (by reduction of friction in the arm and an increase of the frictional force with the ground � stance) was the key to the power in the punch. I took a physics course to gain the mathematics to prove what I had intuitively understood. I got an A in the course and on my paper �the Physics of the Martial Arts Punch�. I could feel the universe beneath my feet. I wanted to run and jump, just keep moving all the time, electrical energy coursing through my blood.

Now I am detached. I don�t get excited about anything. I feel the energy required to drag myself into physical activity is beyond my reach. I shuffle to work and home again day after day and wonder why it is again that I take the medications that have robbed me of the good with the bad, the baby with the bath water if you will. I don�t understand why the caged bird sings, whatever is the point? How could they believe a mirror could substitute for real contact. It�s not that I forget how bad the bad was (it was very bad) it�s just that it seems as though the cure might be as bad as the disease. Can I take a vacation from sanity? Dare I dip my toe into the swirling waters without tumbling into the whirlpool to be dragged down to the cold nether world? Is there some in between that would allow me to draw from the font of energy without overloading my circuits? People wonder why a Schizophrenic or Bipolar stops taking the medication that allows them to lead a normal life. Here it is in a nut shell. Who wants to be normal? Non descript, ghosts that exist only in the tiny world of their associations. Always knowing there is a fire inside that would allow you to burn brightly (though perhaps too hot and thus short lived) that you constantly pour water on so that all you are left with is a steaming wet pile of black coal. Coal in your stocking because you were bad. You are a bad human so you are condemned, by medication, to this half life, somewhere between living and dying, and if you can�t live then why bother. Medication is accused of making people suicidal as though it is a side effect. The reality is that the medication robs the patient of their spark and leaves them nothing but the mundane to take its place until one day others peak into the cage to find the bird on the floor of the cage, feet curled, dead of shear boredom.

What keeps returning to me is the pointlessness of this current manifestation of life. I can�t find enough value in my work, relationships or activities to justify continuing in this manner. This is why the patient eventually eschews the medicine. Even a palace can become a prison when choice is removed form the equation.

Where is my fascination? Oh where oh where can it be, with my spirit cut short and my days cut long, oh where oh where can I be?

I wish you Peace

~alison~

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