Friday 3 January 2014

The bed of life

The antipsychotic tablets which I take nightly are major tranquilisers so it is often difficult to wake up in the mornings. Then my now fiancée came along and when I struggle to wake up she is there to help me.

The other day I realised that it isn’t just actual sleep that she rouses me from; symbolically she has also woken me up in my life as well.

Following the trauma of my psychotic episodes (and without even really thinking about it) I shut myself off from the world. My body spent its days at home focusing on learning Japanese (long story). It did get out but it did so just a shell with no real personality or opinions.

Then my fiancée to be entered my life and somewhere along the way something clicked. I suddenly felt the tug of purpose trying to rouse me from inside my comatose shell; it may sound corny but she had given me a reason to live.

I didn’t break through straight away but the ball was rolling and it started with art. I had given up art when my illness first materialised but now I felt the push to re-embrace it. This was difficult to do because I was still mostly shut away.

I needed to process what was going on but I was too scared to throw open the flood gates. How it started I don’t know but I began to write; processing things a bit at a time and eventually forming concepts that I turned into paintings.

The more I did this the more confidence I was able to build and I gradually began to form opinions of my own­. Just like she does when I struggle with mornings, my fiancée had awoken me from the stupor that my illness had anaesthetised me into.

No comments:

Post a Comment