May 24th is Schizophrenia Awareness Day. In honour of it, we’ve gone purple for the day! Here’s a song, written and performed by Coda Francis, about his experience with schizophrenia.
I hear sirens in my head,
As I’m wide awake, laying on my bed.
The air is thick with the smell of fear and hate.
Clean the carpet from the hypothetical blood stains.
My alcoholism reached a head in spring of 2013, brought to desperation by the death of my wife and my subsequent despair. By this point I was drinking from three pm onward everyday, first wine and then vodka, whiskey or rum. Nothing would bring her back, but I could annihilate myself. It was starting to dawn on me, though, that this was making me nothing but miserable. I wasn’t going anywhere or doing anything. I wasn’t socializing or running errands. I could barely cook. Being on disability, I wasn’t working. My full-time job was getting to the bottom of the bottle.
These past months (as gone by my silence) have slowly burned me down to nothing. I took on too much took quickly, became everyone’s rock, and I forgot about myself.
My brothers death happened seven months ago. People are now telling me it’s time to pack his things away, time to dust his room (which is now my room). People are telling me it’s time to put him away.
But how am I meant to put away a life I am just beginning to grieve? And from this, I get asked; “Why do you feel this way now?”
My wife died four months ago. We had fought the night before, ending with her saying she was taking a bunch of pills. I thought she was joking. I woke up next to a corpse. I woke up with a black eye I didn’t remember getting and spent five minutes trying to clean the vomit from around her mouth until I realized she was dead. Time stands still, memories fail. I called 911 and the person on the line tried to get me to move her from the bed to the floor. I tried, moving a women my same height to the floor, dancing with rigor mortis. A rush of urine. It was then, holding that corpse, that it first hit me.
I’m afraid you have become furniture, brother mine.
Nothing but an engraved box among a hollow wooden desk.
You’re not longer those books your read, the letters that lined
The inside of your throat and tongue. You’re no longer
The songs you played with shaking fingers and bouncing
Legs at three AM when the world finally dozed to sleep.
I want to give my heartfelt condolences to one of our writers on this website, Ava Gaul. Three days ago she lost her wife Katie, to suicide. As some of our writers have pointed out before, a person’s suicide not only affects those close to them, but entire communities. Despite not knowing Katie at all, […]
Editor’s note – this story is continued from On Death, Depression, And The Moments Of Solitude That Follow.
I feel with death, a new journey in life begins. We must relearn how to live for the sake of our livelihoods. For the sake of life itself.
Trigger Warning: mention of abuse
When I was a freshman in high school, my English teacher assigned the first essay of the semester. The topic was “time I felt different”. This proved to be a surprisingly difficult topic for me to write about. Why? Then, I had no idea what it was like to fit in. I had no frame of reference.
Note: I have not used any real names in this article. However, the people, places, and events described are real (to the best of my recollection).
Most people spend their lives actively seeking to create their legacy. For most people it is by having children, being good parents, and then good grandparents. For others it is the accumulation of wealth. Inventors have left indelible marks on our history and culture as well. Politicians and generals guide nations through both war and peace. For my childless, staff-grade officer Uncle “Michael”, though, there seemed to be no legacy after his senseless death in Iraq in 2003. Until now.
Trigger Warning: Death, Depression
My brother passed away of this month. He was a young man, only 23 years old and beginning his life. He, like the majority of my family, suffered greatly from mental illness. We shared depression, anxiety, and OCD. Though, sadly, his mental illnesses seemed to grow as mine began to ease.
But now that he is gone, I am yet again forced to work and understand my depression. I always wished it were something tangible that I could hold within my hands and pull layers away to physically understand it. I want to be able to understand the immensity. The silence. The deafening noise that combats that eerie moments of peace.
