Imagine

Finally, I'm home after a long day at the hospital. Jack Johnson's cover of Lennon's "Imagine" is playing in the background. The song couldn't be more appropriate.

My mother has repeatedly told me over the years of a saying by her mother, my grandmother. In short, my grandmother would say, "We cross back and forth between sanity and insanity every day." It is not that I ever dismissed these words; it is, however, that I never completely understood what they meant. I now do.

Over the last week and half, I have come face to face with horrible illnesses. Most of which there is no cure and the treatment a crude at best in some cases. These patients often struggle to maintain a grip on reality. Before me, the horrors of Schizophrenia / psychosis, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Bipolar Disorder, Major Depression Disorder, and every other mental illness surfaced in the eyes of desperate and almost completely helpless patients.

From the eyes of a schizophrenic, one may find the haunting image of a human being trying to fight off internal voices in a effort to maintain their own sanity and be a functional member of society. Imagine living in a world where one day voices questioned your every thought and slowly through time your thoughts every so slowly twisted with delusions. Imagine knowing you were slowly losing your grip on reality. Imagine trying to fight back...imagine trying to prove to a psychiatrist that you can function by yourself out in this world despite the voices and the deeply seeded beliefs that the president of this country was your friend.

From the eyes of a person with OCD, one may see the confusion and sheer terror of cycling through the same very, very disturbing thoughts without any control over them. Imagine the echoing thought in your every waking moment, and then imagine trying to make sense of why you keeping thinking such horrible thoughts. With such an illness, a person can fall into the trap of depression and slowly give up on life...all because you have these terrifying thoughts that you don't want to be a part of you despite the exhausting struggle to dismiss these thoughts and let alone any compulsions (repeating behaviors that are aimed at calming the obsession).

Imagine knowing that you are now 'crazy' and that at some time in the past you were 'normal' and had a full and wonderful life. The most unfortunate aspect of these illnesses lies in the fact that the patient's prior behavior in life has very little to nothing to do with onset of these severe illnesses. For the majority of cases, people are plucked from reality and left deteriorate before the rest of society. They are trapped in a world they don't deserve and can't escape.