The Ups And Downs Of The Unconscious

My life could be perfect material for a crime story. I was born and severely abused by people who were supposed to protect me from the dangers of this world. And although they protected me physically (as outwardly perfect parents) by providing me with food and shelter, there was also physical and mental abuse ruining it all. See where I'm coming from?

It started at a specific moment, when my fourteen-year-younger sister was born. This was the time when I stopped being the centre of my parents' attention (I wonder if I was at all) and became their enemy, or to put it mildly, a person who will be used as a reason to do things rather than having things done for her.

They have always stated otherwise, and the public can probably prove it, that there is nothing wrong with this family, only with me. Every child has been beaten up in their life, right? Every girl wearing high-prescription glasses was hit in the face in the garden. The neighbours certainly could see. Every girl had to wear high-prescription glasses because her parents didn't realise that staying too close to an old TV that emitted harmful radiation for too long would damage the teenager's eyes. There was no Internet back then, there were only newspapers devoted to politics, because, as my father used to say, this is the most important thing and everything depends on it. Maybe his mood depended on it too often, but mine never did. And the best thing about it all is that every girl ends up in a psychiatric hospital for a month because she is so mentally abandoned by her parents, who (to this today) only take care of her sister's needs, that they never even noticed that their teenage daughter has a bit too much on her plate and could use some support. Let's also add mental support, because financial support was almost always there. I don't think I've ever received so much support from my mother before or since my stay in that hospital. Someone had to show their love outwardly, right?

Is this what a loving family looks like? Not really, right? Is this what a narcissistic family looks like? Yes, with me as the invisible child, of course.

Let's fast forward about two decades. In this case, it's not the time that counts, but the scenario. The circumstances are repeated in another country, but the scenery is almost identical. Work (then school), pressure, management supporting young people (my sister) and neglecting the rest. Similar? Of course. Since my dad died exactly when I started this job, it was the perfect backdrop for this event. Although I didn't realise how bad it was until it all fell apart. My so-called career was ruined, but then again, was there any other career for me than writing? Now I'm starting to think that never.

When I earnestly transposed three previous abuses that had happened to me into fiction, another trouble arose – another injustice and another deterioration of my mental health to previously unknown extremes.

I guess I always believed that the pills would take over the brunt of all the psychological work, which I never did properly because there was no one to learn from and my parents remained the most ignorant in this department until the end, including my sister. This time, my writing saved me in exactly the same way that music first saved me when I was a teenager.

In both scenarios, past and present, it was also about true love, because strong emotions tend to distort reality and present it in darker colours. When I love, I love deeply. Each of my true loves was unfulfilled due to lack of reciprocity or hidden by me to avoid confrontation. This time I fell in love with a boy who helped me mentally at work. I never openly confessed my feelings to him, but I think he may have suspected them. I wrote poems about him here on Vocal. When he spoke, I felt peace and the evil world could no longer enter my head. I just wanted to talk to him, not anyone else. I wanted him to solve impossible problems at work and in my life. I called him my hero and saviour, the true captain of a sinking ship.

But he worked for them, for management, to make it easier for them to infiltrate me. Almost like a spy. I suspect that even the seduction was planned, because he had his own charm and everyone loved him. My boy spoke to me as a loyal messenger so management didn’t have to do it and kept me tethered without a training on the grounds that I am sick. Nothing overt said though, just tiny ticks here and there, but that has become very clear to me after my sickness meeting. However, nothing changed for two years, only the situation of stagnation caused me to lock myself in my world and neglect the complication until it was too late to deal with it. I think the lack of communication and really silly issues threw me off course and made it easier for me to be looked at in a dark light.

I finally feel enlightened after two years of covert and overt abuse at work and what they did to me. I suppose we could say that the schizophrenic's brain was once again coming to light in an attempt to confirm its identity, forced once again by hidden narcissistic abuse that was surging to the surface like lava from a volcano flooding and burning everything in its path. My love, born only in my head, platonic and yet true, which had to follow and face moral questions, evaporated like air.

As I turned to writing, I wrote and wrote and wrote. I have written almost half of my book since February 2023. The second half, as the first one was created many months ago. The eviller the world became, the more I went inward and focused on my fiction. The poems helped me become mentally stronger, as did the online course I completed during this time, the TQUK Level 2 Certificate in Understanding Behaviour that Challenges, and the multitude of articles and practices I learned to help myself alleviate anxiety and suicidal thoughts. Everyone tends to exhibit behaviour that challenges in the most stressful situations, but what if these situations are all around us? Customers, superiors, the surroundings outside the window, bad memories of people from the past in your head? Then what? How to solve this puzzle when everything is a mystery. Or better yet, how to solve a puzzle when all the clues are already laid out, but there is no will to solve it and you have to end up dead. Me – mentally, the main character of my book – physically. I killed my past by getting to the bottom of it all and came out wiser. But is it really wiser when everyone else is imprisoned for their ignorance for life?

I am a writer. In my mind, I always have been.

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You can find more stories, articles, and poems from Mescaline Brisset on my profile on Vocal. The art of creation never ends.