Just Before My Breakdown

Instability

By: Leif Gregersen

Perhaps as I fade into forever I will simply never know. On that April day

that seemed a God-inspired creation as it froze up and snowed. Never know why

my brain played those tricks on me, changing around my thoughts and feelings,

changed what I could hear and see. It must have seemed I was cruising high, ready to

fight, ready to die. Feeling estranged from my world, from any love, even the spirit

above.

Slowly I was losing my mind

Bizzare and all-consuming thoughts raced around in my head. Mixed input from

every sense organ pushed out who I was, replaced it with something that wasn’t love.

All of the people I had studied with those I knew as close friends, close confidants.

In my thoughts they had been divided into separate groups. Among them I was on the loose. Never knowing at all what I should do.

I was slowly losing my mind

One group of people in my school. All the people I thought were simply people as

well. Were divided up into two groups, one to serve, one to rule. There was

the group that was unified, self-defined as cool. Above the nerdy academics who

they ruled. And somehow controlled the school.

Slowly my mind was slipping away

In gym class on that day, from a friend came a killer pair of skates. Just my size

So strong, supportive and lightweight. I went onto the ice and then by fate. An unsure

Young boy became. The focus of all my anguish and my hate.

My Mind Was Slipping Away

In truth even though I knew it wasn’t right. I skated, shouted, started to pick a fight.

For the love of a sweet and lovely brown-eyed, redhead girl. I knocked him down with the first blow, gave away my perfect, happy suburban world.

My mind had slipped away

In the many years until then. I had practised, played, worked out and toiled alongside of athletic friends. There was never such a time like then as my blood boiled. I knocked my adversary down as fists were coiled. How did I ever think I could make her love me at all?

I had lost my mind

The cops came to arrest me right in school. I must have truly looked the fool.

Punching out a guy who did not deserve. To in any way be hurt.

I had lost my mind

In the weeks that followed I was force-fed pills. And lost all of my day to day working

skills. Was slammed around and treated like dirt. Injected with drugs, locked into

an isolation cell, alone and hurt. After all that I never truly got well. They had pounded

into me a lesson I could never forget. I was now worse than a mangy, rabid pet. And with my illness now, I would be forever in their debt.

I had lost my mind.