The two poems and accompanying artwork published below are part of a larger piece of work documenting one of several psychotic episodes I have experienced. I have been drawn to the work of MITUK because of their insistence to include the whole person and wider societal context in our conversations around mental health.
These poems are both distinct yet connected to all of the episodes I have experienced, as beyond the acute phase they bleed into everyday existence and seem to remerge familiar in tone yet the territory uncharted each time, as though they have been incubated in the sub conscious and never really stopped. Instead of describing how it felt or what it was like to experience as I have done previously, I am focused on an account of some of the sensations and delusions I experienced. It is not everything by any means – my memory was not good over this period and my sense of time was scrambled – my language is limited when brought to bear on some of it. The intention of my writing is to help people understand – to encourage people to imagine themselves in the reality I portray. I hope to render the experiences useful by putting them to work. In doing so I do not want to take the sting out of the experiences or trivialise them in the act of trying to create something from them.
Psychosis is a terrifying long-term struggle, for many it is suffering which cannot be glibly summed up or captured. The way I see it, creating something from these experiences is my way of taking them seriously and elevating them as significant. Others prefer to keep their similar or more severe experiences private or they never get the luxury of relative peace afterwards to create from them. I believe there is growth and healing to be gained in learning from these episodes, perhaps those lessons are only for me or perhaps you will find some use for them too.
In this blog on MITUK, I am giving examples of two poems which were written in the run up to an episode of psychosis. They point to a tension which is characteristic of my episodes. It seems in the early stages the experiences are spiritually rich – as my imagination gets carried away, my energy increases and it all moves too fast for me, I lose ground as it were. From then I swing between the extremes of the psyche, unable to hold that middle space – I am the Second Coming or a monster. It seems that some of the learning is about claiming that middle space where I am, Tom, with my potential and faults. Holding the tension with compassion and a calmness that makes shared reality still possible. Positioning myself as part of connected whole, neither at the centre of it or particularly significant, yet unique in the way all things are.
The paintings included in the work were all done by a team of family and friends who looked after me over the two-week period when I was unable to live recognisably in this world. The pieces were ongoing collaborations in a fraught time that must have been both hard and claustrophobic for them. Improvising, they tried ways of creating a calm space and providing me with something to do that would give me some ground – for the most part I was not able to engage. However, in retrospect I can see how incredibly lucky I was to have their patience and love. Interestingly the colours and shapes in the paintings mirror the images and tone of a recurring nightmare I had as a child, I find this disconcerting.
If I can encourage others to create from their lived experience, I would be happy. If I could also illuminate some further understanding for carers helping people going through psychosis that would be wonderful.
Threshold. Pacing
Restless spirits
Come submerge
Let us salvage
What has been lost
From the wreckage
Of a world that cannot be with itself
Let us remember whatever has been on the
tips of our tongues for too long
Daily my small self stands sentry
on a trapdoor to the underworld
Where my deepest essence waits
Sharpening imaginative force
That seeks air and light
And other souls to get to work with
Leaden Tussel
Grounded in service
That flows freely from the heart
Oh be more than words
Morning brings a leaden tussle
Heads helmet folded over every leap life-wards
Hammered at bones forget their shape
Tight gristle grinds
Heart flung wide shut
Mind forgetful
I know you’re talking about rhythm
But I don’t know what you’re saying
Long groans and I know
the destination of that out breath
is sleep
It’s a drawn out sinking
The emptying descent
I won’t leave the house today
This is to all the strangers
That I will never meet now
The surprise interactions on a bus
The friend of a friend at a party
The sudden depth in the pub
New horizons form as ripples
The skimming stones of interaction
Expand the pool laid still
Yet here I am lying in bed thinking I am superior
As so many rush towards domesticity
I pirouette in my bed and sink
Later eye lids refuse to hold the dark
Still lying on the bed
Now thinking how dare I believe I am special
So many rush towards domesticity
So many rush on through to death
Whilst I try and solve the riddle of my desires.
In bed, as though it were a tomb
We are smaller in this straightjacket hug
Paths cross less frequently or not at all
And I am poorer for it
I never heard that pearl or yours
Or had my ear talked off
As you decompressed
I was too scared of your fear
To pick up your purse from the puddle
And hand it back to you
Betraying the sacred social distance
A risk
Kindness now has limits
We have forgotten who we really are
Binary static jumps between worlds
Stay out of the attic
For there is hidden a porthole to the basement
The things that lurk down there have names
We do not say
That balance
The dangerous dance
A quickstep spin
On soul’s nectar
Too often now have I
Burst through that sweet spot
To an unruly contained chaos
To judgement and dread
Beyond the pale where fear and shame reign
This chain of being I long to preserve
I exaggerate my power
Talking big again
I could never break it
Only pollute a portion
Taint the metal
Pause to stop thinking, no longer analyse
In states like this you are neither weary or wise
Come back
Return
Let me infuse the shining links with my spirit
To join the others in
The great dancehall of creative essence
it is happening now and in every place
The many seats of being interchangeable
A cosmic dance of creation irrefutable
Silence
Drums
Bringing pure threads of sound
Sets me still
Awakens an inner knowing
****
Mad in the UK hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.