A Day in the Life of a Schizophrenic
I talked to a man yesterday,
A man I have known for years,
One who was not really there,
My doctor told me today.
Words have taken leave of me
To portray the muddle in my mind.
But is the mind mine,
Or is it the property of another?
Me, just a fleeing sense of insanity
In a perfectly sane brain?
In those fleeting moments of insanity
I ponder over the truth, that is my mind.
How can a person I see
As clearly as I see you now
Be unreal, a figment of my imagination?
How can I be sure ever
If what I see is true or not,
Some mirage brought about
By the mind, unknown and unseen?
Now I shall look at each face,
Both the ones known through my eyes,
And the others seen through my mind,
With a new look of fear;
Asking the closest true neighbor,
"Do you see the person that I see
Or is he seen only through me?"
1 comment:
Read 'A Beautiful Mind'? The biography of Nash. That was the first thing that came into my mind when I read this piece.
On second reading, the the fact that struck my mind was this. Everything I see, is through my own eyes, and processed by my own brain, and analyzed by my own mind. Hence it makes it obvious that what I see need not necessarily be what you see. You may not even see what I see. It is called 'perception', I believe. In this way, are not all of us schizophrenics?
It has long been a desire of mine to be a schizophrenic for a day (and also to be thought dead for a day) and feel what goes through the mind of a schizophrenic. But I feel sure it won't feel any different from what it feels to be me right now, because what I see is what I see, and does it really matter if you can see it or not?
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