Bohemia Village Voice

A Window on Psychosis

Picture the scene if you can. It is early December in Northern Italy. The temperature is well below zero. I’m sitting on a park bench in a residential area with a light covering of snow settling on me.
I have dirty, smelly clothes on. I’ve gone unwashed and unshaven for 4 weeks. I’m half-starved because I’ve been eating out of rubbish bins for the past month. I’m in the middle of yet another psychotic attack. I’m alone, abandoned by my own stupidity, and all I’m worried about is the fact that I’m wearing frilly knickers!
About five in the morning the early birds rouse themselves from their lovely, warm slumber and start going in for their shifts at the treadmill. A new day had dawned, both physically and mentally.
I notice a man walking past me. My eyes beseech him to help me, to take me in and protect me from this madness. He ignores me and passes me by. Something I am now sadly becoming accustomed to. As I stand up the cold hits me hard. A frosty crust has formed on my clothes and hair. My trousers, which I’d removed because they were soaked after jumping into a fountain during last night’s attack, are now frozen solid. I sit back down on the bench and start to cry, it is all becoming too much.
I’m not truly alone though. I’ve got my voices, the daemonic thoughts that have plagued me for the past 18 months. I’ve never really prayed before I came to Italy, but now I am living in a state of continual prayer. Once again I beg God to give me the strength to carry on, the will to live.
I now go into auto-mode and start to ‘defrost’ my trousers under my armpits. It is cold, but I have to do it. I can’t walk around Milano, the fashion capital of Italy, in my frilly panties! After an eternity, I manage to get my jeans soft enough so that I can at least get my legs into them. It is cold, so devastatingly cold! I sit there for an hour or so; long enough to be able to move my aching limbs, but not too long so as to freeze to death.
When the main workforce ascends upon the factories I decide that I have to move, it is time to face the world, again! I start on my daily routine. Routines are good. I traipse around the frost-laden streets searching out cigarette dumps, something big enough to fill my parched lungs.
Suddenly my attention is distracted by a sight that makes me feel loathing for myself. Yes, I’m not in a good position, but the poor soul that I’m staring at is in Hell. He is bedraggled, starved and has a wild, feral look in his eyes. I feel for this wreck of a human; I want to help him, but I have nothing left to give.
As I approach him he steps forward to greet me. He has a familiar look to him; there is something in his eyes that I recognize. It takes me a good few seconds then I realize what it is, I’ve seen him before.
I am staring into a mirror.
He is me!