Sketching Mad III and IV.

Charcoal on Paper.

These are some of my scars from the time, blue pen and cheap paper. The colour is paint and not blood. At least, I think so.

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I remember I had a chance to get out and go to the open wards an interview with three guys running the place. I looked forward to it for a week or something I don‘t know the haze too thick, chemical dust deep - I do remember the longing it I thought my articulation would save me again. I hoped and hoped waited got visited by three girls had tried to destroy with the holes in my heart, cutting arcing guilt betrayer that I was, liar, storm of pain my touch and words a plague of emotion.
They didn’t come back I think the number of doors with locks scared them though they all tended to think it was PRETTY FUCKING ROMANTIC.
I was tanked on some hardcore drugs I have no idea what. Varieties of thorazine the zine family yeah, a chemical lobotomy the pain whirling inside, a thrown running power saw spraying meat but no expression nothing connecting, shut out of my own body.
Got to the meeting and I opened my mouth in front of these psychiatrists and I could not SPEAK. Too wasted oh wasted yes but not in the fun way that’s for sure.
I could SHAKE though and I could drool cuz I couldn't get my facial muscles under any sort of control. So I stayed there for another week or more weeks who the fuck knows?
Hated being there so I longed for squalour ethanol sex attention. Filled instead with drugs and shakes and sobriety. Polluted with chemicals worse oh fucking worse oh yes than my own toxic liquid destruction.
I DARE YOU TO FIX ME!
They had this thing where some poor lost mad bastard would stand up and say the THOUGHT FOR THE DAY after our group meetings with people rocking in the corners. They were all so fucked up most of them could barely speak some not at all others never shut up but they only spoke to people who were not there. I stood up and quoted Shakespeare for ten minutes. Midsummer night's dream I think I thought it was nice and cheery for everyone.
"Lovers and madmen have such seething brains such shaping fantasies that apprehend far more than cool reason ever comprehends.
One sees more devils than vast hells can hold, that is the madman…”
Got out and stayed on the drugs like a good boy but kept drinking and kept cutting. All the fucking useless things did was excise my personality make me impotent make my hair fall out make me fat make me slow and make me HATE. Worst of it was I could not react act my speed acuity lust passion poisoned memory gone awareness gone focused to an angel point into pure hissing SHAME. That I was born in a fucking PARADISE of love and that I had flared brutally, violently bright. I knew history enough to understand that we live in a utopia of humanism; I knew enough LIFE to know that I had been born raised loved and somehow STILL WAS by the most beautiful minds hearts and hands.
Mother. Father. Sister. Every kindness I had repaid with failure. I deserved every torture I could devise to inflict for betraying them so deep and hard, those who threw everything anything they could find to save me into the pyre of my fucking excuse for a life.
Shuffle along undead NOT LIFE PAIN but undead don’t fall and weep with acid logic with scalpel reason undeniable distress killing my father see his eyes watching me tear myself to pieces. Hooks of my own hurt see it in his shoulders slumped he has given up I hurt him so much he is dying ahhhhhHHH. Raised with passionate care, soft hands, sweet voices singing in the night care and care and care such a beautiful boy oh he is so beautiful the boy the betrayer the monster the liar the drunk.
Guilt an endless sun clawing every sense every thought and it was RIGHT it was TRUE the only thing I had ever done was break the bones in the hands that held me. Eat the life deserve this worse such a coward mouth red and sticky and still Life eater ALIVE I was still ALIVE why was I alive?

Lost six months or a year and a half I don’t know managed to stop taking the meds they were killing me faster than the alcohol. Had a mad and stupid psychiatrist on a power trip: here, take some more STELAZINE Paul I can see that you are still vaguely capable of constructing a sentence and your hair hasn’t ALL fallen out yet. Better up the fucking dose.
Came off them then withdrawals and hallucinations my best friend told her she was a an evil bitch as I finally saw it her black heart so putrefied it was pooling behind her eyes. But I had never looked outside myself pity ME I pity YOU bitch. I was too mad to fucking SEE that was the fucking POINT
Stayed as far from my family as I could I could not look at them the only way of course to keep their lives clean of me.
Tried to fix myself went further and more mad and more mad and further faster it was still better pain beats lifelessness pain beats brain-death. Starved till the weight fell off me, wasn’t hard couldn’t afford to eat anyway at least my FUCKING HAIR GREW BACK.
Rapid cycling, oh so real after the fugue and it all slid back to me so fast skeletally thin and quicker than the rest… doing stupid stupid things wandering alone and manic. Euphoric drunkenness a cool ocean a delusion of relief honey sweet.
Beaten up again and a few more times finally worked out that I could to run away. Did gymnastics drunk on the edge of a cliff; on the roof of someone’s house.
Took stupid crazy girls to the lifeguard tower at the end of the pier at the edge of the beach in the middle of the night whenever it stormed. I waited I knew I took them whoever whenever it rained and howled at night and I could smell ozone. They liked THAT, I told them it was a full moon each one I told them a fucking ritual they always said how can you see through the clouds?
I went to clubs broke with no cigarettes and talked women into buying me drinks or just stole them; would walk around the room asking for cigarettes until I had enough to last me till morning; waking up where? Slept in a bus shelter, at the train station, in a construction site, in the bush on the doorstep of display homes and once in an actual for real DITCH.
I remember a shared rental house where I painted a six-foot self-portrait on the wall in blue and RED. I painted crows for eyes. Four houses in six months ending on the street again. Drank everything I could find oh yeah cooking sherry vanilla essence and fucking AFTERSHAVE. Used to love writing NO FIXED ADDRESS at social security called it social obscurity antisocial insecurity told then I had a job interview at a leprosarium.
I went there wearing a trench coat in the middle of the day in the middle of summer blood saturating the wool right to the edges sopping wet with it and trying so hard so hard to fill in the forms without it running down out the sleeves with my hands shaking so much I kept knocking the page onto the floor.
Must have worked I woke up a few weeks later lost them all; all those weeks were they weeks?
Got a sinus infection; reminder of humanity and mortality had to go to the hospital said hi to the staff in casualty. Remembered the nurse I slept with she turned white when she saw me and would not look again. High as a kite I waved at her and grinned oh such smiles. The infection was in my upper sinuses and about to get to my brain all those long drunk walks in the rain I guess.
Was still high even through the pain and told them I liked their x-ray machine because it looked art deco’. They fucked it up and hit the vegus nerve (the spelling is correct and the pun is clear - did I find that funny subsequently oh what do you think???) and I went and died on the operating table full cardiac and respiratory arrest wish I could remember that but I guess it would have HURT. No light at the end of any tunnels no light anywhere too cynical for a religious experience.
Was so weak had to wait three days before I made it to the bar, was straight out in a fucking wheelchair to smoke still high flirting with my face all swollen from the surgery like a freak like a lunatic of course.

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This is me, in front of my mirrored wardrobe. Pretty fucked up. Yes, obviously. Well. I feel better now.