The nightmares keep coming. Night after night my mind is thrown into uncontrollable scenes in which there is only one outcome; total destruction of everything and everyone in the dream, and I mean everyone, including me. As I wake from another nightmare I lie there wondering when this will stop. I feel the coldness start to overcome my body and drag myself out of the sweat drenched bed. Looking down at the wet covers I groan low as if not wanting to wake anyone, but there’s no one to wake, that finished weeks ago now after one argument to many. I slowly walk into the living room dreading the day ahead. The sun is beginning it’s journey through the sky as I look outside and wonder what it’s like to enjoy the dawn again. I used to enjoy those times when the sun started coming up especially as I would have finished working my night shift. Now I watch from the inside of my cage, a cage that has become the only thing I now know. I make coffee, grab a cigarette then go into the living room and sit down, grab the TV remote and switch on the TV.

Always the same news. Disaster here, deaths there with the odd good story thrown in. After a while I switch off from the TV although it’s still on blaring away it’s stories to a room that’s empty. As I sip my coffee and smoke the last bit of my cigarette I try to see sense and tell myself I will do good things today. That’s a laugh I know but I try. I quickly return to a state of foreboding, dread and uncertainty and return my gaze to the TV. Another cigarette is in order along with a fresh coffee.

Coffee made and cigarette in hand I return to the sofa where I sit looking out on the outside world. People have started going about their business of the day, going to work or school, going to the shop, probably for the daily newspaper. Ahhh the good old newspaper. Been around for years and always a good source of doom and gloom. I haven’t read a newspaper since? Well to be honest I can’t remember as it’s been that long, not that I’m bothered. Just like the news channels, newspapers seem to gloat about all the uncertainty, death and destruction we humans are creating and causing in the world today. I wish I could leave, the planet that is. I only have one dream and that is to be alone somewhere where I can grow my own food, live how I want to and do what I want without all the hustle and bustle of today’s modern society. I cling to that dream although all the other dreams have long since vanished. Banished into the never regions of my mind when this, this awful black fog invaded my mind and turned me from a caring, loving and hardworking man into, this monster. I continue to look outside but not really looking anymore. Instead I am thrown back in time. A time when all things seemed to be going well for me, or so I thought. Looking back now I realise that 2000 was the year my life changed, I just didn’t know it yet.

A brush with depression should have been the wakeup call but, sadly I never realised what was starting to happen. My mind changed along with other things too but as they were so gradual I never questioned them. I just thought that the things I did, said and thought where normal. If only I had known. I take another sip of my coffee and drain the cigarette of all the nicotine I can get. As I inhale deeply making sure my whole body has had it’s fill of the noxious, poisonous gases I think about 2007 when, after months of going deeper and deeper into myself I implode. I am sat in a tiny flat on the floor of the kitchen covered in vomit, tablets and blood. Not the best time of my life but again I never headed the serious warning signs.

During the next few years I stumble through them trying to make sense of what is happening to me. As I begin to fight back, this inky black disease fights back with it’s own dirty tricks campaign making me do and say things I don’t want to, or telling me that what I am doing and thinking is normal. I fought and fought until I had nothing left inside me to carry on this fight, good against evil I call it. An evil so horrible I can’t describe it, not to myself or friends, the few I have left that is. Most friends deserted me back in 2007 after… well lets just say I wanted help and found brick walls instead. Now I have enough brick walls in place not even I can get into some areas of my mind as I don’t have the “clearance.” No it’s best if I keep the walls in place so no one can get close or know anything about me. Not even my therapist knows just how my mind is so warped and twisted I have turned in on myself to protect not only myself but others too.

I walk back into the kitchen. ‘Time for another coffee’ my mind is telling me so I switch on the kettle and wait. As I wait looking down at the white kettle boil the water I think more about the past, in particular Northern Ireland. Why me? I say to myself as the kettle finishes boiling the water. I am oblivious to it as more and more images of Northern Ireland come into my head, in particular the incidents I experienced there. Tears well up in my eyes, and as I blink they sting my eyes before running down my cheeks and plop onto the kitchen top. All my problems would have been solved if just one of the incidents had gone wrong and I wouldn’t be here now writing this. If only I think before wiping away the tears and finishing off the coffee.

You want to know how my mind is twisted? Well I will give you one instance.

Someone was supposed to ring me Friday to talk about the tablets I am taking. They never rang. As the day went on I started to think that they had spoken to their boss, my GP and they have all agreed I am ok and that I am not telling the truth. Basically I am lying and my mind is ok so they won’t help me anymore. The only bit of sanity I have left is telling me it’s not true and they were probably busy, but as the rest of my mind, 99.9999999999999% of it is covered in this black stinking mess that has taken control of all my thoughts, they are telling me the opposite. It might seem trivial to most but to me the thought is real and has, no is, stressing me as I dwell on it like all the other thoughts I have inside my mind.

They do say madness is all in the mind, don’t they?