Hello All!
I’ve been slacking with the posts lately on here as I was finishing up school work but now the semester is finally out. The next week or so is going to be spent reworking and (possibly?) remodeling the blog.
Be sure to come back and check it out as I work on it, and if you visit during the next week and wonder why links go nowhere or things look incomplete, that is why.
See you all soon!
Paul
I’ve come this far with a different map in each of my hands.
They’re drawn completely from memory.
One takes me home, one takes me nowhere in particular.
I always seem to pick the path with all the shortcuts open
And the lines and the circles more steadily drawn.
Let me start by saying that I am incredibly thankful for everyone who has followed or checked out the blog so far. It’s been a little while since I last checked in with a non-creative post, so here we go.
Decided to start a photography project that deals with mental illness called “Consumed”. Many know and relate to the idea of being consumed by it. Unedited preview of a larger work to come! Find future editions here.
© Paul M. Falcone
I lie awake in bed staring at the ceiling tiles that seem to float above me. First at each individually, and then back as a whole. Noticing every dot and curve in the cheap design used in this college dorm. But as cheap as it appears, I can still find some uniqueness in each.
My eyes signal out some pieces of one section, crafting each small fragment into a picture. I let my imagination work, seeing ancient civilizations at war, groups of Christmas trees, and machinery transforming into wildlife before my eyes.
The gears turn into vines that breathe life into the sky and for a moment I can sense a feeling of tranquility spread through my body. In my head I feel alive. But even the bed that grasps me from beneath is questionable in my reality.
But in the darkness as I try to fall asleep as the only living thing is this room I feel a sense of dread. A pressing sense creeps upon me, a sense that tells me that these pictures on the ceiling won’t always stay here. I fear that in the morning, after an hour of sleep. I won’t remember this.
I fear I won’t remember me.
“I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad…
…or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.”
![Bell jar[1]](https://wemustbebroken.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/bell-jar1.jpeg)
Sylvia Plath was someone who I instantly identified with when we read The Bell Jar my senior year in high school. The thoughts that went through her head and the way she saw and perceived the world were both relatable to me in so many ways. While so many people who read the book in class couldn’t understand her descent into madness, I understood perfectly.
I am surrounded by friends. I am alone.
I am confident. I am insecure.
I am complete. I am broken.
I am healthy. I am sick.
I am one. I am two.
I am not the same as you.
I am two. But I am one.
I am sick. But I am strong.
I am broken. But I am rebuilding.
I am insecure. But I am moving forward.
I am alone. But I have found comfort in knowing,
We are all the same.
Trigger Warning For Suicide Discussion:
–
This is it.
It would be this easy to end it.
It would be this easy to take a life.
He stood against the cold metal looking straight ahead into the scarce clouds that dotted the city skyline. The sounds of engines combusting gasoline and turning pistons filled in the gaps behind him that reflected the back of his eyes with imagery. But this what just background noise.
Feedback.
Static.
Just like his mind on a constant basis.
He slowly looked down to the waters below. It was so far down. Is this what I truly want? He fought back to look in his mind for any reason not to step forward the six inches between life and death. But he found none. He heard footsteps of people walking down the sidewalk on the side of the bridge. But no one stopped. No one asked.
No one cared.
His eyes began to water as the breeze from the river brushed into his reaming emotions. How did it come to this? How did it come to the point where he wanted to die? Where each day he went to sleep hoping he wouldn’t wake up?
My entire body is heavy.
My eyelids blink with the consistency of a frozen stream. The entire room is an object in motion with the lowest shutter speed from a camera a few decades old, rusted through the dust that collects on the outside of my pupils. I roll over in an attempt to make myself more comfortable.
3:40 A.M reads the clock on my bedside.
I sigh and roll back over, throwing my arm over my forehead with my palm facing upwards.
It’s been two weeks of this. Going on three. Why can’t I sleep? Please God let me sleep.
I’m tired but the sleep won’t find me. I remain invisible to the dust that needs to fall on my eyelids. It’s like I don’t exist. The rest of the world is asleep and here I am,
Awake.
Alone.
With only my thoughts.
Last fall, I called a friend who I hadn’t spoken to in a long time and got the following response:
–
“Paul if I don’t change something, I’m not going to survive winter.
I’m going to kill myself.”
–
Struck by the suddenness of his words that pierced my ear that the phone was pressed against, I responded the only way I could. With empathy and full attention.
I knew this friend had been struggling for a long time, we had been friends for years. Our struggles united us, and we had many talks through our friendship of existentialist questions filled with identity and purpose. But it had never been had real as this.
It had never been as scary as this.
I don’t really know where to start.
I didn’t really understand what I’m going through, and what I have gone through, until some point last year. After being informed that there was an actual name for everything I’d been experiencing, I began to take quite a different outlook on, well, everything. But I digress.
My name is Danny. I’m 21. I go to college. I have a job. I have friends. I like movies, music, sports, and many other things that normal people my age would enjoy. I smile like everyone else, I go about my daily routine like everyone else, and I have fears, just like anyone else. These are normal parts of my identity that many people know. But what I don’t broadcast is that I have suffered from Major Depressive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder for as long as I can remember. After digging up some earlier stuff in therapy this past year, I can deduce that my earliest memory of these disorders was around 7th or 8th grade. I remember sitting in Science class, existing as an introverted adolescent, and thinking about how wonderful it would be to kill myself. This is a thought that would follow me for the next eight years.
Dear Hope 