The Pain of Being Unable to Trust Your Own Eyes

It represents my hallucinations. It is a deep pit so dark you can’t trust your own eyes when you finally see light. So quiet you can’t trust your ears when you hear music. So void of feeling you can’t trust your body and mind when you feel the warmth of a hug. You don’t know what to trust because your symptom is causing so much interference.

It makes it hard to tell what is real and what is not. It is pain. It is fear. It is finding yourself on the floor, in tears and a total mess. It is screaming for help when it touches you. It is having nightmares an entire year later, reliving every moment. It is not fun, not pleasant and should not be romanticized.

I’ve found that so many people take hallucinations as a romantic symptom of psychosis. They talk about how beautiful it is to see things others cannot. They make them into something beautiful when really, they are ugly and wicked. Hallucinations need to be treated properly, not romanticized.

It is death and pain. It is seeing dead people you care about. It is having those dead people tell you to kill yourself and join them. It is not beautiful. It is not romantic. It is an illness and needs to be treated as such.

This is not to say there is something wrong with people who have them. People are people. Hallucinations are a parasite. They do not make the person any less beautiful, but they do make the person sick. Please, realize how serious this is and treat it as such.

Image via Thinkstock.

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