My Voices and Forest

In the recent past, my delusions grew and got loud enough to impact every aspect of my life.

I have a tendency to become obsessed with certain topics – mainly people and conversations between us, actually.

Especially a specific line that was said.

A phrase that I will repeat under my breath and in my mind for months without subsiding.

A situation that replays in my mind time, and time, and time again, week, after week, after week, after week.

The voices I hear mimic everyone around me.

Usually, tonally, they are non threatening.

They sound like they’re talking just behind my shoulder.

After my divorce, there were certain voices that were with me for a little over two years.

There are several that pop up still now.

My ex husband was one of them, well, used to be one of them.

But that one has faded in time.

I’m starting to be able to be at peace with his existence.

Which is big for me.

And crucial, I think, for me to not hear him anymore.

There are a few voices that I have heard for years and years.

They don’t control me.

They don’t take over.

But they do talk to me.

And they get loud at times.

They talk about me, so I can hear them talk, is what it feels like.

It feeds into my social paranoia and anxieties.

It’s like a whisper talk sometimes.

Most of the time it sounds like they’re just over there, out of direct view, and have dropped the volume of their voice a touch.

The tone of their voices is just as if someone were there.

Just like someone said something.

It’s exactly the same as reality.

They’re impossible to differentiate from reality.

There’s one difference I’m starting to notice.

The voices mostly narrate and comment on what I’m doing or thinking.

The topic is always me and the action or emotion being felt by me when I hear them.

Now that I know this, they’ll just morph and mutate into something else.

That’s what happens.

But, for years and years I have heard horrible things said about me.

And I always thought it was someone in my general area.

A human.

But then they started coming in through my phone.

And then through speakers, computers, and tv’s.

And then microchip sized microphones and cameras.

The delusions were usually the voices of angry or fed up with me neighbors and friends.

They complain about the volume of my streaming, the dog howling, or my cigarette smells.

What I was thinking, what had just been said, and they’ll also talk about how to kill me sometimes.

I would rarely smoke in the house, but when I did, these familiar neighbor voices would always be frustrated and talking about me just outside of my apartment window or door.

In hindsight, there was no one talking about me.

There was probably no one even home.

I have heard neighbors talking about me going on ten years that I can remember.

Actually, it’s closer to around fifteen.

If I thought about it a little further, it’s probably been longer than that.

There’s a female voice I hear a lot that’s usually a bitch.

She’s been pretty constant.

She can totally look out for me at times though too.

But usually she’s wretched to me.

She calls me names and makes fun of me a lot.

In the last few months I haven’t heard her as much.

So that’s very promising.

I have heard these voices call me horrible things since I can remember.

It’s a struggle being in the position I am now.

Because I’m aware of my psychosis.

Unlike the first thirty nine years of my life.

And now I can understand where most of my issues and symptoms have stemmed from my psychosis symptoms.

The more I think about that, the scarier it can get.

I understand that it has to get a little worse before it gets better.

I feel as though my whole mind has been critically wounded from the years of psychosis and are just now attempting to mend.

I have always hated myself because the voices have told me that I’m the biggest piece of shit alive.

Now that they’re mostly muffled, what happens?

How am I just today thinking of that whole aspect?

I have always heard voices call me wretched, awful names and tell me I’m completely worthless.

The voices in my head were never too loud though.

It felt as if they were just inside my head for the longest time.

But then they got loud, and I was at my worst ever.

Damn.

Honestly, I wouldn’t have been able to handle where I am now at any point earlier in my life.

I am frustrated at myself for the lack of acknowledgement of my hallucinations and shit.

But the reality is that what everyone else sees and hears is much, much different, calmer and kinder than my world.

I tried to explain it like this to several people throughout the years..

In everyone’s mind there is a forest.

Just bear with me.

Each forest is unique and has tons of paths in it that randomly spiderweb throughout.

Most people have trees, plants, animals, water sources, little fish or land creatures, you name it.

Maybe they’re manicured, maybe they’re not.

Some are mostly green.

Some are a mixture of dead or burned material, some are darker, some are brighter.

My forest is seemingly a very sharp, dark and stormy area with very few thriving pockets scattered around.

It hasn’t changed much since I was in my mid twenties.

Full of dead trees, ashen and charred evergreen stumps.

The green parts are moss, mainly.

There’s no surface water.

Most of my paths are overgrown with dead weeds.

Whenever I tell folks about this, they don’t know how to respond.

I don’t say any of this for any sort of reaction.

It’s a description of what I feel and see through everyday.

It’s an attempt to explain where I’m coming from.

Who I feel as though I am.

Where my subconscious is comfortable.

My world is very different from most.

I’m slowly being submerged into the reality everyone else sees. 

It’s going to take much more time than I thought to not be overwhelmed with it.

It’s very draining to attempt to cope and evolve into a world that is suddenly so quiet.

– Keren